Zunda Tolga is a village (rural type) in the Iki-Burul district of Kalmykia, the administrative center of the Zundatolga rural municipality. The settlement is gasified, connected by a highway with the capital of the Republic - the city of Elista.
The name of the village is two-part. The first part of the name is derived from the Kalmyk name Zunda, which in turn is of Tibetan origin and means "morality". The second part of the name refers to the peculiarities of the terrain and is translated from the Kalmyk language as "mound, hill, hillock".
It was founded as a settlement at a stone quarry. An elementary
school has been operating since 1956. In 1965, by the decision of the
executive committee of the Iki-Burul district Council of Workers'
Deputies of the Kalmyk ASSR, the Zundin primary school was reorganized
into an eight-year school.
On September 1, 1976, on the basis of
farm No. 2 and farm No. 4 of the Kevyudovsky state farm in the
Iki-Burulsky district, in accordance with Resolution No. 335 of the
Council of Ministers of the Kalmyk ASSR dated August 4, 1976 "On the
creation of forage-producing state farms in the Kalmyk ASSR", the
Chograysky state farm was organized.
In connection with the
formation of a new state farm "Chograisky" and the need to consolidate
mechanization and livestock personnel, in 1977 the Zundinsky eight-year
school was transformed into a secondary school.
Since January 1,
1993, a separate village administration has been operating on the
territory of the Chograysky state farm. Before that, the village was
subordinated to the Kevyudovsky village Council.
On December 8,
1998, the state farm was reorganized into the SEC "Chograysky".
Memorial plaque
On the banks of the Chograi River,
two kilometers to the west of the village, there is a monument,
which by the Resolution of the People's Khural (Parliament) of the
Republic of Kazakhstan from
On May 7, 2009 No. 212-IV was
included in the List of Cultural Heritage Sites and taken under
state protection. Initially, the memorial plate was made of shell
rock, on which the words: "Eternal memory to the soldiers of the
Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." Under the influence of time and
nature, the slab cracked and shattered. In the year of the 65th
anniversary of the Victory, the monument was restored by the
Zundatolginskiy SMO, granite slabs and a metal fence were installed.
Every year on May 9, the best students of the local school lay
flowers at the foot of the monument to the unknown soldiers and
honor the memory of those killed in the Great Patriotic War with a
minute of silence.
Entrance arch
The business card of
Zunda Tolga was built in 1969 at the initiative of the quarry
management. The work was performed by the welder Ivan Ivanovich
Fadin. And in 2004 the arch was reconstructed. The sketch and all
the artwork were made by the teacher of the Zunda school, Petr
Erdnievich Kukudaev.
School art gallery
The pride of the
school and the village are the exhibits of the Small Picture
Gallery. In 1993, the administration of the state farm purchased 10
paintings, and some of the paintings were donated by the Union of
Artists of Kalmykia. At present, the museum has over 25 works by
famous Kalmyk artists: Ochira Kikeyev with his autograph for school
students, brothers Valery, Vladimir and Vyacheslav Ledzhinov,
graphic sheets by V. Khakhulin, landscapes by M. I. Ostapenko and
others.
The village is located at the southern edge of the Ergeninsky upland,
belonging to the East European Plain, 1.6 km from the northern shore of
the Chograi reservoir, created in the valley of the Manych River, at an
altitude of about 38 meters above sea level. The terrain is gently
rolling, has a general slope from north to south, towards the Chograysky
reservoir. The soils are chestnut saline and saline soils.
By
road, the distance to the capital of Kalmykia, the city of Elista, is 88
km, to the regional center of the village of Iki-Burul — 69 km.
The climate is continental, arid, with hot summers and relatively cold and snowless winters (according to the Köppen climate classification — semiarid (BSk index)). The average annual air temperature is positive and is + 10.2 °C, the average temperature of the hottest month of July is + 24.7 °C, and the coldest month of January is 4.4 °C. The estimated long—term precipitation rate is 340 mm. The least amount of precipitation falls in February (the precipitation rate is 17 mm). The largest number is in June (49 mm).
Zunda Tolga, like the whole Republic of Kalmykia, is located in the Moscow Time zone (Moscow time). The offset of the applied time relative to UTC is +3:00.
There are SPK "Chograysky", a secondary school, FAP and other rural institutions. The settlement is supplied with gas, an asphalt highway connects the settlement with the capital of the republic.