Vitaly Portnikov. Sometimes they come back...

Sometimes they come back...
Vitaly Portnikov

Publication date: July 4, 2000

The triumphant victory of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party in the parliamentary elections held in the country was one of those expected: on the eve of the vote, all observers predicted the MPRP would receive a majority of votes, and the Mongolian Social Democrats, who had recently left the ruling coalition, were even going to enter a new coalition with the winners from the MPRP. However, it turned out that the Mongolian post-communists do not need coalition partners: the MPRP managed to get, as in the good old days, almost all the seats in the Great People's Khural of Mongolia - at least 70 out of 76. What is striking about this return to power of the MPRP is not primarily The success of the post-communists is striking in that they lost this power.

Unlike the CPSU, which appeared on the political arena of the Russian Empire along with other parties and organizations (after all, we understand perfectly well that the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) was not a system-forming organization at all and became one through the methodical extermination of all its opponents right and left, and even then hiding behind the pseudonym of the Soviets), the MPRP, in fact, was Mongolia itself. In Soviet historiography, they tried not to write about the first years of the party’s existence, declaring it the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and peasantry, led by Sukhbaatar. However, the MPRP was created primarily as a “party of power”, at the first stage of its existence successfully cooperating with the monarchical regime. Turning to Russia for help was quite natural for this “party in power” - otherwise Outer Mongolia would have to become part of China again. However, neither the largest Mongolian feudal lords, who initially led the party, nor the Bolsheviks, who sought to create buffer states between Russia and China, were interested in this. The fact that they were not confident in Mongolian independence is evidenced by the fact of the creation of two “Arat republics” at once - Mongolia and Tuva - with Great People's Khurals, people's revolutionary parties and a foreign policy controlled by Moscow. The Mongols, by the way, were not averse to seeing Tuva as their own territory. A funny detail: the failed attempt to take control of Tuva was led by Khatanbaatar Maksarzhav - according to the Soviet historical version - a feudal lord, according to the Mongolian socialist version - a folk hero and commander... Moscow “believed” in Mongolia only in 1944, eliminating Tuvan statehood overnight. But by this time there were no feudal lords left in the leadership of the country; a person distinguished by good biography and timely death of Sukhbaatar. The country was led by his comrade-in-arms, Marshal Khorlogiin Choibailsan, although the Kremlin had much more confidence in Yumzhagiin Tsedenbal, who was educated in Irkutsk and married to a Russian, who after the death of the marshal became the sovereign leader - or, better said, the sovereign governor of Mongolia. Tsedenbal, appointed under Stalin, was removed already under Chernenko, replaced by the relatively young prime minister Zhambyn Batmunkh... But by this moment Mongolia almost ceased to interest Moscow, and by the time mutual understanding seemed to begin to develop between Russia and China, the buffer state was completely forgotten ... But in vain: Mongolia has not disappeared anywhere from the map of Asia, the touching strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing exists only in the imagination of Kremlin strategists. But during the time Russia lost in Mongolia, both Beijing’s position and Washington’s position have significantly strengthened - and this in a country that previously did not have its own foreign policy at all!

Russia's influence on the Mongolian economy is still great, but this is by no means a constant. The victory of the opposition over the communists several years ago, by the way, reflected the fact that, having lost the attention of its neighbor, the MPRP found itself disoriented, and Mongolian society decided to trust people who were not connected by their careers with the Kremlin - although they often still had the same Russian education. But the opposition, having come to power, was unable to cope with the Mongolian economy, and the MPRP learned to survive without Kremlin support: in the last presidential elections its candidate Natsagiin Bagabandi won a landslide victory , and this became the first signal of a return to power. However, there is hardly any need to explain that post-communists are often greater pragmatists than the newly-minted liberals and conservatives. Moscow’s influence in Mongolia will not automatically be restored by their victory; moreover, ideologically the leadership of the MPRP may find Beijing much closer and clearer to Beijing than Moscow. Nevertheless, over the past decades, Beijing has been a threat to Mongolian independence, and Moscow has been its guarantor. And the Russian leadership is unlikely to be happy if Beijing ends up being the economic master of the country, and Washington is the guarantor of statehood...