The Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) was the Mongolian communist state that existed from 1924 to 1992 that self-designated first as a people's democratic state and later as a socialist state. The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party was enshrined as the leading force of state and society; it occupied the historical region of Outer Mongolia. Geographically positioned between the Soviet Union and China, the MPR became the world's second communist state. It was the first Soviet satellite state, and remained so for its entire existence, longer than any other Soviet satellite. It is the predecessor of the modern state of Mongolia.
The state was established in 1924 following the Mongolian Revolution of 1921, which was supported by the Soviet Red Army. Under the rule of Khorloogiin Choibalsan, the government aligned closely with Soviet policies, undertaking Stalinist repressions from 1937 to 1939 that resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 people. The MPR's army fought alongside the Soviets in the 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol against Japan, and its independence was formally recognized by China after a 1945 referendum.
After Choibalsan's death, Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal came to power and maintained a close alliance with the Soviet Union, particularly during the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. His rule was marked by Soviet-guided industrialization and the complete collectivization of agriculture, mirroring the Soviet Model. This would transform the nomadic society into a developing agricultural-industrial economy. Inspired by the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, the 1990 Mongolian Revolution led to the resignation of the MPRP leadership, the legalization of opposition parties, and the establishment of a multi-party system. A new constitution was adopted in 1992, formally abolishing the communist state and establishing the present-day parliamentary republic, officially known as the State of Mongolia.
History
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. Its administrators also impoverished and oppressed the Mongols, and pursued colonization 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. 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 called on the Mongols of Inner Mongolia to join it, and sought international recognition. In 1912, it signed a treaty with the Russian Empire. Under the Treaty of Kyakhta of 1915, Mongolia accepted autonomy under the suzerainty of the Republic of China (ROC).
Revolution and early years
After the 1917 October Revolution and outbreak of the Russian Civil War, Mongolia was recognized by the Bolshevik government in August 1919. That November, ROC troops entered the capital and overthrew the Bogd Khan. During the Chinese occupation, Mongolian revolutionaries made contact with the Bolsheviks in Siberia, and in 1920 founded the Mongolian People's Party (MPP), led by Damdin Sükhbaatar, Khorloogiin Choibalsan, Dogsomyn Bodoo, Soliin Danzan, and others, across the border at Kyakhta. In October, White Russian cavalry under Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg entered Mongolia, and in February 1921 drove out the Chinese and restored the Bogd Khan. The MPP made a provisional government at its first congress on 1 March, and that July cavalry under Sükhbaatar, supported by Soviet troops, captured the capital in the Mongolian People's Revolution. Bodoo was appointed prime minister, while the Bogd Khan was allowed to remain on the throne. In November, a Mongolian delegation traveled to Soviet Russia and signed a treaty.
A split began to emerge between nationalists and communists in the MPP, whose members included lamas and nobles. In 1922, Bodoo was executed as a "counter-revolutionary". After Sükhbaatar's death in 1923, the MPP program was amended so the party could be "purged of oppressor class elements"; after the Bogd Khan's death in 1924, the search for a new incarnation was forbidden. Danzan was executed for "bourgeois tendencies" that year. 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 its capital was renamed Ulaanbaatar (meaning "red hero").
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 nationalization of private property. The Seventh Congress in 1928 denounced previous "right opportunism" (baruun opportunizm) 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, and herdsmen began to slaughter their livestock or herd their animals across the border. At the direction of the Comintern, the MPRP expelled the perpetrators of the "left deviation" (züünii nugalaa) in 1932, and a "new turn" (shine ergelt) was taken by moderate leadership. Collectivization of livestock herders was completed in the 1950s (see § Economy).
From September 1937 to April 1939, 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. Some 20,000 to 35,000 Mongols were executed in Mongolia and the USSR in a campaign organized by NKVD officials and Khorloogiin Choibalsan, minister of internal affairs and commander-in-chief. Under communist repression, an estimated 17,000 monks were killed, official figures show. Prime Ministers Peljidiin Genden and Anandyn Amar, for example, were accused of counter-revolution and shot in Moscow in 1937 and 1941, respectively. Buddhist institutions were nearly all destroyed, their property appropriated, and the lamas killed or secularized. In March 1939, Choibalsan, Stalin's close ally, became premier, led a Stalinist dictatorship, and initiated further episodes of repression during his tenure.
