screenshotting @rival-rook ‘s tags not to mock or shame but because they made one of the few contributions to this post worth discussing. for ease of reading I’ve split it into three sections: pre-revolution feudal circumstances, some 1924-45 history to give historical context to the MPR’s repression, and some brief discussion on the modern day
any discussion about the MPR’s repression of the lamas/Mongilian-Tibetan-Gelug Buddhism must be examined in the context of a pre-revolution Mongolia. the adoption/promotion of Tibetan Lamaism was a deliberate 16th century project of the ruling class (the nobles, still descended from the Chinggis Khan era Mongolian Empire all the way to 1924) to reinforce a crumbling/stagnant aristocratic powerbase and shift away from ancestral Tengric shamanism. the first monasteries were finished in the 1580s and were heavily subsidized by the nobles, gifted money, land, livestock, and “shabinar,” or servant families - more accurately, serfs.
Lamaism, especially of this time period, is a theocratic religion, that is, it bears many of the aspects/functions of a state unto itself. had the nobles lost power and no external empire or internal socialist revolution occurred, then Mongolia would be a full theocracy just like Tibet; the “church” would be the state, utterly and completely. this, of course, did not happen, and the political alliance between the Lamas and nobles was the foundation of Mongolian feudal exploitation for almost 400 years. the Arats - the Mongolian peasant/nomad class, 90% of the population - was ruled brutally by both secular and religious lords who cooperated and collaborated. the church and state - the nobles and lamas - were functionally one feudal entity, with the Khan serving as both head of state and of Lamas as long as he lived. his “reincarnation” was conveniently always one of his direct heirs. if no heir was present, it would be the heir of his brother, like any other secular feudal and patrilineal succession policy.
by 1918 the monastaries had a full monopoly over both healthcare and education; there was 1 secular school in Mongolia prior to the revolution, with 2 teachers and 100 pupils, every other school was owned and operated by the monastaries. these Lama schools trained monks, and almost without exception did not allow women any education at all. i will reiterate that only 0.5% of the full Mongolian population could read and write in the original Mongolian script, and all of that 0.5% were either Lamas or nobles. Arat illiteracy of the Mongolian script was complete. put a pin in this fact, we’ll come back to it when talking about the spread of Cyrillic.
the monasteries also had an enormous amount of Mongolia’s total wealth (land, money, livestock, serfs) in 1918, at 20% (the nobles having 25%, for 45% of all Mongolian wealth privately owned by feudal lords). i write all of this pre-revolution information to try and dispel the Western orientalist notion that lamaism was an innocent and enlightened spirituality. in pre revolution Mongolia, Lamaism and the Lamas were an active force of oppression, exploitation, serfdom, and brutality as much as any other secular feudal lord.
now, onto some revolutionary history and into the details of the repression of the lamas by the MPR.
the Mongolian People’s Party (again, a coalition national liberation front comprised of Arats, Lamas, nobles, Marxists, and nationalists) took the capital from tsarists in 1924 (who took it from the nationalist Chinese in 1920). before this point, Bogd Khan, the head of the Lamas, was being pushed by both nationalist Chinese and tsarist forces as the head of either a semi-independent (imperialist China, pre-nationalists) or completely vassal theocratic state (tsarists) from 1915 onward. post national liberation there was intense internal conflict between the Arat Marxists and the Lama/noble nationalists for the nature of the new Mongolian state. though, with the death of Bogd Khan in late 1924, the Marxists secured power (renaming the Mongolian People’s Party to the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party) and cemented their policy to pursue socialism like their neighbor and ally the USSR. as far as im aware, this particular securing of power was done entirely peacefully through long, heated, and involved debate at the, then MPP’s, 3rd Party Congress in 1924.
it should be rather obvious that the lamas and nobles - a minority of the population and historic exploiters and oppressors - were, for the most part, not happy with this socialist direction. early MPRP policy toward the lamas and monasteries was quite soft: indentured servitude and serfdom were banned, but their land was not expropriated and they were not heavily taxed. despite this, due to the sway they had over the population (0.5% literacy, remember?), a history of reactionary ideology, and a large concentration of old society wealth and power within the monasteries, led to the monasteries naturally becoming focal points of conservative, nationalist, counterrevolution ideologies, sympathies, and movements.
this antagonistic simmering was aided by the MPRP’s deliberate focus during this time period on shattering the lama’s monopoly on social services by building schools, hospitals, and starting massive literacy campaigns. this is where the switch to Cyrillic comes in. 0.5% literacy in the Mongolian script meant that none of the people in power - overwhelmingly Arat Marxists - could read this script to begin with, let alone had the tools to mass print materials for literacy campaigns. they could, however, read Cyrillic (and some Chinese) - they were in frequent communication with their brother and sister communists in the USSR. combine this with the monasteries jealous guardianship of teaching the Mongolian script to any non monks (frankly, a weaponization of literacy to preserve their own intellectual/economical/political hegemony) and the MPR’s close cooperation with the USSR in all aspects of founding, creating, and developing its state, and Cyrillic was the choice that they had the tools and knowledge to pursue widespread literacy with, not traditional Mongolian script. there was a referendum to switch from Cyrillic to the Mongolian script in the 1990s after the fall of the USSR. it failed, quite handily.
