REVIEW OF TWO SOVIET TEXTS TITLED 'THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC- - A COUNTRY OF NEW DEMOCRACY, AN OUTLINE OF HISTORY' AND 'THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC, A PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00423R001201200003-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: November 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 16, 1998
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: December 1, 1951
• Content Type: FORM

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FORM NO. 5Y-41
DEC' 1951
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
INFORMATION REPORT 25X1A2
COUNTRY Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) REPORT NO.
Review of two Soviet Texts Titled "The Mongolian People '92,
JVDJCI.I Republic--A Country of New Democracy, An Outline of
History" and "The Mongolian People's Republic, A Physical
Geographic Description"
PLACE ACQUIRED
(BY SOURCE) 25X1X6
DATE ACQUIRED
(BY SOURCE)
DATE (OF INFO.) 1950 and 1948, respectively
25X1X6
DATE DISTR.
NO. OF PAGES
NO. OF ENCLS.
SUPP. TO
REPORT NO.
1. Ia Zlatkin, Mongol's skaia Narodnaia Respublika - Strana Novoi Demokratii.
Ocherk Istorii (Mongolian People's Republic - A Country of the New Democracy,
An Outline of History), edited by the Academician I M Maiski, Academy of Sciences
of the USSR, Scientific and Popular Series, Moscow-Leningrad, 1950, 290 pages
with two maps.
2. Reviewer's Remarks:
The title of this book tells us that this is a propaganda book -- a brief
history of a Soviet Satellite. The author of the book is not known in scientific
circles. The editor is Maiski who, in the first few years of the Soviet regime,
was a chairman of the Siberian division of the cooperative "Centrosoyuz." Later
on, he was appointed ambassador to UK and was elected a full member of the
Academy of Sciences a few years ago. The book is for mass general reading.
3. In Maiski's preface (p 3 - 10) the very naive statement is made that 30 years
ago the only means of transportation were horses and camels, while now there
are automobiles and railroads. I think the same could be said of the US -- in
olden days people rode horseback and now every third person has an automobile.
4+. The introduction (p 11 - 62) contains a short history of MPR since the begin-
ning of the Manchu domination until the Chinese revolution in 1911. This
chapter does not contain anything new, being written on the basis of books in
Russian language. No original Mongolian or Chinese sources are quoted. The
very large Western literature (e g "History of Mongols" by Howorth in four
volumes; Baddeley - "Mongolia,.Russia, and China" in two volumes, etc) is not
mentioned at all. The Mongolian social organization in the 1917 Revolution
is regarded as feudal. The author repeats here the doubtful theory of
Vladimirtsov (1933). The oppression of the Mongols by the Manchus is. exaggerated
by Zlatkin. He mentions only negative phenomena, but he passes with silence over
such privileges of the Mongols as; full independence of the princes in their
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principalities, unlimited religious freedom for the Mongols, privileges granted
to the clergy by the Manchu authorities, the prohibition of Chinese immigration,
prohibition for the Chinese to take their wives and families to MPR etc.
5. The first chapter (p 63 - 112) deals with the national liberation struggle of
the Mongols at the time of the autonomy (1911 - 1919), with the Tzarist
Russian policies toward MPR, and with the events in 1911 (Chinese revolution).
This chapter does not contain great mistakes or distortions as do some other
chapters.
6. The second chapter is "The Revolution of 1921 and the Formation of the People's
Republic (p 113 - 157). This is a very typical example of forgery of history
with the purpose of propaganda. It contains brazen lies and abominable distor-
tions. Zlatkin mentions as the only founders of the Mongolian People's Party
Sukhe Bator and Choibalsang (p 122), while in reality the party was founded 1921,
in Maimacheng (it is Altan Bulak now) near the Soviet frontier, by the following
persons: Bodo, Danzang, Zhamtsarano, Tseren Dorji, Toktokho, and other persons.
Neither Sukhe Bator nor Choibalsang were present at the time of the foundation
of the party.
7. When the newly created party manifested her leftist-radical tendencies as
early as 1922, Bodo, one of the founders of the party, was greatly dissatisfied
with the new line and created his own fraction group within the party. To that
group, among others, also Toktokho, Djaa Lama, Shakdurjab, and other persons
belonged. All of them were arrested and shot by order of Elbek-Doti Rinchino,
a Buriat, a former Soviet subject and student of the St Petersburgh University.
He had been a revolutionary socialist (SR) in USSR prior to his arrival in R.
He had joined the People's Party very soon after its foundation and became the
Red boss of MPH and secretary-general of the MFR People's Party. Rinchino was
later on removed from MPR and sent to Moscow to teach and"be re-educated" at
the Stalin University of the Toilers of the East. Rinchino was arrested and
shot in 1937 as a "Trotskyite, leftist deviationist, enemy of the people, and
an old Japanese secret agent." As stated, Bodo and his fellow members of the
"rightist wing" were shot. The accusation was: Zlatkin calls him "an old agent
of the Tzarist.and later on Japanese secret service" (p 147), an accusation which
has become trivial and does not impress anybody, because it is made also against
everybody noncommunist in all the Satellite states with the difference that
sometimes the persons concerned are accused of being US or UK agents.
8. The adventurer Dja-Lama, who was fighting the Reds after he had first joined
them, was also executed. To what Zlatkin says I can add that Dja-Lama was
beheaded and his head, smoked and salted, was sent to Leningrad in 1923 and
presented to the Anthropologic Museum of the Academy of Sciences in 1923, one
year after the execution. The year 1922 is also remarkable from that viewpoint
that then the MPR secret police, an MPR replica of the GPU, was created. Its
abbreviation name was GVO - the initials of the Russian words Gosudarstvennaia
Vnutrenniaia Okhrana ("The Internal Defence of the State").
9. The hero of the Mongolian revolution, the chieftain of the partisans Sukhe Bator,
died under mysterious circumstances on 19 Feb 23. Zlatkin mentions that
Choibalsang had said in December 1940 (1 e 17 years later) that Sukhe Bator had
been poisoned by Danzang (p 148), because the latter had been "a Tzarist and
Japanese secret agent." The most amazing thing is that Zlatkin does not explain
to the reader how it was possible that this poisoning had been disclosed only
after 17 years, no post-mortem having been made immediately after Sukhe Bator's
death. Thus, this too is a forgery and a brazen lie. I remember that in 1923
Mongolian lamas were made responsible for having treated him with wrong medicine,
because Sukhe Bator, being an old-time Mongol did not care for European medicine
and preferred lama quacks.
10. In the same chapter the resolution of the Third Party Congress is discussed,
which had outlined the new party general line and put the foundation for the new
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"road of noncapitalistic development," i e socialist and communist development
(p 150). Although the People's Party.was officially a peoples' and not a communist
party, it belonged to the Comintern from the very beginning, being one of the
member-parties of the Communist International.
11. The third chapter is entitled "The struggle for the general line of the Mongolian
People's Party against the rightist and leftist restorers of feudalism and the
colonial slavery in 1924 - 1932" (pages 160 ff). Here we learn that the most
dangerous enemies of the P eople's_Party and Republic were the Japanese and the
Mongolian clergy. These two are not incidentally mentioned together, because in
1924 the first great drive against religion was started and Zlatkin needs a
justification of the measures taken against the lamas. He tries to demonstrate
that the lamas were enemies of the regime and the people, being mercenary agents
of the Japanese. The lamas were accused by Zlatkin of being Japanese subversive
agents and spies, an accusation very familiar to everybody engaged in research on
the Soviet satellites. The clergy is always accused of being spies (of US, UK,
etc), no matter whether they are Hungarian Roman Catholic priests., or Cardinal
Stepinac in Yugoslavia, or Protestant pastors in Eastern Germany.
12. The "Rightists" also started their "subversive" activities in 1924 - 1925. Their
sabotage manifested itself in that the then Minister of Education, Erdeni Batukhan,
sent Mongol students to study in Germany and France. I knew Batukhan well, because
later on he was exiled to USSR and became a teacher of Mongolian at the Leningrad
Oriental Institute, actually subordinate to me. He told me that the only reason
for sending young Mongols to Europe was that in USSR the housing and food problem
was so precarious that the young Mongols contracted tuberculosis in the damp
Leningrad climate after having stayed there more than six weeks. I can confirm
this, because at least four Mongols and one Tibetan died in 1922 - 1924 in
Leningrad. These were the first students to be trained abroad. Erdeni Batukhan
was arrested in Leningrad and sent to a concentration camp in 1937, whence I got
a letter from him through the underground in 1938. Then he was starving to death
and implored me to do something for him, but of course this was impossible. His
family was slowly dying in MPR. Most of the students who had come back from Europe
were arrested and destroyed in 1935 - 1937, among them Gombojab Merguengoon, son
of a little prince, who had studied in France under the very famous professor of
Oriental studies, Paul Pelliot. All these things are lacking in Zlatkin's book.
I think this should be added here in order to tell the truth about what happened
at that time in MPR.
13. The time between 1924 and 1932 was a period of never ending purges. Zlatkin
does not speak of purges. He merely mentions that out of 373 chairmen of the
Ithoshun administrations (district administrations) 79 had been former feudals.
He does not say what this label means. In reality it means that all of them had
been removed, arrested, destroyed immediately or slowly killed in concentration
camps. In 1928 also the Institute of the Living Buddhas was abolished and it was
strictly forbidden to proclaim new rebirths of saints (p 187). Zlatkin does not
tell us what this means. He says "it was forbidden" or "abolished." It would
not have been half so bad if it had been simply forbidden, just as we forbid
making a U-turn in the middle of New York's Broadway. In reality it meant that
all lamas involved in this Institute of Living Buddhas were imprisoned. They
were usually sent to concentration camps in the Turukhansk area in Siberia.
14. In 1929 the "Leftists" started their subversive activities. The reader already
has noticed that the book of Zlatkin is a sort of salad with everything in it:
Japanese agents, Tzarist agents, "Rightists," "Leftists" and I do not know what
more, a real Pandora box with all,sorts of surprises. But as strange as it may
sound, Zlatkin does not mention a single name of leftist leaders. What is the
matter here? The answer is very simple: there were no leftist leaders, there
were no Titoists as Owen Lattimore calls them, taking his information from all
sorts of Zlatkins. In reality the "leftist" line was a consequence of the direct
fulfillment of the orders coming from the Comintern. The MPR government had no
other way but to comply with the line dictated to them by the Soviet Comintern
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representatives: first was Ryskulov, later on came Matthew Amagaieff. The latter
was removed in 1931 from MPR and sent to Moscow to work at the Toilers` University.
Later on, in 1934 or 1935, Amagaieff was appointed director of the Leningrad
Institute of Oriental Languages, thus becoming my boss. He was arrested in 1937
and shot as a Trotskyite.
15. Simultaneously with the leftists the lamas became, according to Zlatkin, very
active. He mentions Yegudzer, Mandzushri, Delib, and a few others, (p 198).
The accusation that these men were Japanese agents is untrue. I knew Mandzushri
personally and I know that he was only one of the Living Buddhas absolutely not
participating in any worldly affairs. In reality Zlatkin again needs here a
justification of the anti-religious activities of the Soviets. The man called
Delib by Zlatkin is in reality Dilowa Khutuktu. Dilowa was also arrested. While
Mandzushri, Yegudzer, and the others (they were 27 Living Buddhas) were shot,
Dilowa sat in his death cell in Ulan Bator and managed to escape. He was helped
by his friends who took him out of prison, gave him a camel and sent him away
across the desert into China. There Dilowa was met by Oven Lattimore a few years
later and taken to the US. He told me the whole story and it is absolutely
obvious that what Zlatkin says is a brazen lie.
16. The activities of, these "lama cliques," spies, subversive agents, etc resulted in
creation of various "reactionary groups." So Zlatkin calls them. But in reality
they were not "groups"; it was the entire population including many party members
and even . large. units of the MPR Red Army which revolted against the intolerable
conditions created by the regime. This revolt in 1932 was crushed by Soviet
Red Army. units which were brought with their planes and tanks.
17. Of course, the Comintern could not be accused of these "leftist deviations" from
the general line. Somebody had to be blamed. Thus the.legend about a "leftist
group" in MPR was created. The government which simply had had to comply with
the policies imposed upon them by the Comintern, was arrested and tried. These
were: Gendung, the chairman of the government; Amor the prime minister and
foreign minister; and many other people. They were accused of being Japanese
agents and spies, and executed. This happened in 1936. At that time NPR
definitely became a Soviet satellite, after her government had been destroyed
and Soviet creatures came to power.
18. The fourth chapter is "The Mongolian People's Republic stands firmly on the road
of the noncapitalistic.development" (p 206 ff). Here Zlatkin tells about the
liquidation and the consequences of the subversive activities of the leftists.
19. The remaining pages of the book discuss the events during World War II and the
participation of MPR troops in war against Japan in fall 19445.
20. To conclude this review we should remark that Zlatkin's book gives a greatly
distorted picture of Mongolia. Unfortunately only one who knows NPR from his own
experience can find out about this. It is a bad book.
21. E M Murzayev, The Mongolian People's Republic, A Physical Geographic Description,
Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of Geography, State Publishing House,
Moscow, 1948, 314 pages with numerous pictures and maps. (In Russian)
22. Reviewer's Comments:
While there are numerous descriptions of MPR and many special works on geology,
botany, zoology of that country, etc, there was no general geographic work on
the NPR. This explains while knowledge of MPR outside of the USSR is so little
and even the Encyclopaedia Britannica contains numerous inaccuracies in her
articles on MPH. Murzayev's book is an important achievement and it is an
accurate and thorough work.
