Communism in Mongolia

Qing rule and independence

From 1691, the Mongols were ruled by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China, during which northern and southern Mongolia became known as Outer Mongolia and Inner Mongolia respectively. The Qing dynasty promoted Tibetan Buddhism and built monasteries, which grew rich and powerful, while its administrators impoverished and oppressed the Mongols and pursued colonisation of Inner Mongolia in the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the implementation of the New Policies, aimed at further Qing integration of Outer Mongolia, led to anti-Manchu mutinies and uprisings.^[2] In late 1911, the Qing dynasty collapsed in the Xinhai Revolution, and Outer Mongolia declared its independence under the leadership of the 8th Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, who was named the Bogd Khan. The new state sought international recognition; in 1912 it signed a treaty with the Russian Empire, and under the Treaty of Kyakhta of 1915, Mongolia accepted autonomy under the suzerainty of the Republic of China (ROC).^[2]

Chinese occupation and resistance

The outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Russian Civil War changed the Mongolian-Chinese dynamic. During most of the civil war, Russian colonies along the Mongolian frontier fell under control of the White movement. Within Mongolia, from October 1919, Chinese troops under Xu Shuzheng, a prominent member of the Anhui clique, nullified treaties and began asserting Chinese control over the region.^[4] In November 1919, Xu compelled the Mongolian parliament to accept the abolition of autonomy, effectively reimposing Chinese sovereignty. That same night, some Mongolian herdsmen and lamas gathered outside the palace and tore down the flags of the Chinese Republic hanging from the gate.^[5]

Between 1919 and early 1920, a few Mongolians formed what became known as the "Consular Hill" (Konsulyn denj) and East Urga (Züün khüree) groups, representing the beginning of organised resistance to Chinese rule.^[6] The Consular Hill group was founded by Dogsomyn Bodoo (1885–1922), a highly educated lama who had worked as a Mongolian language teacher at the Russian-Mongolian School for Translators and was exposed to Russian Bolshevism through his contacts at the Russian consulate.^[7] Other members of the Consular Hill group included Dambyn Chagdarjav (1880–1922), head of commerce department in the capital,^[8] and Darizavyn Losol (1890–1940), a former monk who had served in the army of Autonomous Mongolia since 1911.^[9] Khorloogiin Choibalsan (1895–1952), who acted as Bodoo's Russian interpreter, also joined the group; he had been sent to study at a gymnasium in Irkutsk from 1914 to 1917 and was exposed to Bolshevism while living among Irkutsk's radicalised student population.^[10]

The East Urga group was established in 1919 by Soliin Danzan (1885–1924), a customs official in the Ministry of Finance, Dansranbilegiin Dogsom (1884–1941), a ministry official who had participated as a scribe in the negotiations of the Treaty of Kyakhta of 1915,^[11] and Damdin Sükhbaatar (1893–1923), a soldier in the Mongolian army whose talent for military tactics and skills at riding and shooting had earned him the respect of his comrades. After his death, Sükhbaatar was canonised by Communist historians as the "Lenin of Mongolia" and enshrined as the "Father of Mongolia's Revolution."^[12] These seven men, Bodoo, Chagdarjav, Losol, Choibalsan, Danzan, Dogsom, and Sükhbaatar, would become known in Mongolian history as the "First Seven" (Анхны долоо) founders of the Mongolian People's Party.^[13]

Soviet intervention

Immediately after the first congress, the provisional government decided to seize the Mongolian part of Kyakhta from the Chinese troops. On 18 March 1921, Sükhbaatar's troops, despite being heavily outnumbered, succeeded in taking the town. This day is now the official holiday of Mongolia's army. Shortly after, Chagdarjav was relieved of the prime ministership on 16 April 1921 and Bodoo took over as both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.^[20]

On 18 March 1921, the Mongolian guerrilla army seized the Chinese garrison at Kyakhta Maimaicheng. In May 1921, the White Russian Asian Horse Division under Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg attacked border troops of the Red Far Eastern Republic, advancing toward Troitskosavsk. The Red Army moved large numbers of troops toward Mongolia from different directions and had a tremendous advantage in equipment and numbers. After initial skirmishes, the joint Bolshevik and Red Mongol forces defeated von Ungern-Sternberg's forces in battles between 11 and 13 June, fought by the 35th Division of the 5th Red Army under commander Mikhail Matiyasevich, Far Eastern Republic units, and Mongolian People's Party troops.^[21] Combined Bolshevik and Red Mongol forces entered Mongolia and captured Urga on 6 July 1921. Von Ungern-Sternberg was captured by Red partisans on 20 August 1921 and executed on 15 September 1921, after which the power of the Bogd Khanate of Mongolia was eliminated.^[22]

On 11 July, the new government was ceremonially established, with the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu installed as a limited monarch while real power lay with the People's Party. The Soviet intervention thus fully pulled Mongolia out of the influence of the Beiyang government of China and under the influence of Soviet Russia, resulting in the establishment of the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924.^[2]

The Mongolian People's Army

One of the first actions of the new MPRP authorities was the creation of a native communist army in 1921 under the leadership of adept cavalry commander Damdin Sükhbaatar, in order to fight against Russian White movement troops and Chinese forces. The decision to create an army was made on 9 February 1921.^[23] On 13 March 1921, four cavalry regiments were formed from partisan detachments.^[24] The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army (MPRA) was aided by the Red Army of the Russian SFSR, which helped to secure the Mongolian People's Republic and remained in its territory until at least 1925. A Military Council was formed soon after among the military leadership, while the General Staff was led by Soviet specialists.^[25]

A central Political Administration Unit was established in the army in 1921 to supervise the work of political commissars and party cells in all army units and to provide a political link with the Central Committee of the MPRP. Up to one third of army units were members of the party. The Red Mongol Army received sixty percent of the government budget in early years and was expanded from 2,560 men in 1923 to 4,000 in 1924 and to 7,000 in 1927. The native armed forces stayed linked to Soviet Red Army intelligence groups and the NKVD, while Buryat Mongol Comintern agents acted as administrators and represented real power in the country under direct Soviet guidance.^[2]

In September 1923, the first cavalry school and an artillery school were opened on the outskirts of Urga, and a year later the publication of the army newspaper began.^[26] On 16 October 1925, Mongolia adopted a law on universal conscription, and in 1926 the creation of temporary detachments of the people's militia began.^[27]

Early purges and the fate of the First Seven

Dansranbilegiin Dogsom, executed 1941

Darizavyn Losol, died in Soviet prison 1940

Following the People's Revolution, infighting within the MPRP resulted in several waves of violent political purges, often instigated and aided by Comintern or Soviet agents. Within two months of the establishment of the revolutionary government in July 1921, Danzan lost his seat as party leader to a relative of Prime Minister Bodoo. The rivalry between the two intensified as Danzan, serving as Minister of Finance, engineered various plots to remove Bodoo from office.^[28] Danzan exploited an angry public backlash to Bodoo's campaign to "modernise" the people by forcibly cutting off "feudal" ornaments from Mongolian clothing, and accused Bodoo of plotting with the independence leader Ja Lama and with the Chinese and Americans to undermine the revolution and establish an autocratic government.^[29]

On 7 January 1922, Bodoo resigned from all his government positions, ostensibly for health reasons, but Danzan nevertheless pursued the charges against him. Bodoo, Chagdarjav, and 14 others were arrested and interrogated by a Russian agent. Bodoo and Chagdarjav were executed by shooting on 31 August 1922.^[30] Their deaths are generally viewed as the first in a series of political purges that would take place in Mongolia through the 1920s and 1930s. To blunt criticism of Bodoo's execution by powerful religious groups (Bodoo was a lama), party leaders invited the Hutagt Jalkhanz Khutagt Sodnomyn Damdinbazar to become the next prime minister.^[31]

Two years later, Danzan himself became a victim of the same factionalism he had exploited. At the Third Party Congress in August 1924, Danzan and Bavaasan were accused of representing bourgeois interests and engaging in business with American and Chinese firms. They were arrested together with several other delegates, quickly put on trial, sentenced to death, and shot, all within a period of 24 hours while the party congress continued to meet.^[32] The swiftness of Danzan's execution sent a shockwave through the party that consolidated the Soviet stranglehold on Mongolia.^[33]

The fate of the remaining members of the First Seven was grim. Sükhbaatar, Mongolia's revolutionary hero, died on 20 February 1923 at the age of just 30; although some in the 1940s alleged he had been poisoned, the cause of death was never officially established.^[34] Dogsom and Losol, the last two living members besides Choibalsan himself of the original First Seven, were arrested in July 1939 as the Stalinist repressions drew to a close, on charges of counterrevolution. Choibalsan recruited MPRP General Secretary Dashiin Damba to deceive Losol into boarding a plane he believed was bound for Dornod Province in eastern Mongolia; Losol was instead flown to Moscow, where he was confined at Butyrki Prison and died on 25 July 1940 before his case came to trial.^[35] Dogsom was sent to Moscow, tried by Soviet authorities, and executed on 27 July 1941.^[36] Both were posthumously rehabilitated, Losol in 1962 and Dogsom in 1967.

Founding the republic

After the Bogd Khan's death in 1924, the search for a new incarnation was forbidden. The MPP declared a socialist "non-capitalist path of development", was renamed the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), and joined the Comintern. The 1924 constitution founded the Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) and proclaimed the transfer of political power to the working people along Marxist-Leninist lines. The land, water, and mineral wealth of the country were nationalised. The capital was renamed Ulaanbaatar, meaning "red hero."^[2]

Political instability in the 1920s and 1930s

As in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Mongolian politics went through several abrupt changes of direction in the 1920s and 1930s. The initial nationalist leadership of the MPRP advanced the slogan "Get rich!" to promote business, which was opposed by the communists. The Fifth Congress in 1926 called for restriction and nationalisation of private property. The Seventh Congress in 1928 denounced previous "right opportunism" and dismissed several leaders. In 1929, the state began expropriating monastery property and tried to force herdsmen into collective farms and communes. During 1930–1932, there were uprisings led by the lamas of several monasteries, the largest of which took place in 1932 and was brutally suppressed; both Soviet and Mongolian-operated aircraft took part in actions against the rebellion, carrying out reconnaissance, leaflet dropping, and bombing missions.^[37] At the direction of the Comintern, the MPRP expelled the perpetrators of the "left deviation" in 1932, and a "new turn" was taken by moderate leadership.^[2]

In 1928, several prominent MPRP members were imprisoned or exiled in a widescale purge of suspected right-wingers as the country underwent rapid collectivisation, land expropriation, and persecution of the Buddhist clergy.^[38] In 1933–34, in what is viewed as a dress rehearsal for the repressions of 1937–1939, MPRP General Secretary Jambyn Lkhümbe and other MPRP elements, particularly Buryat-Mongols, were falsely accused of conspiring with Japanese spies. Over 1,500 people were implicated and 56 were executed.^[39]

The Stalinist repressions (1937–1939)

From September 1937 to April 1939, the Stalinist purges in Mongolia saw mass arrests of top party and state leaders, lamas, soldiers, and citizens on false charges of "counter-revolution" and spying for Japan. The repressions were an extension of the Great Purge unfolding across the Soviet Union around the same time. Soviet NKVD advisors, under the nominal direction of Mongolia's leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan, persecuted thousands of individuals and organisations perceived as threats to the Mongolian revolution and the growing Soviet influence in the country.^[40]

Soviet Deputy NKVD Commissar Mikhail Frinovsky was dispatched to Ulaanbaatar at Stalin's direction. He delivered a list of 115 counter-revolutionaries and Japanese collaborators to Choibalsan and assembled an Extraordinary Purge Commission, an NKVD-style troika headed by Choibalsan, with Minister of Justice Tserendorj and former MPRP Secretary Dorjjavyn Luvsansharav.^[41] The arrest of 65 high-ranking government officials and intelligentsia on 10 September 1937 signalled the launch of the purges in earnest. All were accused of spying for Japan and most confessed under intense torture.^[42]

What followed was a spasm of violence that lasted nearly 18 months. Choibalsan's troika approved and carried out the execution of more than 18,000 counter-revolutionary lamas. Monks that were not executed were conscripted into the Mongolian armed forces or otherwise forcibly laicised,^[43] while 746 of the country's monasteries were liquidated. Thousands more dissident intellectuals, political and government officials labelled "enemies of the revolution," as well as ethnic Buryats and Kazakhs, were also rounded up and killed. Twenty-five persons from top positions in the party and government were executed, 187 from the military leadership, and 36 of the 51 members of the Central Committee.^[44] Prime Ministers Peljidiin Genden and Anandyn Amar were accused of counter-revolution and shot in Moscow in 1937 and 1941 respectively.^[2] Buddhist institutions were nearly all destroyed, their property appropriated, and the lamas killed or secularised.