by 1927 it was clear the MPR would soon be forced into war. the expansionist and hyper anti-socialist Kuomintang consolidated power in mainland China, and imperial Japanese war plans to invade Mongolia and Manchuria as gateways to taking over the whole of China had been leaked to the international media. it was against this background that intense conflict within the MPRP on how to proceed forward with the revolution was taking place. to this point, neither the land/assets of the lamas or nobles had been expropriated, even while their serfs had been freed, and both the lamas and nobles were making inroads to restorations of their old power within the new state through means both economic and political (all that asset and historical precedent meant they had a lot of power). they also were in talks with both the Kuomintang and Imperial Japanese.
one faction, the right wing, considered the nobles and clerics as politically dead, incapable of overthrowing the revolution even despite retention of their fundamental assets. the other, the left wing, wanted to follow the Soviet line, with support from the Comintern, toward complete redistribution of land and assets for the betterment of the Arats and completion of the social revolution. in the end, the left wing won out (this party congress being a month and a half long) and civil war was avoided in part due to the mediation of Bohumír Šmeral, co-founder of the Czech Communist Party and representative of the Far East Bureau of the USSR. taxes focused on redistributing the wealth of the wealthy Arats, feudal lords, and Lamas were implemented, and much of the monastery’s and noble’s herds were seized. tax privileges for lamas were revoked to discourage Mongolian men from becoming monks. this was a necessary step to disempower the nobles and lamas and empower the poorest Arats, longtime serfs of these lords who had worked the herds and land they didn’t even own, but it solidified anti-socialist sentiment in the old exploiter class, and closed nearly all domestic routes to restoration of rule, intensifying their contact and cooperation with the imperial Japanese and the Kuomintang.
hasty collectivization and insufficient public infrastructure led to discontent in the countryside, which wealthy lamas capitalized on to lead a series of armed, anti-government uprisings in 1932. the MPA suppressed them in a few months, but these revolts, whose leaders claimed they were supported by the Japanese, did great economic damage by targeting much of the infrastructure and public works finished since 1924.
by the mid 1930s war was imminent. Japan’s Manchurian puppet state began regularly provoking conflicts and initiating border skirmishes with the MPR, and fascists taking power in Germany and openly declaring their intent to destroy communism and the MPR’s close ally of the USSR stoked further tensions. the MPR decided it could no longer afford to maintain the “general democratic period” that had been active till this time. it initiated a USSR supported and state-led mass industrialization campaign (increasing industrial output x22 from ‘33-‘40) and, after Japanese invasion of China in ‘37, wider anti-Japanese-collaborator purges of the MPRP and MPR. part of this, given the nobles and lamas growing cooperation with Japanese imperialists and explicit uprisings led by lamas, meant a wider crackdown on the remnants of both the nobles and lamas. heavy taxes, complete expropriation, and a violent repression/imprisonment of many key lamas and nobles (but especially lamas, who had been the most active domestic counterrevolutionary force to this point). weeks after these purges finished, the Japanese invaded Mongolia. this broke the power of the nobles and lamas once and for all.
in summary, i think it’s important to examine the MPR’s repression of Lamaism and the monasteries in the context of survival against looming fascist forces. yes, there was explicit anti-lama sentiment and action taken by the MPR in order to complete the social revolution aspect of the Mongolian Revolution by redistributing the lamas’ and nobles’ land to the working Arats so that the power of the old exploiting classes might be broken. however, the most violent repression of the lamas came as part of wider anti-fascist, anti-collaborator crackdowns across Mongolia when faced with impending Japanese invasion.
your mention of the English-speaking Mongolian public’s sentiment that it is moving forward under its own policies today somewhat saddens me, but does not surprise me. it’s a sentiment that many wealthier global south persons in former socialist countries share. even while the Mongolian Prime Minister is impeached on corruption charges by the force of mass youth protests and discontent, the ones who benefited, who bought the factories and land and sold it to American/European/Russian Transnational Corporations for a massive profit, say it’s all going well, it’s all their own choice. but the Mongolian people are now, like we both said, an extraction economy. they do not see the wealth they make from mining or herding, and domestic farming has been decimated almost to extinction. the Mongolian people do not control their economy anymore, foreign interests do. foreign interests who want cheap hides and cheap coal, iron, gold, copper, fluorite, and uranium. who want to steal those raw resources, refine them abroad, and then sell the Mongolians the advanced products made from Mongolian resources at criminal prices.
this is not unique to Mongolia though, it is a global exploitation perpetuated by the Global North.
