Mongolian People's Republic

• 1. Introduction

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  The Mongolian People's Republic began with a renaming. In 1924, the ancient capital of Mongolia was rechristened Ulaanbaatar, meaning "red hero", and a new constitution founded a communist state that would last nearly seven decades. Sandwiched between the Soviet Union and China, this landlocked country became the world's second communist state and the very first Soviet satellite. What did that mean in practice? How did a nomadic, illiterate, monastery-driven society transform into a Soviet-style industrial republic? And what finally brought it down? The answers are threaded through purges, copper mines, hunger strikes, and one day in December 1989 when young people flooded the streets of Ulaanbaatar to demand something the state had never promised: political freedom.

• 2. Revolution and Its Price

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  In 1920, a group of Mongolian revolutionaries crossed the border at Kyakhta to meet the Bolsheviks in Siberia. Among them were Damdin Sükhbaatar and Khorloogiin Choibalsan, two names that would define the country's next three decades in very different ways. They founded the Mongolian People's Party that year, and by July 1921, cavalry under Sükhbaatar, backed by Soviet troops, had captured the capital. The Bogd Khan, the Buddhist spiritual leader who had ruled since independence in 1911, was allowed to stay on the throne for a time. But the revolutionary coalition was already fracturing.

  Dogsomyn Bodoo, appointed the first prime minister, was executed in 1922 as a "counter-revolutionary". Sükhbaatar died in 1923. Soliin Danzan was shot for "bourgeois tendencies" in 1924, the same year the Bogd Khan died and the search for a new Buddhist incarnation was forbidden. The party purged itself of lamas and nobles, renamed itself the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, and joined the Comintern. What had begun as a broad nationalist coalition was now an instrument of Soviet policy.

  The 1924 constitution formalized this transformation, proclaiming the Mongolian People's Republic and nationalizing the land, water, and mineral wealth. Suffrage was extended to all citizens at age 18 except "feudalists" and monks resident in monasteries. A new national symbol, the soyombo, was adopted as the state arms. But the moderate gestures in the constitution masked a more turbulent reality: within a few years, the party's early slogan of "Get rich!" would be reversed, private property restricted, and monastery estates seized by force.

• 3. Choibalsan and the Purges

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  From September 1937 to April 1939, the Mongolian state turned on itself. Mass arrests swept up top party and state leaders, lamas, soldiers, and ordinary citizens, all accused on false charges of counter-revolution and spying for Japan. The campaign was organized by officials from the Soviet NKVD working alongside Khorloogiin Choibalsan, who at the time served as minister of internal affairs and commander-in-chief. Between 20,000 and 35,000 Mongolians were executed in Mongolia and the Soviet Union during this period. An estimated 17,000 monks were killed. Buddhist institutions were nearly all destroyed, their property seized.

  Prime Ministers Peljidiin Genden and Anandyn Amar illustrate the purge's reach: both were accused of counter-revolution and shot in Moscow, in 1937 and 1941 respectively. In March 1939, Choibalsan himself became prime minister, consolidating power he would hold until his death. His rule mirrored Stalin's closely, right down to the political logic of eliminating rivals through the machinery of state security.

  The earlier upheavals of collectivization had already devastated the countryside. Starting in 1929, nearly 30 percent of poor and middle herdsmen's households were forced into collective farms by the end of 1930. Uprisings led by lamas broke out between 1930 and 1932, with the largest brutally suppressed in 1932. Herdsmen slaughtered their livestock or drove their animals across the border rather than surrender them. The Comintern ordered a retreat: collectivization was paused, the perpetrators of the "left deviation" were expelled, and a "new turn" under moderate leadership was declared. Full collectivization of livestock herders would not be completed until the 1950s.

• 4. War and Recognition

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  Mongolia's most significant military engagement came before the Second World War officially began. In May 1939, Japanese forces skirmished with Soviet and Mongolian troops along the Khalkhin Gol river on Mongolia's eastern border. That July, Japan launched a larger attack across the river. In August, Soviet and Mongolian forces under General Georgy Zhukov encircled and destroyed the Japanese units in a decisive battle. The engagement ended any Japanese ambitions toward Mongolia and demonstrated the practical value of the 1936 mutual aid agreement between Mongolia and the Soviet Union.

  When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Mongolia did not enter the war directly, but its economy was organized to support the Soviet war effort. Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal, then general secretary of the MPRP and second to Choibalsan, gained visibility inspecting aid deliveries and touring the Eastern Front as a Mongolian People's Army lieutenant general.

  Mongoolia's international status was resolved at the end of the war through a combination of great-power bargaining and a popular vote. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Allied powers agreed to maintain the "status quo" in Mongolia as part of the terms for Soviet entry into the Pacific war. In October 1945, an independence referendum was held. The Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-shek, recognized Mongolian independence under the 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty, in exchange for Stalin's promise not to support the Chinese Communist Party in the civil war then underway. After decades of ambiguous status, Mongolia finally had formal recognition from its southern neighbor.

• 5. Tsedenbal's Long Rule

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  Choibalsan died of cancer in Moscow in 1952, and Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal replaced him as prime minister. Where Choibalsan had been Stalin's close ally and a figure of terror, Tsedenbal was a different kind of ruler. A friend of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, he managed potential rivals through internal exile rather than execution. Dashiin Damba was sent away in 1959, Daramyn Tömör-Ochir in 1962, Tsogt-Ochiryn Lookhuuz and others in 1964, Bazaryn Shirendev in 1982, and Sampilyn Jalan-Aajav in 1983.