Estimates differ, but anywhere between 20,000 and 35,000 "enemies of the revolution" were executed, a figure representing three to five percent of Mongolia's total population at the time.^[45] By the time the purges ended in early 1939, an entire stratum of Mongolian society had effectively been exterminated while much of Mongolia's cultural heritage lay in ruins.^[46] With Amar's removal, Choibalsan became Mongolia's uncontested leader, simultaneously holding the offices of prime minister, minister for internal affairs, minister of war, and commander-in-chief of the Mongolian armed forces.^[47]

Economy and society

At the MPR's foundation in 1924, Mongolia was a nomadic subsistence society. Farming and industry were almost nonexistent, and transportation and communications were primitive. Socialist collectivisation, industrialisation, and urbanisation ultimately transformed the agrarian, nomadic economy of the 1920s into a developing agricultural-industrial economy by the late 1980s.^[51]

The first attempt to collectivise livestock herding began in 1929. After uprisings, these collectives were disbanded in 1932 and replaced by voluntary cooperatives (nökhörlöl) and production associations (negdel). Collectivisation was achieved in the 1950s; the number of negdel rose from 165 in 1952 to a peak of 727 in 1958, comprising 108,200 households representing 75 percent of the total.^[2]

In 1961, the manufacturing town of Darkhan was founded on the Trans-Mongolian Railway, north of Ulaanbaatar. In 1973, Erdenet was founded to host the Erdenet Mining Corporation, a joint Mongolian-Soviet enterprise and one of the world's largest copper mines. Industry accounted for 7 percent of Mongolia's net material product (NMP) in 1950 and increased to 35 percent in 1985. Agriculture, including herding, declined from 68 percent to 20 percent over the same period.^[51]

Before the 1920s, Mongolia had no health services apart from what was provided by lamas or shamans, and the population was in decline from untreated sickness. Modern healthcare in Mongolia was developed starting in 1922 under the Soviet Semashko model. In 1990, there were more than 6,000 physicians, three-quarters of whom were women. Infant mortality fell from 109 per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 57.4 in 1990.^[2] Education was similarly transformed; the number of general education schools rose from 331 with 24,000 pupils in 1940, to 359 with 50,000 pupils in 1947, with obligatory eight-year general education introduced gradually in the 1970s.^[2]

Under one-party rule, media in Mongolia was strictly controlled. The official MPRP newspaper Ünen (Truth), founded in 1920, served as a mouthpiece of the People's Great Khural, Council of Ministers, and MPRP Central Committee. Under political pressure, traditional Mongolian arts were suppressed in favour of Soviet-inspired "socialist realism", with much of traditional culture viewed as "feudal" or "religious" and officially abandoned in favour of artworks depicting revolutionary heroism.^[2]

Gorbachev's influence and early reforms

After Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in March 1985, he began implementing policies of perestroika (restructuring the economy) and glasnost (openness and accountability); the atmosphere of reform prompted the same policies in Mongolia, known as öörchlön baiguulalt and il tod.^[2] Unlike Tsedenbal, Batmönkh agreed with the Soviet leadership on normalising Sino-Soviet relations; between 1987 and 1992, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Mongolia. In 1988, the MPRP newspaper Ünen urged accelerated reforms to overcome the party's "dogmatic interpretation of socialism", declared that "authoritarianism and intellectual indolence" undermined national "renewal", and described Tsedenbal as "willful and unprincipled."^[2]

Beginning in December 1988, Ünen began publishing a new column called "Workers' Letters," which criticised the Politburo and party leaders for the first time.^[52] Also in December 1988, a youth underground organisation called "New Generation" (Шинэ үе) was established by young dissidents, including Erdeniin Bat-Üül, the son of well-known author Sengiin Erdene; Sosorbaramyn Tsogtsaikhan, lead singer of the Honh band; and Sukhbaataryn Amarsanaa, a journalist.^[53]