World War II (1939–1945)
In 1931–1932, the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. In 1934, Mongolia and the USSR made a verbal agreement on mutual aid in case of invasion, followed by a formal agreement in 1936. In May 1939, Japanese forces first skirmished with Soviet and Mongolian troops at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. That July, Japan launched an unsuccessful attack across the river, and in August, Soviet and Mongolian troops under General (later Marshal) Georgy Zhukov, encircled and destroyed the Japanese forces. In April 1941, the USSR and Japan concluded a neutrality pact. That June, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Mongolia did not join the war directly, but provided the Soviets with volunteers and materiel, and the country's economy was marshalled to support the war effort. Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, MPRP general secretary and second to Choibalsan, rose to prominence, inspecting aid deliveries and touring the Eastern Front as a Mongolian People's Army (MPA) lieutenant general.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the "Big Three" Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) decided the terms of the planned Soviet entry into the war against Japan, which included a recognition of the "status quo" in Mongolia (which was still internationally recognized as part of China). In August 1945, the Soviet Union used Mongolia as one base for its Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. The build-up brought 650,000 Soviet troops and large amounts of equipment to the country; the MPA played a limited role. The ROC, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, was persuaded to recognize Mongolian independence in the 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty after Stalin promised to refrain from supporting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Chinese Civil War. In keeping with the treaty, a successful independence referendum was held in Mongolia in October 1945.
Cold War politics (1945–1984)
Following the CCP's victory in the Chinese Civil War and its proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, Mongolia transferred its recognition from the ROC to the PRC. The 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty guaranteed Outer Mongolia's independence, but ended Choibalsan's hopes for reuniting it with Inner Mongolia. Mao Zedong privately hoped for Outer Mongolia's reintegration with China, and he was rebuffed by Soviet leadership after raising the question in 1949 and again in 1954, the year after Stalin's death. In 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, Chinese leaders attempted to present Mongolia's independence as one of Stalin's mistakes. The Soviet response was that the Mongols were free to decide their own fate. Choibalsan died of cancer in Moscow in 1952, and was replaced as prime minister by Tsedenbal. Unlike his predecessor, Tsedenbal was enthusiastic about incorporating Mongolia as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. This proposal was met with strenuous opposition from other MPRP members, and was subsequently abandoned.
Mongolia's foreign relations outside of the USSR and PRC were initially limited to the Soviet satellites of the Eastern Bloc. It was recognized by India in 1955, and that year attempted to join the United Nations (UN), but its request was vetoed by the ROC (now based in Taiwan) which had withdrawn its recognition of Mongolia's independence and renewed its territorial claim on the country. Mongolia eventually became a member state of the UN in 1961, after the Soviet Union threatened to veto the admission of the newly decolonized states of Africa if the ROC again used its veto. Mongolia established diplomatic relations with its first Western country, the United Kingdom, in 1963, but its diplomatic relations with the United States were not established until 1987, near the end of the Cold War.
In the 1950s, relations between the MPR and the PRC improved considerably. The Trans-Mongolian Railway, which opened in 1949 and linked Moscow with Ulaanbaatar via the Trans-Siberian Railway, was extended to the Chinese border and linked with Beijing in 1955. China provided economic support to Mongolia by building factories and apartment blocks, and thousands of Chinese laborers were involved in the projects until they were withdrawn in 1962 in an unsuccessful bid to pressure Mongolia to break with the USSR during the Sino-Soviet split. A military build-up on the Sino-Mongolian border began in 1963, and in 1966, the Soviet Union and Mongolia signed a new mutual aid treaty with a secret annex allowing the stationing of Soviet troops and missiles in the country. The Soviet Union increased its investment in the Mongolian economy on a "fraternal" or "elder brother–younger brother" (akh düü) basis.
Tsedenbal, a friend of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, sent many of his political rivals into internal exile during his leadership, including Dashiin Damba in 1959, Daramyn Tömör-Ochir in 1962, Tsogt-Ochiryn Lookhuuz and others in 1964, Bazaryn Shirendev in 1982, and Sampilyn Jalan-Aajav in 1983. After Jamsrangiin Sambuu's death, Tsedenbal was elected in his place as chairman of the presidium of the People's Great Khural (head of state) in 1974, and handed the premiership to Jambyn Batmönkh. Tsedenbal was expelled from office by Batmönkh and the MPRP Politburo in August 1984, on the pretext of "old age and mental incapacity" in a move with full Soviet backing, and he retired to Moscow; Batmönkh took over as the party leader and head of state.
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. Unlike Tsedenbal, Batmönkh agreed with the Soviet leadership on normalizing Sino-Soviet relations; between 1987 and 1992, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Mongolia, which enabled both countries to normalize relations with China. 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". In that same year, Mongolia participated in the Seoul Olympic Games, making its final appearance as a communist nation. In 1989, Mongolian newspapers called for an "objective and realistic evaluation" of Mongolian–Soviet relations.