The article is devoted to the study of one of the most important problems of modern historical science - the history of the formation of the Russian multinational state. Special attention is paid to the comparative analysis of the state and political statuses of the national autonomies of Russia - the Kalmyk Khanate and the Hetman's Ukraine. The statehood of the Kalmyk nomads arose after their entry into the Russian state in the first half of the 17th century. It is shown that the nature of the Russian-Kalmyk relations during this period makes it possible to define them as a protectorate of Russia over the Kalmyk uluses. The article examines the formation of the Russian-Kalmyk interaction, the evolution of the status, territorial framework and geopolitical position of the Kalmyk Khanate. At the beginning of the second quarter of the 18th century. After the Kazakhs of the Younger Zhuz migrated to Emba, the Kalmyk lands partially lost their border status and began to increasingly resemble the inner territory of the Russian Empire. A gradual transformation of political autonomy into administrative one begins. The article describes the main features of the autonomy of the Kalmyk Khanate in the period of the 17th - early 18th centuries: the preservation of the traditional administrative structure, the concentration of administrative, judicial, legislative and fiscal power in the hands of the secular elite, the inheritance of the supreme power in the Torgout dynasty. The paper determines that the new geopolitical status of the Kalmyk Khanate after the second quarter of the 17th century also changed the state policy in relation to it - the system of government of the khanate was unified, political independence was eliminated, the khanate was being integrated into the general imperial administrative and political system. The restrictive policy of Russia in relation to the Kalmyk Khanate, the government's interference in the hereditary question contributed to the beginning of the political fragmentation of the Khanate in the second half of the 20s - the first half of the 30s of the 18th century, political crises of the second half of the 18th century, and the crisis of 1771. The material presented in the article makes it possible to highlight general patterns in the political status of the Kalmyk Khanate and Ukraine in the 17-18th centuries.
