Source: The St. Petersburg Times

http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/922/top/t_11042.htm

On November 25, 2003 The St. Petersburg Times ran a feature story on a Buddhist temple in Kalmykia, a small region in the Siberian steppes of Russia: "This Buddhist temple is located just south of Elista, the capital of the Kalmyk Republic,...home of the only Buddhist ethnicity native to Europe...The Kalmyk are the descendants of the Oirat, a union of western Mongolian tribes that joined the empire of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. After the fall of the Mongol empire in the 14th century, the Oirats relocated to the steppe of western Siberia...Today, yin-yangs, Buddha statues and religious Boddhisatva images speckle the capital. For an optional donation of 50 rubles, you can even have a private consultation with a Mongolian lama in Elista's only hotel on Ulitsa Lenina. His advice will consist of a horoscope reading, a physical and a Kalmyk history lesson all rolled into one. But under Soviet rule, Kalmykia's Buddhist religion was banned, and hundreds of temples destroyed along with local Orthodox churches. Only one - the dilapidated 19th-century Khosheutovsky Khurul - remains, four hours to Elista's east."