  Tsedenbal harbored an unusual idea for Mongolia: he genuinely favored incorporating the country as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. Other MPRP members opposed the proposal strenuously, and it was dropped. On the question of China, Tsedenbal sided with Moscow during the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. China had been building factories and apartment blocks in Mongolia, with thousands of Chinese laborers involved, but they were withdrawn in 1962 as pressure on Mongolia to break with the USSR. The gambit failed. A military buildup on the Sino-Mongolian border began in 1963, and a new Soviet-Mongolian mutual aid treaty signed in 1966 included a secret annex allowing Soviet troops and missiles to be stationed in the country.

  Tsedenbal was removed from power in August 1984, the Politburo citing "old age and mental incapacity" with full Soviet backing. Jambyn Batmönkh, to whom Tsedenbal had handed the premiership in 1974, took over as party leader and head of state. Tsedenbal retired to Moscow. He was later expelled from the MPRP entirely.

• 6. Building a New Economy

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  At the republic's founding in 1924, Mongolia had almost no farming, no industry, and no modern transportation. Most men worked as nomadic herders or lived in monasteries. Chinese and other foreign merchants dominated trade. The task the new government set itself was to build an industrial economy from this foundation, using the Soviet model as both template and lifeline.

  In 1961, the manufacturing town of Darkhan was founded on the Trans-Mongolian Railway north of Ulaanbaatar, in a previously uninhabited area. In 1973, Erdenet was founded on a branch railway west of Darkhan to house the Erdenet Mining Corporation, a joint Mongolian-Soviet enterprise that became one of the world's largest copper mines. Both towns were built from scratch and equipped with power stations, high-rise housing, schools, hospitals, and shops. They are today Mongolia's second and third largest cities.

  The numbers behind this transformation are striking. Industry accounted for 7 percent of Mongolia's net material product in 1950 and rose to 35 percent by 1985. Agriculture, including herding, fell from 68 percent to 20 percent over the same period. In 1960-61 percent of the employed worked in the agricultural sector; by 1985, that share had dropped to 33 percent. GDP growth continued through the late 1980s, recording a 5.1 percent annual increase as late as 1988. The national debt, however, told a different story: by 1990, long-term loans from the USSR were estimated at 10 billion rubles.

• 7. Society Under the Party

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  Before the 1921 revolution, healthcare in Mongolia was provided entirely by lamas and shamans. The population was in decline from untreated disease. Modern medicine arrived under the Soviet Semashko model starting in 1922, with a network of hospitals and Western-trained staff. By 1990, Mongolia had more than 6,000 physicians, three-quarters of them women. Infant mortality fell from 109 per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 57.4 in 1990, partly due to state-sponsored maternity rest homes for pregnant pastoral women.

  Education underwent an equally dramatic change. The first government primary school opened in the capital in November 1921; the first secondary school followed in 1923. A nationwide campaign against adult illiteracy was launched in 1930-1931 alongside a switch to the Latin script for written Mongolian. The Cyrillic script was decreed in March 1941 and came into general use from January 1946. The Mongolian State University opened in 1942. By 1990, 267 "complete" secondary schools offered education through grade eleven.

  Media and arts were tightly controlled. The official MPRP newspaper Ünen, founded in 1920, served as a party mouthpiece. Mongolradio was established in 1933, Mongolteleviz in 1967. Traditional arts were branded "feudal" or "religious" and suppressed in favor of Soviet-inspired socialist realism. Yet some artists found room to work. Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj became Mongolia's most prominent modern poet and writer; his opera Uchirtai gurvan tolgoi, or Three Fateful Hills, remains performed today. Mongolia's first film studio, set up with Soviet aid in 1935, produced the drama Norjmaa's Destiny in 1938. The first Mongolian ballet, Path of Happiness by Bilegiin Damdinsüren, premiered in 1950. The National Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1957.

• 8. The End of the Republic

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  On the 10th of December 1989, Human Rights Day, young people began demonstrating for political freedom in Ulaanbaatar. The protests grew through January 1990, when student and social democratic organizations held anti-MPRP rallies. Their spokesman was Sanjaasürengiin Zorig. A hunger strike followed more demonstrations, and in March 1990 the MPRP leadership resigned. Batmönkh was replaced as head of state and general secretary.

  The cascade of changes came quickly after that. In May 1990, the People's Great Khural amended the constitution, removing references to the MPRP's "guiding role", legalizing opposition parties, and establishing the office of president and a standing legislature called the State Little Khural. At Mongolia's first multiparty elections in July, the MPRP won majorities in both bodies. A transition to a market economy was approved, and the herding cooperatives and state farms were broken up and privatized.

  The shift had been building for years. In 1988, the MPRP's own newspaper Ünen had called for accelerated reforms, declaring that "authoritarianism and intellectual indolence" undermined national "renewal" and describing the exiled Tsedenbal as "willful and unprincipled". Also in 1988, Mongolia had participated in the Seoul Olympic Games, marking its final appearance as a communist nation. The new constitution, adopted in January 1992 and entering into force in February, created a unicameral State Great Khural and formally ended the socialist republic. Zorig, the young spokesman of the 1990 protests, would go on to serve in the new parliament.