Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
With an army of 6000 troops (and tacit backing of the Japanese), the baron
crossed the Mongolian border in the summer of 1920 with the aim of establishing a
Pan-Mongol empire. By October, his forces attacked Urga, but were driven back
four times before finally taking the city. He freed the Bogd Khan (who had been im-
prisoned by the Chinese), but Mongol joy turned to horror as the next three days
saw an orgy of looting, burning and killing. In May 1921 the baron declared himself
the emperor of Russia.
After only a few months, the Bolshevik advance forced the baron to abandon
Urga. Out on the steppes, his own followers tried to kill him, shooting him in his
tent, but he managed to escape. A group of Mongolian herders later found him
wounded in the grass, tortured by biting ants. He was eventually taken by the
Bolsheviks, deported to Novosibirsk and shot on 15 September 1921, presumed
mad.
Dr Ferdinand Ossendowski, a Polish refugee living in Mongolia in the early 1920s,
offers an excellent account of the Mad Baron in his book Beasts, Men and Gods.
For a more recent account, read James Palmer's The Bloody White Baron,pub-
lished in 2009.
Soviet Control
After Lenin's death in Russia in 1924, Mongolian communism remained independent of
Moscow until Stalin gained absolute power in the late 1920s. Then the purges began in
Mongolia - MPRP leaders were disposed of until Stalin finally found his henchman in
one Khorloogiin Choibalsan.
Following Stalin's lead, Choibalsan seized land and herds from the aristocrats, which
was then redistributed to nomads. Herders were forced to join cooperatives and private
business was banned. The destruction of private enterprise without time to build up a
working state sector had the same result in Mongolia as in the Soviet Union: famine.
Choibalsan's policy against religion was just as ruthless - in 1937 some 27,000 people
were executed or never seen again (3% of Mongolia's population at that time), 17,000 of
whom were monks.
Choibalsan died in January 1952 and was replaced by Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal - no lib-
eral, but not a mass murderer - and Mongolia enjoyed a period of relative peace. With
the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, the Mongolians sided with the Soviet Union. The
Mongolian government expelled thousands of ethnic Chinese and all trade with China
came to a halt.
