By Owen Lattimore
ONE of the most significant results of the war is the enhanced importance of the chain of frontiers running across Asia from Korea to Turkey. Everything on the northerly side of this frontier falls under the sovereignty of the U.S.S.R. In one sense, this is a single sovereignty, centered in Moscow. In another sense, it is a joint sovereignty in which a number of republics and important non-Russian peoples hold an interest. Because of this double aspect of Soviet sovereignty, the inner Asian frontier is important not only because it is the longest in the world, but because the Soviet Republics grouped along it are preponderantly Asiatic.
The lands on the southerly side of this frontier fall under a number of sovereignties. The roll call from east to west is: Korea; China (the northeastern or Manchurian provinces); Outer Mongolia; China (the vast Central Asian province of Sinkiang, with a Chinese population minority of 5 to 10 percent, and an overwhelming majority which includes a number of non-Chinese peoples); Afghanistan; Iran; Turkey.
The names of these countries are enough to call attention to the fact that this inner Asian frontier resembles the frontiers of eastern Europe and the Balkans in having two contradictory functions. On the one hand it divides different sovereignties and political, social and economic systems from each other. On the other hand, it sometimes divides similar peoples, cultures, languages and religions from each other. There are small but significant Korean minorities in both the U.S.S.R. and China's northeastern provinces. There are Chinese communities in the Soviet Far East. There are Mongols in the U.S.S.R. and also in the Inner Mongolian territories which have been administratively absorbed into the northeastern, northern and northwestern Chinese provinces, as well as in independent Outer Mongolia. All of the non-Chinese peoples of Sinkiang have closer affinities with peoples and cultures across the Outer Mongolian and Soviet frontiers than with the Chinese people and their culture. Similar but perhaps not so strongly marked situations exist in Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey.
Our familiar use of the terms "Russia" and "China" tends to disguise from our political perception the fact that the frontier between the two countries is anything but a clean-cut boundary between Russians and Chinese. Except in the northeastern provinces (Manchuria), most of the frontier is masked by peoples who are neither Russian nor Chinese. Even in the northeastern provinces the small but politically potent Korean and Mongol minorities are generally grouped in territorial enclaves lying away from China and toward Korea, Siberia and Outer Mongolia.
On this unique frontier Outer Mongolia stands in a commanding position. Its independence and sovereignty have now been recognized by China, after an agreement with the U.S.S.R. in August 1945, confirmed a few months later by a plebiscite in Outer Mongolia conducted in the presence of official Chinese observers. The emergence into the world community of such a state, standing on a frontier of such importance in the world distribution of power, is of exceptional relevancy in the revisions and redefinitions of American foreign policy which are now going on.
II
Unfortunately, there is no people and no state which we as a nation are less well equipped to assess and understand. Any honest treatment of the subject should begin with the admission that only a handful of Americans have even the basic knowledge of languages and of the cultural and political background which are necessary for a study of the Mongols and their institutions. And even of this handful, there is not one who can pretend to have more than a fragmentary knowledge of the statistical facts and of recent developments and trends.
An approach to the study of the problem can be made, however, by noting the connections between Mongol and Chinese revolutionary history. It should be said at the outset that for reasons of space this article does not attempt to deal with Inner Mongolia and Tannu-Tuva, though their relationship to the study of Outer Mongolia should be noted. Inner Mongolia has been administratively absorbed into various Chinese provinces, but a strong nationalist movement survives. One wing of this movement may be expected to press for local autonomy under Chinese sovereignty, another wing for separation from China and union with Outer Mongolia. Tannu-Tuva, under the Manchu Dynasty, was a special administrative enclave of Outer Mongolia. It then became a "People's Republic" like Outer Mongolia, and has now been absorbed into the U.S.S.R. This annexation may be regarded as a sequel to the Chinese recognition of Outer Mongolian independence. As long as China claimed sovereignty over Outer Mongolia, the Chinese view was that Tannu-Tuva (Urianghai) was a part of Outer Mongolia, and Russian annexation would have been seriously disturbing to Russo-Chinese relations. Since Outer Mongolia itself does not claim sovereignty over Tannu-Tuva, and since its people are at a level of development lower than that of the Mongols and similar to that of several "fragmentary" peoples under Soviet jurisdiction, its existence as a fully sovereign state was highly artificial. The Russian move can obviously be criticized as poor "public relations," in view of the readiness abroad to criticize the Soviet Union as an all-engulfing menace, but has in its favor advantages of administrative and economic efficiency which are equally obvious.