The 1990 Revolution

The first public demonstrations took place on 6 December 1989 in Erdenet, the second-largest city of the MPR, where protestors submitted demands for the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the full nationalisation of the Erdenet Mining Corporation, and the resignation of the MPRP Politburo.^[54] On 10 December 1989, on International Human Rights Day, the first open pro-democracy public demonstration occurred in front of the Youth Cultural Center in Ulaanbaatar, where the creation of the Mongolian Democratic Union (MDU) was announced with Sanjaasürengiin Zorig as general organiser.^[55] Around 300 protestors submitted 13-point demands to the government, including a multi-party system, free elections with universal suffrage, the replacement of a centrally planned economy with a market economy, private property, and protection of human rights, particularly freedom of religion.^[56]

Demonstrations drastically increased by late December when news broke of a Garry Kasparov interview suggesting the Soviet Union might sell Mongolia to China.^[57] On 14 January 1990, the protesters had grown from 300 to a few thousand and gathered in the square in front of the Lenin Museum. A demonstration on Sükhbaatar Square on 21 January (in weather of minus 30 degrees Celsius) followed, with protesters carrying banners rehabilitating Chinggis Khaan, a figure which the socialist school curricula had outright banned.^[58]

On 18 February 1990, the MDU convened its first Congress with 611 representatives and 200 guests from 16 provinces and 3 cities, announcing the establishment of the Mongolian Democratic Party, Mongolia's first opposition party.^[59]

On 4 March 1990, the MDU and three other reform organisations held a joint outdoor mass meeting of over 100,000 people demanding democratic change, to which the government sent no representative.^[60] On 7 March 1990, in Sükhbaatar Square, the MDU initiated a hunger strike urging the current government to resign. The situation was tense; within the Politburo there were serious discussions about cracking down on the protestors and a decree was drafted awaiting approval from MPRP Chairman Jambyn Batmönkh. Batmönkh outwardly opposed the decree, maintaining that they must "under no circumstances resort to using violence." Those present later recalled that Batmönkh said "I will never sign this. We few Mongols have not yet come to the point that we will make each other's noses bleed," smacked the table, and left the room.^[61]

On 9 March 1990, the Politburo resigned en masse, and on 21 March 1990, Batmönkh announced his personal resignation.^[62] Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announced the news of the Politburo resignation to the hunger strikers and to people gathered on Sükhbaatar Square. The hunger strike stopped. In May, the constitution was amended by the People's Great Khural, which removed references to the MPRP's "guiding role" in society, legalised opposition parties, and established the office of president and a standing legislature, the State Little Khural.^[2]

The transition

At Mongolia's first multiparty elections in July 1990, the MPRP gained majorities in both bodies of the new bicameral parliament.^[63] The ruling MPRP won 357 seats in the People's Great Khural and 31 out of 50 seats in the newly established State Little Khural, with the opposition Mongolian Democratic Party nominating 346 candidates for the 430 seats in the People's Great Khural but unable to nominate enough candidates to compete fully.^[64] A transition to a market economy was approved, and the herding cooperatives and state farms were broken up and privatised.^[2]

As these reforms coincided with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which had until 1990 provided significant economic aid to Mongolia's state budget, the country experienced a harsh economic downturn which caused enterprises to close down, inflation to rise, and basic food to be rationed for a time.^[65] A new constitution, adopted in January 1992 and entering into force on 12 February 1992, created a unicameral State Great Khural and formally abolished the socialist republic, ending Mongolia's communist era. The Mongolian People's Army was simultaneously reorganised and renamed the Mongolian Armed Forces in February 1992.^[2]

The first major electoral victory for the democratic opposition came in the presidential election of 1993, when incumbent Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat, running as the opposition candidate of the Mongolian National Democratic Party and Mongolian Social Democratic Party, won by 59.89 percent of the total vote. The Democratic Union Coalition, co-led by MNDP chairman Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, succeeded for the first time in winning parliamentary majority in the 1996 parliamentary elections, marking the first peaceful transfer of power from the former ruling communist party to the opposition.^[66]