Mongolia Twice Asked to Be Part of USSR, But Moscow Said No

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 21 – Many specialists on the former Soviet bloc are aware that Bulgaria asked to be taken be taken into the USSR as the sixteenth republic only to be refused, but fewer know that Mongolia also asked to become a Soviet republic – and was also turned down flat despite its deference to the Soviets and Moscow’s control of its policies.

            The usual explanations for this situation in the Soviet Union’s first satellite are that Moscow didn’t want to spend the money, Zen.Yandex says; but in fact, it spent more in Mongolia than in many of union republics (zen.yandex.ru/media/centralasia/pochemu-mongoliia-ne-voshla-v-sssr-5df7954878125e00ae85d403).

            Tsarist Russia helped Mongolia gain independence from China in 1911, and then after Soviet forces helped defeat Baron Ungern and his anti-Bolshevik units in 1921, the Mongols set up a communist government long before “the Red Army brought socialism to Europe by force” after 1945.

            But in Mongolia, there was “no conquest or occupation.” Nonetheless, many expected that the USSR would absorb Mongolia after World War II. But at the Yalta Conference, the powers agreed that it would remain a buffer state “in exchange for the guarantee that Inner Mongolia would remain part of China,” the Russian news agency says.

            That was a good agreement, it continues, because “it reduced the probability between the two largest socialist countries in the future. But nevertheless, the Mongols themselves wanted to become part of the USSR.” Mongolia’s leader Tsedenbal twice asked Moscow for this “but each time was refused.” 

            Mongolia “was part of the Soviet Union almost in everything except its name and was unofficially considered the 16^th republic. Of all the communist states, the USSR interfered in its internal affairs most of all. As a result, Mongolia’s capital looks Soviet, its alphabet is Cyrillic, its way of life “completely European, and marrying a Russian is a matter of pride.

            But there is one part of Mongolia which Moscow did “swallow up,” the news service continues, Tuva. It became a communist satellite in the 1920s, and in 1944, it was absorbed as an autonomous oblast.  “It remains within Russia to this day.”