Comparison reveals important parallels and also important divergences between the rise of modern China and Outer Mongolia. Both countries date their history as Republics from rebellions against the Manchu Dynasty in 1911. The Mongols date their Republic from 1911, when the risings began, and thus have a shadowy seniority over the Chinese who, in accordance with Chinese custom, date their Republic from 1912, the first full year of the new dispensation. In the decade from 1912 to 1921 China relapsed into the period of warlordism, and national disunity was aggravated by the intrigues of foreign interests. Outer Mongolia began by being drawn into the orbit of Tsarist Russia. Very soon, however, the Russian position in Asia was weakened by heavy commitments in Europe in the war against Germany and Austria, and the threat of Japanese expansion began to grow.
Secret conventions between Russia and Japan made in the years from 1907 (soon after Russia's defeat by Japan) to 1916, when Russia was preoccupied with war in Europe, had allocated to the Japanese sphere of interest the Inner Mongolian territories east of the meridian of Peking (Peiping), which accounts for the Japanese-sponsored term "Eastern Inner Mongolia." Japanese penetration was next extended to Outer Mongolia through the Anfu clique, a corrupt group of Chinese politicians and militarists manipulated not only by the Japanese militarists but also by the supposedly non-militarist Zaibatsu or great industrial and financial houses. "Little" Hsü, the Chinese General who attempted a reconquest of Outer Mongolia in 1919 , was an Anfu leader.
In 1920, civil war in China dislodged the Anfu clique from power. The "Mad Baron" Ungern-Sternberg and Ataman Semenov, two exceptionally savage anti-Soviet leaders in the Russian Civil War, then became the instruments of Japanese policy in Outer Mongolia. In the early 1920s, however, Japanese prestige and influence receded everywhere. The failure to occupy eastern Siberia permanently was a blow to the ascendancy of militarism in Japan itself, and the Washington Conference of 1921 resulted in a lull in Japanese expansionism. Concurrently, the Soviet Union, having survived civil war and foreign intervention, enjoyed a period of prestige not only in Mongolia and China but throughout Asia. In this interval the relations of both Outer Mongolia and China with the Soviet Union were closely parallel to each other.
In 1921 an agreement was signed between the Soviet Union and the temporary Revolutionary Mongol Government (which did not yet call itself the Mongolian People's Republic), the most important clause of which was the mutual undertaking "not to allow on their territory the formation of groups, or the recruiting of troops, hostile to one of the contracting parties, as also not to allow the transportation of arms and the transit of troops, hostile to one of the contracting parties." In 1923 the Soviet Envoy, A. A. Joffe, issued a joint statement with Dr. Sun Yat-sen whose party, the Kuomintang, had still a long way to go before winning power in China and international recognition. There were two key clauses in this statement, Number One and Number Four. Under Number One, Mr. Joffe "entirely shared" the view of Dr. Sun that "the Communistic order or even the Soviet system cannot actually be introduced into China, because there do not exist here the conditions for the successful establishment of either Communism or Sovietism." Under Number Four, "Mr. Joffe has categorically declared to Dr. Sun . . . that it is not and never has been the intention or purpose of the present Russian Government to pursue an imperialistic policy in Outer Mongolia or to cause it to secede from China."
The parallelism of this period extends both to institutions and persons. The Sun-Joffe statement led to the formation of a United Front between the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party. The Government of Outer Mongolia at that time was also, in effect, a United Front. It included on the Left the small Revolutionary Party led by Sukhe Bator and on the Right representatives of the powerful clerical and aristocratic interests. As for personalities, little need be said here about Sun Yat-sen, whose career is well known, except to emphasize that in his person he represented a fusion of pure Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism with western political thought. The parallels between his life and that of Sukhe Bator are significant.[i]
Sukhe Bator, like Sun Yat-sen, was born of a poor family. Sun Yat-sen, born in 1866, came under American influence as a boy in Hawaii, and under further western influence as a medical student in Hong Kong. Sukhe Bator, born in 1893, learned to speak Russian as a child, playing with Russian children in the Russian quarter of Ulan Bator (then known to the Russians as Urga, to the Mongols as Da Khuriye, and to the Chinese as Ta K'ulun). In 1912, at the age of 19, he was conscripted into the Mongol army. He soon showed his aptitude for military life and was detailed to a machine-gun unit under Russian instructors. During his military service he came into contact with one of the early revolutionary military leaders, Maksorjab.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 "resounded on the plains of the Mongol homeland like a clap of thunder," as Sukhe Bator's biographer says, and brought about a crisis in Mongol politics and in Mongol relations with China. Since it opened the way for "Little" Hsü's attempt to reconquer Outer Mongolia for China, Mongols were forced to choose sides. Conservatives of the Lama Buddhist Church and among the hereditary aristocrats "suspected the October Revolution like the plague," and were in favor of coming to terms with China. Sukhe Bator, as early as 1918, began to organize a secret independence movement. There were two groups in this movement. One, influenced by upper-class officers, was in favor of resisting Chinese control but not in favor of changing the order of things in Outer Mongolia. Sukhe Bator's own group believed that this was not enough: "all the yellow (clerical) and black (lay) feudal aristocrats must be cast from off the backs of the common people."
There was at this time a great complexity of political groups in Outer Mongolia (and in Inner Mongolia as well). To some extent they overlapped and worked in alliance, but there were also conflicts between them which sometimes smoldered and at other times broke into devouring flame. All groups, including the Rightists, were "revolutionary," simply because the position of all Mongols was desperate and the old order increasingly unbearable; but conflicts broke out over the degree to which the old order should be changed, and the methods of effecting change.
Sukhe Bator's own revolutionary movement appears to have been purely Mongol in inspiration, but in 1920 he came into contact with Choibalsang, the present Premier of the Mongolian People's Republic, who had also organized a secret revolutionary party. Choibalsang was in touch with two Russian Communists in the Russian community in Urga. It is a fair inference, though there is no explicit statement in the record, that Choibalsang had already begun to draw on Marxist theory as a guide to action, while Sukhe Bator had not; and to this extent the merging of the two groups as one revolutionary party may be taken as a parallel to Sun Yat-sen's step in admitting the Chinese Communists to membership in the Kuomintang in 1923.
Later in 1920 Sukhe Bator, Choibalsang and others went on a mission to Siberia to ask for the aid of the Russian revolutionaries against both the Chinese forces and the White forces of Ungern-Sternberg in Outer Mongolia. The "legitimacy" of this mission is stressed in the Mongol account, inasmuch as the mission was authenticated by a document bearing the seal of the Living Buddha of Urga, who represented the conservatives and the "autonomous" Outer Mongolian Government deriving from the Revolution of 1911. The appeal to the Russians was thus officially not an appeal on behalf of one party only, but on behalf of all Outer Mongolia. Much negotiation had been needed in Urga to get this document, and it was granted only because the Mongols required help wherever they could find it. Appeals were also sent, on the initiative of the conservatives, to America and Japan.[ii]
The confused record of this period may be abridged by reciting the well-known facts that Russian aid was granted, that Ungern-Sternberg first dispersed the forces of the Chinese and then, making a raid against Siberia, was taken and shot by the Russians, and that a joint force of the Red Army and the Mongol Partisans of Sukhe Bator and Choibalsang entered Urga (as Ulan Bator was then still called), in July 1921.
Sukhe Bator then made an important decision, which indicates that his method of political operation, like that of Sun Yat-sen, was to work through the widest coalition that could be grouped together at any given time. Instead of setting up a left-wing republic, which would undoubtedly have provoked civil war, he confirmed the Jebtsundamba Hutukhtu or Urga Living Buddha as a kind of limited monarch, of clerical character, presiding over a state that was neither a monarchy nor a republic nor a clerical state.
There nevertheless remained a bitter internal struggle between right and left wings, the ferocity of which is indicated by the accusation that Sukhe Bator, who suffered from tuberculosis, was poisoned by a lama "doctor" sent by the Living Buddha. The struggle took the form of rivalry for control of the armed forces and various departments of the Government. There were a number of instances of armed violence, and there were purges and executions. At least once the Government, in a misguided attempt at collectivization -- indicating that the new state had to contend not only with those on the Right, but with those who stood to the left of the Left -- tried to go too far too fast, and had to retreat to the recognition and encouragement of private property. Yet there was no general civil war, and the fact that there was not indicates that Sukhe Bator, and his successor Choibalsang, held successfully to the principle of winning wider and wider popular support, and avoided the attempt to impose obedience purely by armed force.
Sukhe Bator died in 1923. His party successor was Choibalsang. The Living Buddha died in 1924. No successor was allowed to be proclaimed; instead, Outer Mongolia became the Mongolian People's Republic, and its first Constitution was published at the end of that year.
