ABSTRACT
The emergence of Choibalsang as dictator True national independence for Mongolia in the 'thirties was never a practical proposition. In theoretical terms the choice lay between alignment with the us S R, with whom she had thrown in her lot in 1921 and again in 1929, and penetration by Japan, whose sphere of imperial ambition was beginning by now to embrace Mongolia. China herself, the main objective of Japan's expansion, was becoming more and more a negligible quantity. But in practice Mongolia was never faced with a choice of this sort. The whole history of her revolution predisposed her towards the Russian connection. Her ruling party was a Soviet creation and many of her leaders had undergone training in Russia. There was no organized opposition to the People's Party in the country. The Japanese were certainly probing Mongolia, sending in agents and, at times from 193 5 onwards, testing out Mongolian frontier defences with reconnaissance raids. But the extravagance of the wholesale accusations which were flung about in the late 'thirties, and which stuck to nearly all Mongolia's erstwhile leadership, make it impossible to assess whether the Japanese really did enjoy any support in Mongolia, or whether, as in the US S R, allegations of spying on behalf of foreign powers were not just another weapon of terror. All indications are that the latter is likely to be the true explanation. To judge by the reports of trials in the 1930s, Mongolia was penetrated from top to bottom by Japanese intelligence. Every ministry and public office was a hotbed of sedition, and the whole of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Party, more or less, with the exception of Choibalsang, were Japanese agents. So was the Commander-in-Chief together with
many other members of the High Command. At the top the Japanese were allegedly in a position to engineer the assassination of Choibalsang through the agency of the Mongolian surgeongeneral, and to call forth a mutiny to coincide with their own invasion. They could persuade the Mongolian High Command to let their own soldiers die, of poison, malnutrition, and medical mistreatment, in the most despicable way. Farther down the scale, the Japanese could pay attention to such minutiae as organizing a roof fall to block two shafts at the Nalaikha coal mines, and floods to waterlog three shafts. Yet in spite of this comprehensive penetration of practically the whole of Mongolia's administration and economy, which should have brought the system down like a worm-eaten house, the Japanese were never able to bring off a single effective coup. It is now admitted that the alleged army plot was a fake, and that the treacherous commanders were really heroic defenders of Mongol-Soviet solidarity who were unfortunately framed and done to death. The same is doubtless true of most, if not all, the other evidence of Japanese penetration. At any rate, no uprising in the rear ever accompanied Japanese aggression on the frontiers between 1935 and 1939. On the other hand, Mongolia was in all practical matters reduced, after 1929, to unilateral dependence on Russia. Her economy was integrated with the Soviet economy, and her military ,organization and internal security apparatus were similarly co-ordinated. Not only did the US S R, for ideological reasons, need to uphold the existence of her first associate in revolution, but she needed Mongolia as a buffer and military deployment area against Japanese aggression, which from 1931 onwards, was increasingly threatening the security of the whole Far East, but whose southward direction, avoiding the bare steppes of Mongolia, was not assured till after the decisive victory of combined Soviet and Mongol forces at the battle of the Khalkha river in 1939. The definitive choice having been taken in 1921, all logic was on the side of Mongolia's continuing loyalty to Russia.