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23. The first chapter of the book is entitled "General Geographic Characteristic."
Here we find data on the square mileage and the co-ordinates of geographic points,
boundaries are described, etc (p 7 - 10). It should be noted that MPR is from the
point of view of geographic research very interesting, because here in winter lies
the center of the atmospheric high pressure for the whole world. MPR is the most
southern area in the world where there is never melting ice in the soil (47 degree
of Northern Latitude). MPR has also the most northern dry deserts in the whole
world (in the depression of the Big Lakes in Western Mongolia, i e 5005' of the
Northern latitude). MPR has also one of the most continental climates in the
world. This chapter is followed by a brief analysis of NPR place names which
might be of importance to readers who do not know MPR, although it is not as
good as the work by V A Kazakevich: Modern Mongolian Toponymy (In Russian),
Leningrad, 1934.
24. The brief "Data on the governmental organization, the populations, and economy"
(p 18 - 36 are of interest only to readers who know little of MPR). Otherwise
these data are too brief and fragmentary. Contrary, "The History of Geographic
Exploration" looks interesting to me (p 36 - 58). It contains a survey of all
travels ever made in MPR since the 13th century (the monks Plano Carpini, Rubruk,
and the merchant Marco Polo, etc). Although this survey is more or less complete,
some data is missing, e g nowhere is the travel by the Taoist monk Ch'an-Ch'un (at
the time of Genghiz Khan) mentioned which has been described by the Soviet
scholar Palladius and the German Bretschneider. Modern time is better discussed,
although here, too, the important work by Baddeley, "Russia, Mongolia, and China"
is not mentioned, although it contains mention of some important trips to MPR.
The Jesuits are only mentioned and no more is said about them than "they have
done incomparably less than the Russian scholars" (p 45). The Soviet scholars
who were destroyed by the Soviets are not mentioned, of course, e g Tsokto
Badmazhapov, a Buriat Cossack noncommissioned officer who traveled with Kozlov
and discovered the famous ruins of Khara Khoto, or A D Simukov, a geographer who
worked in the NPR Scientific Committee in Ulan Bator. Both were arrested and
murdered by the Soviet Secret Police in 1937.
25. The chapter "Outlines of the Surface Structure" (p 58 ff) is important and
interesting.. Here we learn something of the altitudes of MPR: the lowest altitude
(from the ocean level) is the dry lake Koke Nur in northeastern MPR (532 meters).
The highest altitude is the mountain Khuitun in the mountain group Tabun Bogdo 17.
the Altai range. It is 4,653 meters. The average altitude of MPR is 1,580
meters. Ulan Bator, the capital of the NPR lies on an altitude of 1,297 meters
(p 59). This chapter contains also geological data, although soil riches or any
ore deposits are not mentioned. It should be pointed out that the desert
character of the MPR is greatly exaggerated by outsiders and Murzaev tells us that
of the total square kilometrage of MPR (1,531,000 square kilometers) only 29,916
square kilometers (or 1.96%) are sands.
26. A very interesting survey of the periods of the origin of the landscape is found
on p 78 ff. The author says that:
a. The continental character of MPR started during the Palaeozoic era and
this process continued during the Mesozoic era;
b. During the latter era and in the Tertiary the river and lake system of
NPR was greatly developed;
c. An important event was the coming into existence of new mountain ranges
(at the end of the Tertiary and at the beginning of the Quarternary).
The deserts are old in MPR, because during the chalk period (I e since
the beginning of the Quarternary) the climate became very dry. The
dryness of the climate is a result of the rise of the mountains which
after coming into existence prevented the monsoons from entering MPR.
27. Very interesting is the chapter about the climate in which data on precipitation,
temperatures, winds, and the seasons are given. This chapter is followed by a
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chapter about the rivers and lakes (p 115 - 125) and about the geographic zones.
There are the following zones:
a. mountain-forest-steppe-zone,
b. high steppe zone,
c. semi-desert and desert-steppe zone,
d. desert zone.
These zones are described very thoroughly-and their animals and vegetation are
discussed very well.
28. This is followed by a description of the physical-geographic areas of MPR: the
Altai mountain area; the Great Lake Depression; the Khangai and Kentei mountain
ranges; the high plains and the Gobi area.
29. An index of literature and an index of geographic names conclude the book.
30. To conclude this review I should say that this thorough work (at least, it is
the most thorough of all) can be recommended to readers as a reliable book. I
think also that it should be translated into English.
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