Sun Yat-sen died in 1925. His party successor was Chiang Kaishek, who in 1923 had visited Russia. In 1926 Chiang Kai-shek led the northern expedition which resulted in the unification of the greater part of China, the establishment of the National Government, and its recognition by the Treaty Powers. In 1927 the Chinese Communists were expelled from the Kuomintang and there began a civil war, for the purpose of extirpating the Communists, which was to last for a decade.
III
In this constellation of dates the parallels between the revolutionary history of China and of Outer Mongolia end, and a wide divergence begins. Choibalsang in Outer Mongolia and Chiang Kai-shek in China occupy analogous positions; but Choibalsang was the left-wing successor to a party founder who had stood (by inference rather than by evidence) somewhat farther to the right, while Chiang Kai-shek was the right-wing successor to a party founder who had stood decidedly farther to the left.
There were still interesting contacts between Outer Mongolia and China, however. An Outer Mongolian delegate or delegates attended a Kuomintang Party Congress at Canton, in 1924, while Sun Yat-sen was still alive. (An anonymous and undated pamphlet, published at Tientsin in 1924 or 1925, entitled "Mongolia: Yesterday and Today," is most interesting in this connection. It contains long but not full transcripts from the proceedings of the Third Congress of the Mongolian People's Party, August 4-31, 1924. The interjected comments of the anonymous author are violently hostile, stigmatizing the People's Party, for instance, as "a handful of men devoid of any ideals" and "an obedient weapon in the hands of the Bolsheviks." The excerpts from the transcript itself are quite obviously not selected for the purpose of doing any credit to the revolutionary Mongols. They also reveal violence, such as the impeachment and summary execution of the official who presided over the opening meetings. They are also notable, however, for the naïve picture they present of ignorance, maladministration and everything else that might be expected -- but also earnestness, a desire to be modern and progressive, and a desire to learn the things that honest, democratic, progressive, modern people ought to know, and a blunt Mongol conviction that no man, dishonest or merely incapable, must be allowed to stand in the way of such progress.) It is also worth noting, as an indication of intellectual contacts between China and Outer Mongolia, that the Mongol name which we translate as "Mongolian People's Republic" is Bughut Nairamdakho Monggol Arat Ulus, in which bughut nairamdakho," by the consent (or harmony) of all," the term for "republic," is an exact equivalent for the Chinese term kung ho, but not an exact equivalent for the Latin root of either the word "republic" or the word "federation."
While the attitude of the Mongols toward the Kuomintang under Sun Yat-sen was friendly, their attitude toward Chinese claims of sovereignty over Outer Mongolia has always been uncompromising. Thus in 1925 (before the establishment of the present National Government), the Bureau of Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs, of the Peking Government, an office of "colonial" character, made several attempts to put on the record a reassertion of Chinese authority de jure. To one communication the Mongols replied by lecturing the Chinese:
It seems that the Chinese Government still observes the traditional principles of its intention to get rid of the former Mongolian self-government by military force. . . . The only thing this Government hopes for is an early cessation of civil wars, and an early shaking-off by the Chinese Government of the yoke of aggressive Powers . . . [if the Chinese will treat the Mongols on a footing of equality] this Government will name plenipotentiary representatives to the Central Government to discuss plans for perpetual peace and safety between Chinese and Mongols.
From this general period we have also some valuable notes by a Chinese traveller, an agent of Feng Yü-hsiang, then still known as the "Christian general." This agent spent some time in Outer Mongolia when going to Russia to negotiate for the purchase of arms by Feng Yü-hsiang. It is clear from his account that the Mongols in 1926 did not regard themselves as "backward" in comparison with the Chinese. On the contrary, they considered that they had been more successfully progressive than the Chinese had yet managed to be. This traveller was impressed by the vigor of the campaign against Lama-Buddhist superstition and by the educational program. He thought that the numerous Russian advisers, though nominally not holding executive power, did in fact exercise initiative. Finally, his account reveals the presence in Outer Mongolia of Mongols from Inner Mongolia, who, though often educated in China, evidently had found Chinese jurisdiction less attractive than a career in independent Outer Mongolia.[iii]
After the Kuomintang broke its United Front with the Chinese Communists and turned sharply to the Right, even these tenuous relations with Outer Mongolia no longer continued. Little can be said of the last 20 years except that, even during the period since the Chinese Communists have been in regions adjacent to Inner Mongolia, no evidence has been reported of the infringement by Outer Mongolia of a "correct" attitude toward China, through furnishing arms or supplies to the Communists.
