Abstract
<jats:p>The purpose of this article is to study the contribution of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society to the formation of ethnographic collections in the museum funds of the country in the last third of the 19th — early 20th century, using the example of the Kalmyk people. The material and spiritual culture of the sole nomads in the European part of the country could not but arouse the scientific interest of the IRGS members, who not only undertook expeditions, but also permanently resided among the people they studied during their travels or while in government service. The source base of the study comprises inventory lists found in the collections of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the accession books of the Dashkov Ethnographic Museum from the archive of the Russian Ethnographic Museum. The study examines the factors that led to the collection of Kalmyk ethnographic items: the territory of Kalmyk nomadism, the professional activities of the donors, and the list of items transferred to the museum. Special attention is paid to the identification of the items and their correlation with the modern names. It is concluded that the activities of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society members aimed at studying the nomadic culture of the Kalmyks contributed to the replenishment of museum collections with items of Kalmyk ethnography and Buddhist religious worship, which demonstrated not only its originality and uniqueness, but also the polyethnicity and multi-confessional nature of Russian society. Thanks to the activities of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, authentic items characterizing the material and spiritual culture of the nomadic Kalmyks have survived to the present day.</jats:p>