It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is still an opinion, at least among the masses, that in pre-revolutionary times literacy was poorly developed among the Kalmyks. It was believed that representatives of the clergy and noble classes ― Noyons and Zaisangs — were literate. The clergy accounted for the largest percentage of literates, which was due to their type of activity. Nevertheless, there was an opinion that even among them the bulk was mired in drunkenness and deception of the ignorant masses of the people. The purpose of the proposed work is, as far as possible, to answer some of the above questions, although the study and coverage of the content of the problem as a whole is not a matter of one article. Materials and methods. To solve these problems, archival material, which is being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, is mainly involved. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to approach the resolution of certain emerging problems, abandoning the recent habit of approaching the analysis of a diverse historical panorama with a single pre-regulating theoretical attitude. Descriptive, historical-comparative, historical-genetic and analytical methods were used in the study. Results. In Kalmyk society, representatives of the Noyono-Zaisang environment were primarily literate. The Noyons were almost all literate, including their wives. The Zaisangs had a fairly high literacy rate; there were also women among the literate, but their number was small. There are no specific data on commoners, but it can be assumed that the number of literate among them was small. In the XVIII century. literacy education in general in the Kalmyk Khanate went in two directions. Russian Russian was taught to the representatives of the Kalmyks, and the Russians — Kalmyk. This training was initiated by the Russian government (translators, interpreters, etc. were needed) and spontaneously, in the process of everyday communication between representatives of neighboring peoples.