We know virtually nothing of internal developments in Outer Mongolia in this period. We do know that both Outer Mongolia and Russia were chronically menaced with aggression by Japan, and that there were actual border conflicts, some of them on a large scale. We know that the situation led to an increasingly close coördination between Russian and Mongol defense; but we do not know exactly how this led to the development of Russian influence in Outer Mongolia, nor do we know how far influence approximated to control.
Hence the importance of China's present recognition of the Mongolian People's Republic. We know that the ground for this recognition was prepared at the Yalta Conference, where China was not represented. We do not know the exact steps and stages of negotiation at Yalta. We do not know whether pressure for recognition of Outer Mongolian independence was applied by Russia, or whether Russia's allies, eager for her participation in the war against Japan, held out as an inducement the suggestion that an arrangement be made to recognize the Mongolian People's Republic.
In any event, President Chiang evidently did not wish even to hint at pressure in the public statement which he made when he stated China's new policy toward Outer Mongolia. Instead, he made a careful statement on the theory and application of policy toward Outer Mongolia; its logical implications for Chinese policy toward Tibet; the bearing of such questions on policy toward ethnic minorities in the home provinces of China; and finally, China's attitude toward the colonial countries of Burma and French Indo-China, and toward Thailand. The whole statement, almost completely overlooked in other countries because of the excitement accompanying the end of the war with Japan, will rank as one of the most important state papers of Chiang Kai-shek, and as a major contribution to the modern statesmanship of Asia. One of its key pronouncements is that China, because of her own "revolutionary principles," must "recognize, with bold determination and through legal procedure, the independence of Outer Mongolia."[iv]
IV
The country thus recognized by China is -- and here we resume to a certain extent the parallel with China -- organized under a Party and Government system much like that of China under the Kuomintang. Both systems were drafted under strong Russian influences in the early 1920s. The present Constitution of the Mongolian People's Party is, however, not in draft form like that of China, but in actual operation. This Constitution was enacted by the Eighth Great Hural, in 1940. (The Mongol word hural, like the Russian word soviet, means "a council.") In July 1944 when Vice-President Wallace visited Ulan Bator on his way back from a mission to China, the writer of this article, who accompanied him, was given a copy of the Constitution and of the Mongol Labor Law and was informed at that time that the Constitution had not been translated into any language (including Russian). The Constitution is divided into twelve chapters, containing a total of 95 articles, and some of its major provisions are as follows:
Chapter I: Land, natural resources, factories, mines, metal working, communications, banks and the mechanized hay-making stations which are a key modernizing factor in a nation of herdsmen, are nationalized (Article 5); Individual ownership of cattle, equipment, tools, dwelling places (camp sites), etc., is guaranteed (Article 6).
Chapter III: The supreme executive organ is the Great Hural (Article 13); Delegates to the Great Hural are elected by the hurals of the aimaks (provinces) and the hural of the municipality of Ulan Bator, the capital, on the basis of one delegate to every 1,500 of population (Article 14); the Great Hural must be called into session at least once in three years, by the Little Hural. A special Great Hural can be convened at the will of the Little Hural, on the vote of not less than one-third of the Little Hural (Article 16); the Great Hural elects the members of the Little Hural (Article 15, iii); when the Great Hural is not in session, the Little Hural is the supreme organ of the state (Article 17).
Chapter IV: The Little Hural is elected for a three-year term by the Great Hural on the basis of one member for every 10,000 of population (Article 18). [Since the population is of the order of one million, the membership would be about 100]; a standing committee of the Little Hural must meet at least once a year (Article 20); the Little Hural chooses a Presidium of seven members (Article 21); the Presidium is the supreme organ of the state when the Little Hural is not sitting (Article 22).
Chapter V: A council of Ministers carries on the current business of government (Article 27); The Council of Ministers is responsible to the Presidium of the Little Hural; or to the Little Hural, if it is in session; or to the Great Hural, if that is in session (Article 28); the Ministries are: War, Foreign Affairs, Livestock and Agriculture, Labor, Communications, Commerce, Treasury, Interior, Enlightenment (Education) and Justice (Article 33).
Chapter VI: Local Government is carried on through People's Hurals of the aimaks, the municipality of the capital city, and subdivisions known as somo, bak, khoriya, and khorin (Article 37); the members of each of these hurals are elected by the members of the one below it. There is one representative for each 200 of the population of Ulan Bator, one for each 400 in the aimaks, and one for each 50 in a somo or khoriya.In a bak and in a khori, the smallest units, all voters of the unit meet in assembly (Article 38).
Chapter IX: The franchise is extended to all at the age of 18, men and women, without distinction of religion, race, individual capacity, nomad or settled, or wealth, with such usual exceptions as the feebleminded and those who lose their franchise under criminal sentence (Article 71).
Later chapters and articles detail a number of rights, liberties and duties, such as right of leisure and social security, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of both religion and disbelief and the duty of military service. Chapter XII, the concluding chapter, consists of a single article, Article 95, providing that the Constitution may be amended by the vote of not less than two-thirds of the Great Hural, on a show of hands.
A constitution is a blueprint of a political organism, but most political organisms, in actual function, do not correspond exactly to the structural blueprint. A full translation of the Mongol Constitution would give us a much better idea than we have now of the kind of country that Outer Mongolia is supposed to be. It would still not answer, however, the further question -- what kind of country Outer Mongolia actually is?
At this point it is necessary to return to the reservation made at the beginning of this article, to the effect that we must admit our ignorance; and ignorance, once admitted, restricts the range of legitimate inference and speculation. One thing can be said, however, without reservation. All printed material coming out of Mongolia, in the Mongol language, reveals a strong tincture of Marxist thought. Yet it is equally clear that this pervasive Marxist influence should not be mistaken as slavish imitation of the Russians and their institutions. A strong Mongol character and a strong Mongol pride also stand out from every page.
Also, and perhaps even more important, there is a realistic acceptance of the fact that the new can only be made out of the old; that Mongols must work within the conditions imposed by the fact that what they inherited from the past was not some theoretical order of "feudalism," "backwardness," or "religious superstition," but a particular kind of society molded by history, different from other societies, and associated with a strongly specialized economic system which combined collective tribal ownership of land with individual ownership of flocks, herds and portable dwellings. Hence the Mongol Marxists describe themselves as anti-imperialistic and anti-feudal, but believe that they still have a long way to go before they can even attain Socialism, much less Communism. They therefore consider their problems different from those of the Russians, who live under an order that is Socialist already.
Perhaps the major features of the picture can best be described, or sketched, by saying that the Mongols, under the stress of complex influences, are rapidly changing their old ways, but changing some of them more rapidly than others. In making changes, they appeal for intellectual and philosophical sanction to the Marxist classics, not to the classics of either oriental or western democratic political philosophy. They approach their problems, however, primarily as Mongols, not as imitators of the Russians.
Comparable tendencies appear to be more clearly evident among the Chinese Communists than anywhere else in the world. In view of the spread of many new intellectual influences throughout Asia, and the competition among them, it seems advisable that western political thought should begin to take more note of a major new development, in which philosophical influence does not necessarily connote intellectual subordination or institutional imitation. With all due caution, it may be said that Outer Mongolia indicates the possibility of political, economic and social complexes eclectic in origin and novel in structure and function, but with a stability of their own and with real survival value. The study of such new developments offers a field of investigation as yet hardly touched by American political scientists.
[i] The conventional Mongol spelling of Sukhe Bator is Sukhebagator (written as one word). The meaning of the name is "Axe Hero"; although this sounds like a "party name," it appears to be his given name. Mongols are customarily known only by the given name; the family or clan name is not used. Some Mongols in Outer Mongolia now use an initial before the given name. The details of Sukhe Bator's life here related are taken from "Sukhebagator-un Namdar" ("Biography of Sukhe Bator"), by Sh. Nachok Dorji, Ulan Bator, 1943.
[ii]Op. cit., p. 48-49. The appeal to the United States, of which I have often been told by Mongols, must be in the archives of the Department of State.
[iii]Cf. Ma Hung-t'ien, Nei Wai Meng-ku K'ao-ch'a Jih-chi (Journal of Investigations in Inner and Outer Mongolia), Nanking, 1932. (Reviewed by Owen Lattimore, Pacific Affairs, Vol. VII, 1934, p. 103-107.)
[iv] The full text can be found in a special release of the Chinese News Service, Washington, D. C., dated August 25, 1945. The original address was delivered to a joint session of the Supreme National Defense Council and Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Government on August 24.
Source:Archive of International Affairs magazine
