Socialist Revolutions in Asia

The Social History of Mongolia in the 20th Century

Irina Y. Morozova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135784362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Contemporary Mongolia is often seen as one of the most open and democratic societies in Asia, undergoing remarkable post-socialist transformation. Although the former ruling party, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (the MPRP), has fundamentally changed its platform, it holds leadership and frames nation-building policy. This book re-conceptualises the socialist legacy of Mongolia and explains why in the 1920s a shift to socialism became possible. Furthermore, the role of Mongolian nationalism in the country's decision to ally with the USSR in the 1920-1930s and to choose a democratic path of development at the end of the 1980s is explored. Focusing on social systems in crisis periods when the most radical differentiation in social relationships and loyalties occur, the book describes the transformation of the elite and social structures through the prism of the MPRP cadres' policy and the party's collaborations with the Third Communist International and other Soviet departments that operated in Mongolia. Based on original sources from former Soviet and Mongolian archives the author offers a critique of the post-modernist approaches to the study of identity and its impact on political change. This book will be of interest to academics working on the modern history of Central and Inner Asia, socialist societies and communist parties in Asia, as well as the USSR's foreign policy.

1 Mongolia’s socialist history historiography

A sketch

The goal of this historiography sketch was originally rather ambitious: to identify the status quo of Mongol studies in the field of twentieth century history. With time, as a few years passed since the first version of this text was written, I became even more determined in my aim. Concerned about the future of Mongol studies, I decided to point out the main theoretical, methodological and conceptual omissions in the current discussions among Mongolists. Containing a great deal of criticism towards my teachers and colleagues (a manoeuvre not very popular in the world of Mongol studies), this sketch aspires to continue discussions on the problems mentioned below. It was not my intention to mention all the published works dealing with the twentieth century Mongols, but rather to concentrate on those that illustrate most achievements and gaps in our knowledge.

Original Sources

Until recently the scholars conducting research on twentieth century Mongolian history were deprived of original data that was stored in the USSR and the MPR archives as secret documentation. These archives became available at the beginning of the 1990s, providing us with a unique opportunity to shed light on the events of Mongolia’s recent past, Soviet—Chinese– Mongolian relationships and many other intriguing subjects of East Asian history and geopolitics.

This research is primarily based on data extrapolated from these sources during my more than seven years working with documents of the Comintern and the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks (RCP(b)) in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI)). Some results have already been published in the form of a book on Comintern activities in Mongolia¹ and as separate articles.² I accumulated and systemised materials on the MPR’s history of the 1920s–1950s from two archival Funds: Fund 495 ‘The Eastern Secretariat of the Comintern’ and Fund 17 ‘The RCP(b) CC Propaganda and Agitation Department’. Fund 372 ‘The Far Eastern Bureau of the RCP(b) CC’, Fund 532 ‘Communist University of the Working People of the East’ and Fund 493 ‘Siberian Bureau of the RCP (b) CC’ were also of great help.

Schedules 154 and 152 from Fund 495 were of special interest. Schedule 154 contains such documents as the minutes of the meetings of the Mongolian—Tibetan Department’s Board of the Section of the Eastern Peoples, which was the part of the Siberian Bureau attached to the RCP(b) CC, the meetings of the Political Secretariat and its Presidium (Schedule 2) and the Mongolian Commission of the Executive Committee of Communist International (ECCI) (Schedule 3), informational telegrams, correspondence between the Comintern agents and the Mongolian revolutionaries (Schedule 3), the minutes of the MPRP, as well as the Comintern Congresses; personal particulars, files and reports, resolutions of the ECCI Far Eastern Secretariat on the ‘Mongolian question’, the reports by the Comintern agents on Inner Mongolia, and various selections and translations. Schedule 152 contains the protocols of the ECCI internal meetings on the situation in Mongolia, the protocols of the ECCI meetings with Mongolian delegations, agreements and draft agreements between the ECCI and the Mongolian representatives on organisational matters and future revolutionary activities; reports, letters and telegrams by the Comintern delegations and agents, working in Mongolia, as well as resolutions and instructions on the ‘Mongolian question’ by the ECCI Eastern Department (Schedule 3). The documents of these Schedules were processed by me to cover the period of the 1920s–1930s. For the 1940s, I used the files of Fund 17 Schedule 128, which hold protocols of the MPRP CC Plenums and the MPRP Congresses.

The documentation by the local authorities in the MPR for the period 1921–1931 from the State Central Historical Archive of Mongolia (Ulsyn Tüühijn Töv Arhiv, UTTA) in Ulaanbaatar, Funds 72, 132, 168, 169 and 170 provided me with information about social transformation at the aimag level. This archive also contains the selection of documents on famous Mongolian revolutionary activists, such as A. Amar (Fund 35, Schedule 1), Kh. Choibalsan (Fund 25, Schedule 1), D. Sükhbaatar (Fund 2, Schedule 1) and many others.

The availability of documents in the former Soviet and Mongolian archives interested a number of scholars in Russia and Mongolia and spurred joint projects between the RGASPI and UTTA, which after the merger with other central Mongolian archives was called the National Central Archive (Ündesnij Tüv Arhiv, ÜTA). The result of one of these projects was the volume The Comintern and Mongolia;³ prepared and published in Ulaanbaatar, it contained a selection of documents, some of which were translated from the original Russian into Mongolian.

I examined materials of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi Arhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, GARF), particularly Fund 200 ‘The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the City Omsk’ on Mongolian and Buryatian nationalism in the 1920s; and the Russian State Military Archive (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Arhiv, RGVA) Fund 16, Schedule 3 on the White Russians captured on the territory of Mongolia during the civil war, and the correspondence between the Bogdo Gegen government and the first Mongolian revolutionaries. Some information on the communications between the Buryatian and Mongolian revolutionaries was extrapolated from the National Archive of the Buryatian Republic (Natsional’nyi Arhiv Respubliki Buryatiya, NARB) Fund P-477.

The archives in Moscow and Ulaanbaatar contain detailed accounts of political, social and economic conditions in the MPR. The data was collected to provide Mongolian and Soviet policy-makers with reliable information from the field. Special care should be taken in approaching this documentation. First, only processing massive data helps to identify certain tendencies and distinguish between a mainstream and a random event. Second, working with different departments’ materials reveals the competition among them, as well as their agents, that a watchful observer over time learns how to perceive by reading between the lines. Third, the real motives of Soviet—Mongolian disputes can be poorly documented and even lost in the archival structure (for instance, in the RGASPI, the departments’ meeting minutes and resolutions are kept in different schedules and even different funds). Fourth, besides the views of the Soviet and Mongolian leadership, the collections contain reports and documents authored by local figures. These papers illustrate their understanding of the political processes then underway. At the same time, these petitions were often composed to achieve certain goals in relation to the political centre and the local leaders were not necessarily sincere and objective. The political struggle within the local elite is reflected in the documents.

The files contained in the former Soviet and Mongolian archives also lack in-depth information on the cultural and religious backgrounds of local politicians and their activities. More importantly, the data selected by organisations such as the Comintern or the RCP(b) was meant to frame the ongoing social processes in a certain way to create a working concept for the prospective reforms. One could argue that Soviet archival documentation presents a vision, a directive for the re-modelling of society, more than it presents a source truthfully reflecting processes in that society. Unfortunately, discussions on the approach to the archival data have not been developed in the domain of Mongol studies, despite the general recent improvement of archival research. The Mongolists still have to examine the recently published scholarly works of another regional focus.⁴

Apart from the original archival materials, I used collections of decrees and resolutions by the Mongolian revolutionary government and the MPRP published in the MPR and the USSR.⁵ The selected works and reminiscences by the Buryatian communists who worked in Mongolia (some of them, like E-D. Rinchino, were also Comintern agents) became another valuable source on political and social change in the 1920s. To analyse the social effect of the battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, I addressed the documents published by a group of Mongolian and Russian researchers in the collected volume The War at Khalkhin Gol: sixty years later.⁶ To track the change in the MPR’s social composition after the Second World War, I used statistical data from the volume The MPR People’s Economy.⁷ While depicting the times of Kh. Choibalsan and Yu. Tsedenbal, I applied discourse analysis to their writing and speeches.

In addition to written original and secondary sources, I made use of information from my field interviews in Mongolia. A few informants of mine who directly witnessed the course of reform in their country in the 1920s– 1940s have already passed on. For a scholar spending most of the time in the archives, those informants’ personal reflections on how revolution and social change had been perceived by people provided me with an alternative, more ‘anthropological’ view on the data. Interviews with present Mongolian politicians and conversations with scholars born and raised during the socialist period (most of them preferred to remain anonymous) provided a valuable perspective on the 1970s–1980s. At the same time, since I have been conducting field research in Mongolia regularly for the last eight years, I have to admit that the personal views and interpretations of past events of these people have been in constant flux, reflecting the recent transformation. Some ideas on the 1990s to the present day I will share with the reader at the end of this book.

Literature

Mongol studies as a modern scientific discipline emerged and developed during the Cold War. The key question is whether or not the Cold War produced Mongol studies as a kind of ‘luxury’ research, to which a limited number of Soviet and Western scholars (‘elite studies’) could devote their lives, deserving recognition as a Mongolist. The current decline of Mongol studies in Western Europe probably signals that there were, indeed, political preconditions for the growth of the field. This, however, does not automatically imply the prevalence of conventionalism in the works by Mongolists. On the contrary, the most prominent scholars went beyond politics and, though experiencing certain pressure from political officialdom and the academic milieu in their countries, tried to minimise if not to avoid politicised definitions and interpretations in favour of one block or another. By definition, that was not a really ‘luxurious’ position; in addition, it frequently resulted in the conscious decision to skip any theoretical discourse. In any case, the Cold War substantially framed the discussions within Mongol studies, particularly on modern history, and the legacy of certain conventional concepts tends to be rather strong even at present. That is why I am going to concentrate on Cold War Mongol studies in a significant part of this sketch.

Mongol Studies in the USSR and the MPR

The sketches on Mongol studies in the USSR and MPR are united in one block, since the emergence of historical science in the MPR was parallel to and closely connected with the formation of the official, state- and party-approved Soviet scientists’ approach to the world historical process.⁸ Based primarily on the Marxist theory of socio-economic development and focused on identifying the dominant type of production and labour relationships, it depicted nomadic pastoralism as a degraded productive economy. As the analysis by Soviet scholars was deemed to indicate a way for future development, the keystone of research was the transition to socialism. Socialism as a formation was supposed to bring nomadic Mongols to social and economic prosperity, skipping the stage of capitalism, which, according to the Soviet Marxists, the Mongols, as well as many other Asian peoples, never experienced. The discussion in Soviet academia of how to approach Asian history—whether to characterise Asian society and its economy as an ‘Asiatic mode of production’ or ‘Eastern feudalism’–echoed in Mongol studies as well: the ‘father’ of Soviet Mongol studies, B. Vladimirtsev, introduced the concept of ‘nomadic feudalism’.

Soviet Mongol studies also inherited a great deal from pre-revolution Russian Mongol studies and the works of N.Ya. Bichurin, V.P. Vasiliev, K.F. Golstunski, G.E. Grum-Gryzhimailo, Ts.J. Jamtsarano, P.K. Kozlov, V.L. Kotvich, A.M. Pozdneev, G.N. Potanin, N.M. Przhevalski, V.V. Radlov and others. Their Soviet disciples conducted research in philological disciplines, source studies and archaeology and significantly contributed to the development of world Mongol studies.⁹

The advantage enjoyed by Soviet and Mongolian historians writing on twentieth century history was the systematisation of factual material, to which they had access. This also allowed me to operate with some statistical and factual data from their works. Thus I used the detailed surveys of revolutionary events in the 1920s by B. Shirendyb,¹⁰ as well as the works by A.D. Kallinikov,¹¹ B. Tsybikov’s data on the Red Army’s activities in Mongolia,¹² as well G.S. Matveeva’s work on the Union of Mongolian Revolutionary Youth (URY).¹³ To analyse the politics of revolutionaries towards the Buddhist monasteries and lamas, I used the works by S. Purevjav and D. Dashjamts.¹⁴ With special interest, I approached the works of Soviet authors, who were direct witnesses of events in the 1920s and 1930s: G.Ts. Tsybikov, S. Natsov and N.V. Burdukov.

In a joint fundamental work, The History of the Mongolian People’s Republic, edited by a number of well-known scholars of the Soviet and MPR Academies of Science, namely A.P. Okladnikov, Sh. Bira, Sh. Natsagdorj, S. D. Dylykov, I.S. Kazakevich and H. Perlee, there is, above all, some concrete data on the MPR’s economy, state administration and stages of social reform throughout the twentieth century.¹⁵ The general layout of the book had to exhibit the merits of socialism to Mongolian society; consequently, the data was also manipulated accordingly.

For example, a group of Soviet and Mongolian scholars (G.F. Kim, Yu.F. Vorobev, I.S. Kazakevich, M.P. Makareev, S.K. Roschin, T.A. Yakimova, P. Luvsandorj, T. Namjim, B. Dolgormaa, N. Mishigdorj, V. Natsagdorj, M. Hasbaatar), in a collective work entitled The History of the MPR’s Socialist Economy, provided a survey of the people’s economy in 1925–1940, outlining economic growth and the increase of livestock.¹⁶ The authors explained decreasing revenues from agriculture by way of the increased revenues from industry, transport, communication and trade. The reader could very well conclude that the country’s economy was gradually growing, and that there was no decline during the jas campaign¹⁷ in 1930–1932. With the same inconsistency, the authors tried to illustrate the increase of workers at the beginning of the 1940s by pointing out the tota...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Mongolia’s socialist history historiography: A sketch
• 2 1921–24: Theocratic monarchy and revolution in Mongolia
• 3 1925–28: The birth of the Mongolian People’s Republic
• 4 1929–32: Old and new Mongolian terror
• 5 1933–39: Between Russian Communism and Japanese Militarism
• 6 1940–45: The Mongolian Arad and the Second World War
• 7 1946–52: Socialist nomadism
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography