Svetlana Sabrukova, autobiography, Kalmyk Culture, Scholars Who Studied Kalmyks

Svetlana was born in 1966 in the village of Tsagan-Usn, Kalmykia. After finishing the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad University, she did her PhD on the comparative analysis of Tibetan and Mongolian translations of Shantideva's Bodkhicharya-Avatar at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of St Petersburg University. Today Svetlana works at the same Institute. She talks about Konstantin Golstunsky and Alexei Pozdneev's trips to Kalmykia as well as about the lives of the Kalmyks of Don, Tersk and Orenburg regions. She also talks about her student years, her family, the Kalmyk language, Buddhism and a traditional healing method with consecrated butter. When she was a child, Svetlana was cured by a famous Kalmyk healer called Namka Kichikov with herbs and excrements of a ground squirrel that had its burrow facing south.Sponsored by Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin