As seen, the border
between Russia and China is far more than simply a geopolitical boundary, a
barrier, or a line of interaction and contact between two powerful nations. Its
formation and the dynamics of its status represent complex sets of human
relationships, networks, control mechanisms, and economic, social, and cultural
practices. The border is not merely a dividing line between two states – it
epitomizes the interrelations between individuals, groups of people, and states
while encapsulating what people think about the border, and how they
conceptualize it. Essentially, the border is at the crossroad of institutions,
contacts, conflicts, and interests. Currently more than 440,000 Buryat live in
Russia, many in Buryatia. About 46,000 live in Mongolia, and approximately
70,000 live in China.
Concentrations of ethnic Mongols (red) within the
Mongol Empire (outlined in orange)
After the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the
Russian imperial state disintegrated into many self-governing entities, each
claiming sovereignty over its territory based on the right of “national
self-determination.” The Buryats, a Mongol-speaking people from Eastern Siberia
inhabiting the borderland between Russia, Mongolia, and China, were among those
who made a bid for independence between 1917 and 1919. Their situation was
complicated, however, by the start of the Allied Intervention into the Russian
Revolution, and specifically by the arrival
of the Japanese expeditionary forces into Buryatia in 1918. Pursuing their
own agenda of independence in the complicated realities of the Civil War and
the Japanese Intervention, Buryat political leaders initiated the pan-Mongolist
movement that aimed at uniting all Mongol-speaking people into one state. Although
they failed to unite all the Mongols of Outer and Inner Mongolia, the Buryat
national movement succeeded in 1923 in establishing territorial autonomy, the
Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, albeit within the new
Soviet state.
The efforts of the Buryat national movement culminated
in 1919, a year that sharply divides the history of the Mongols and the
borderland region in general. Buryat aspirations for cultural and increasingly
territorial national independence emerged in the early 1900s, in part due to
the aggressive Russification policy of the Tsarist government but mainly
because the Buryats got actively drawn into the modern world due to their
strategic location on the Russo-Chinese border.1 As the power balance in the
region was broken after 1917, the region plunged into shifting and complicated
power hierarchies between different power players, among them the Buryats.
Recently, historians have turned their attention to the role minorities played
in interimperial conflicts in Northeast Asia, especially between imperial Japan
and China. Very little attention, however, has been given so far to the role of
the Buryat-Mongols in the interimperial rivalry between Imperial/Soviet Russia,
Japan, and China. The young Bolshevik regime worked on regaining authority over
Russian imperial territories lost during the Russian Civil War, while imperial
Japan pushed further north, at times successfully, to gain new territories of
influence. Although China had been weakened by the end of World War I, it used
the “Mongolia question” to attempt to restore its former control over Mongolia,
and thus represented for Mongols and Buryats one of the biggest impediments on
their road to independence. Moving beyond conventional narratives that depict
various ethnic groups within empires as bit players in imperial struggles, or
as tragic victims of colonial expansion, I wish to offer a depiction of the
Buryats as full-fledged historical actors who played a formative role in the
political making of the region. As the history of Buryats’ political endeavors
demonstrates, minorities often indirectly shape imperial designs and colonial
realities by pursuing their own complicated and shifting agendas.
1919 is important for another reason: it is the year
when the pan-Mongolist national movement reached its peak, galvanized by the
breaking and shifting regional order and balance of power. Pan-Mongolism, I
contend, was one of the several competing regional projects, namely the
Japanese, the Chinese, and finally the Soviet efforts to build a new regional
or global order. These projects were linked by complex hierarchical webs of
cooperation, coercion, and dependence, which determined in the end the downward
trajectory of the pan-Mongolist movement. To recover the full dimension of
Buryat agency at this historical juncture, it is necessary to reevaluate
intersections among the Buryats and the colonial powers of Russia, China, and
Japan, as well as the kind of broader political, economic, and cultural
struggles that borderland regions are often rife with. My aim is not to argue
for the incidental significance of Buryat politics to Russia, Mongolia, Japan,
or China, but to demonstrate that Buryat, Mongol, Russian, Japanese, and
Chinese politics came together in 1919 in a forgotten nexus that reshaped
Northeast Asia’s boundaries for all of its peoples.
The trajectory of the relationship between members of
the Buryat pan-Mongolist movement and Japanese imperial agents is a story of
complicated negotiation and eventual clash of two very different visions of the
region, one of independent Mongolia under Buryat leadership, and another of
pan-Asianist order under Japanese direction. For the Buryat national leaders,
the Japanese were critical allies in providing assistance to their independence
movement. The historiography to date has assumed that the Japanese
Interventionist forces superimposed their authority and mercantile interests on
the local population. Often overlooked is the fact that this arrangement was
also in the interest of the Buryat political leaders, who sought to gain the
support of the Japanese military and business sector. The cooperation
ultimately failed largely because the Japanese diplomatic, military, and
business establishments pursued uncoordinated and mutually conflicting agendas.
The pressure of American and Chinese interests on Japan, and the advance of the
Red Army into Buryatia after 1920 and to Outer Mongolia in 1921, gave
additional impetus for Japan’s policy makers to abandon cooperation with the Buryat
leaders. On the other hand, the Bolshevik leaders enhanced their efforts to win
over non-Russian populations by declaring the right for national
self-determination and territorial autonomy. In the changed geopolitical
situation, and attracted to the promises of the Bolshevik regime, the Buryats
abandoned their pan-Mongolist plans and embraced Buryat nation-building within
the new Soviet federative state. The Buryat national movement was, therefore,
not a story of survival and resistance, but rather of active participation in
the regional political configuration which saw the pan-Mongolist project reach
its nadir in 1919 and produce lasting political effects.
Buryatia after the Revolutions of 1917
Buryat pan-Mongolism was not a post-World War I
phenomenon related to the “Wilsonian moment” of national self-determination but
had its roots in the pre-revolutionary period. Taking a cue from
anthropological and ethnographic studies, we consider the Buryats an
“autoethnographic people,” meaning that their cultural identity was largely
shaped by the self-descriptive activities of its educated members.2 In the
middle of the nineteenth century, early Buryat chroniclers first attempted to
describe their own people by imitating modern European ethnographic accounts.3
In the early twentieth century, a school of Buryat studies started to take
shape thanks to the pioneering efforts of the first ethnographers and
historians of Buryat origin, such as Mikhail Bogdanov (1878–1919), Gombojab
Tsybikov (1873–1930), and Tsyben Jamtsarano (1880–1942).4 They received a
Western education in prestigious academic institutions, mainly at St.
Petersburg University, where they became acquainted with the latest trends in
European social sciences and humanities, as well as with the new currents of
social-revolutionary ideas. Their European education led them to engage with
and analyze their own personal experiences, which they used to understand the
cultural experience and history of their people. As members of a colonized
people, their academic activity was bound to become a political act,
impregnated with meanings of social justice and social consciousness. In
1905–1907, reacting to the new land-use regulations that favored Russian
peasant migrants in Buryatia at the expense of the indigenous people, the newly
emerged Buryat national movement began to campaign for more political, social,
and economic rights for the Buryats. The Buryat educated elite began to
formulate at this time a newly imagined Buryat nationality, in which connection
to the larger Mongol and Asian community became the key characteristic.5
Finally, it was these same Buryat scholars who became the leaders of the
national movement in 1917–1919.
The February Revolution of 1917 was the beginning of
the end of the Russian Empire, but just the start of the political journey for
Buryat nationalists. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and the new Provisional
Government and the leftist Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies
established dual power in the country. National movements in the territory of
the former empire, including Buryatia, began to agitate either for greater
autonomy or absolute secession from Russia and the creation of independent
states. From March 1917 onward, leaders of the Buryat intelligentsia organized
several conferences in Petrograd, Chita, Irkutsk, and Verkhneudinsk (present
Ulan Ude), to which they invited Buryat representatives from all-Buryat
ethnoterritorial administrative districts (aimak) of the Irkutsk region,
Buryatia, and Transbaikalia. These efforts culminated in the first All-Buryat
Congress in April 23–25, 1917, in Chita. At the Congress, Russian-educated
Buryat activists advocated the creation of a self-governing Buryat Autonomous
Region, with elective bodies and within a continuous territory, on the model of
Finland and Poland. All adult Buryats, men and women, with no criminal
convictions from the age of eighteen, would be able to vote and elect their
representatives to the parliament, the Buryat National Duma. The Duma, in turn,
would elect a permanent executive body, the Buryat National Committee
(Burnackom), responsible for organizing elections, assembling the National
Duma, and launching publications in the Buryat-Mongol language.6 Matters of
language, culture, and religion were of utmost concern. The Congress called for
the establishment of an Education Council that would overlook the creation of
Buryat schools, training of teachers, and design of curricula that would
include the history of the Buryats and Mongols, the history of Mongolian literature,
and Buryat studies. This new vision of an independent Buryatia was based
primarily on Buryat identity in an ethno-national sense that excluded other
ethnic groups. In their appeal to the Russian Provisional Government, the first
All-Buryat Congress defined Buryats as a “distinct group in a national,
cultural, economic, and legal sense.” For most of the Buryat leaders, Buddhism
and Buryat language were the two unifying principles of the Buryat nation, and
the Buryat government took it upon itself to assist in spreading Buddhism
across the Baikal region and promoting compulsory primary schools in the
Buryat-Mongol language.7 However, despite Burnackom’s appeal to the Provisional
Government and the Siberian Soviets for recognition, both central authorities
hesitated and finally rejected the Buryats’ request, fearing the break-up of
the Russian state as the imperial authority collapsed.
The Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 plunged the
region into chaos. Burnackom tried in vain to remain neutral in the Civil War
between Red and White forces. Attempting to navigate between the two centers of
power, the Buryats made appeals to both sides, and in both cases with
disappointing results. Much like the Provisional Government before him, the
leader of the White forces, admiral Kolchak, refused to acknowledge the
Buryats’ proposal for territorial autonomy, fearing further disintegration of
the country. As the Bolsheviks rose to power in the spring of 1918, Burnackom
attempted to ally with them, only to be turned down as well. Amid intense
fighting to solidify the Soviet rule in Siberia, the Bolshevik authorities had
no intention of granting the Buryats administrative and political
self-government, and merely agreed to autonomy in the sphere of culture. Faced
with refusal from both sides, the Buryat national leaders decided to search for
support elsewhere.
By the spring of 1918, another formidable anti-Red
force emerged in Buryatia: the military detachment of the
local Cossack warlord ataman Grigory Semenov (1890–1945). Semenov returned
from the western front to his home in the Baikal region in September 1917 to form a special Buryat-Mongol mounted division for the
Russian Army under the Provisional Government. After the Bolshevik Revolution,
in December 1917, Semenov and his small force, which now accepted all
nationalities, settled in the region of Manchuria (now Manzhouli), in the
Hulunbuir district. This was the territory of the Barga Mongols where, because
the Russian-owned Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) ran through it, Russian
influence and settlement were considerable. As more soldiers returned home from
the western front, Semenov’s division grew in numbers. Just one month later, in
January 1918, the Buryat-Mongol division had 51 officers, 300 Barguts, 80
Khorchin Mongols, and 125 Russian volunteers, 556 persons in total. Many
Mongols who sought to disentangle themselves from the former Qing Empire and
fled to the north after the failed anti-Chinese revolt in 1916, joined
Semenov’s forces. In early 1918, 300 Serbs, former Austria-Hungarian prisoners
of war, also joined Semenov. The division was renamed the Special Manchurian
Division.8
Though nominally part of the White Army and under the
command of its leader, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, Semenov acted as an
independent power in the region. Along the western part of the Chinese Eastern
Railway, his detachment “requisitioned” everything he desired despite the
protests of Kolchak and Dmitry Horvat, the pro-Kolchak General Manager of the
CER. Semenov’s further ascendency to regional power came, however, with the
support of the Japanese Army. In February 1918, in Harbin, Semenov met with the
head of the Harbin Japanese rezidentura, Lieutenant Colonel Kurosawa Hitoshi,
and the military attaché in Beijing, General-Major Saitō Suejirō.
Semenov was able to convince them to assist his detachment in his fight with
the Bolsheviks.
The Japanese business sector learned about Semenov
from its own sources. Businessman Nishihara Kamezō, mainly known as the
middleman for a series of Japanese loans in 1917–1918 to a Chinese warlord in
exchange for territorial concessions and rights in northern China, sent his two
envoys to Siberia in late 1917 to search for a pro-Japanese White leader. On
the basis of his intelligence sources, Nishihara concluded that Semenov was the
most acceptable figure for an alliance with the Japanese government. In March,
nine Japanese officers, including members of the Harbin rezidentura, became
part of Semenov’s Staff as consultants and instructors.9 By April 1918,
Semenov’s division included 346 Japanese officers, non-commissioned officers,
and rank-and-file soldiers. Semenov also received a considerable amount of
armaments and ammunition as material support from the Japanese. Backed both by
Japan’s approval and Japanese guns, Semenov embarked on achieving his own political goals.
The Japanese Intervention
The Buryats populated the territory that was
historically a contested area between the Russian and Chinese empires, until
the Japanese empire joined the rivalry in the 1890s. The 1689 Treaty of
Nerchinsk, the 1727 Treaty of Bura, and the 1729 Treaty of Kyakhta divided the
Mongols and their territories, marking the formation of the Buryats as a
separate ethnic group out of several large Mongol and Manchu-Tungus groups. The
Buryats became the most numerous and most unified of all ethnic minorities in
the Siberian part of the Russian Empire, and they put up a prolonged and bloody
resistance to Russian colonization in the eighteenth century. After a century
of stability, Russia took advantage of China’s defeats in the Opium Wars
(1839–1842, 1856–1860) and its paralysis during the Taiping Rebellion
(1851–1864) and acquired large territories in the Far East. After signing the
anti-Japanese Treaty of Alliance in 1896 immediately after the Sino-Japanese
War of 1894–1895, Russia constructed a railway through Manchuria, extending its
sphere of influence over northeast China. After its victory in the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Japan solidified its power in Korea and South
Manchuria, effectively stopping Russia’s expansion eastward. Starting in early
1917, as Russian influence began to wane in East Asia, Japan fixed its sights
on the territories formerly under Russian influence and sought opportunities to
exert more control over Chinese domestic politics. In December 1917, the
Japanese Army General Staff, together with the Navy General Staff, developed an
“Operational Plan for the Actions of the Imperial Army in Russia.” In
accordance with this plan, in January 1918, two Japanese warships entered the
port of Vladivostok to “protect the interests of Japanese citizens.” Nominally
under the auspices of participating in the Allied Intervention to contain the
Bolshevik Revolution and guard the eastern front against Germany, Japan
deployed considerable armed forces to the Russian Far East, Eastern Siberia,
and northern Manchuria between 1918 and 1925.10
Initially, there was a lack of consensus among the
Japanese ruling elite over whether the Japanese intervention was a good idea at
all. The Japanese government was split into three factions. The hantai shuppei
(anti-interventionist) faction led by Hara Kei, prime minister between
September 1918 and November 1921, opposed the intervention, warning that it
would be a financial disaster and would jeopardize relations with the United
States. This faction was widely supported by the more liberal segments of the
public, which were quite rightly concerned that the intervention would threaten
peace in the Far East and incite hatred of the Japanese among the Russian
people, thereby destroying the good relations rebuilt after the Russo-Japanese
War.11 The kyōchō shuppei (allied intervention) faction, dominated by
older statesmen like Yamagata Aritomo, was not against military action in
principle but wanted to do so in cooperation with the United States. The
tandoku shuppei (sole intervention) faction, represented by the general staff
led by Field Marshal Uehara Yūsaku, General Tanaka Gi’ichi, Foreign
Minister Motono Ichirō, Home Minister Gotō Shinpei, and Director of
the Southern Manchurian Railway Company Kawakami Toshitsune, insisted on an
exclusively Japanese operation, emphasizing Japan’s need to take control of
Siberia’s abundant resources.12 The kyōchō shuppei faction prevailed,
and the Japanese government officially announced the start of the intervention
on August 2, 1918, after the United States joined the Allied forces. The
government issued a promise to withdraw from the Russian territory once order
was restored, and renounced any intention to infringe on Russian territorial
sovereignty and internal affairs.13 In reality, however, the Japanese Army had
been on Russian soil since April 1918, and was already actively involved in the
raging Civil War. Moreover, Japan’s intelligence service had stepped up its
operations in Siberia since early 1917, while starting in January 1918,
high-ranking Japanese generals began arriving in Vladivostok to observe the situation
on the ground and offer arms and financial aid to the anti-Bolshevik
government.14 Further insubordination by the Army was reflected in the scale of
the Japanese Interventionist forces. Despite an agreement with the Allied
Intervention forces to limit the total number of troops to 7,000, and in
opposition to the cabinet and the Privy Council in Japan, the Army General
Staff asserted the “right of supreme command” and launched a full-scale
assault. It deployed more than 72,000 troops, one-third of all of Japan’s
active service troops, to Vladivostok and the Transbaikal region, in addition
to 60,000 troops in North Manchuria.
The government’s interest in Siberia did not end with
the dispatch of military forces. In July–August 1918, a number of high-profile
businessmen, politicians, and military personnel established a Special
Commission for Siberian Economic Aid (Rinji Shiberia keizai enjo iinkai). Among
members of the Commission were the presidents of Mitsui and Mitsubishi
corporations, the head of the South Manchurian Railway Corporation (Mantetsu),
and the head of the Bank of Korea. The aim of the Commission was “to establish
a basis for Japanese economic activities in opposition to the acquisition of
concessions by the United States and other countries.”15 In December 1918, the
Committee set up the Russo-Japanese Trading Company, followed in 1919 by the
Far East Business Development Corporation and the Russo-Japanese Bank, which
were organized for the purpose of entering the mining, oil production, forestry,
fisheries, and related transport industries.16
Beginning in mid-1918, the military, the Terauchi
Government, and the business establishment, backed by the Ministry of Finance,
committed Japan to gaining either an economic or political foothold in Buryatia.
To achieve this goal, they actively engaged in the Russian Civil War, making
contacts with the leaders of the White forces, supporting them financially and
materially, staging anti-Bolshevik uprisings, and often acting as coordinators
and strategists of White Army actions against the Bolsheviks. Semenov and the
Buryats were key figures for Japan, as they positioned themselves as
pro-Japanese and promised considerable concessions to Japanese interests once
they gained power.
Buryat Pan-Mongolism
Unfortunately for the Buryats, they could not help but
ally with Semenov. After December 1917, the Red Army, which included a few
Buryat Bolsheviks, was gaining more ground first in Irkutsk and then, in spring
of 1918, in Buryatia. In the Transbaikal region, the Buryat self-government
still represented the most stable and popularly supported authority. In the
summer of 1918, however, Semenov rooted out the Bolshevik forces in Buryatia
and the Irkutsk provinces. The Buryat self-government had to work now with Semenov
and his staff. For a short while, cooperation seemed to be possible as Semenov,
trying to gain military, political, and economic assistance from the Buryats,
supported the Buryat national movement.
Numerous rumors and false reports circulated in the
region regarding Japan’s involvement with Semenov and with Buryat-Mongol
activities. Aleksandr Kolchak’s Omsk government, which controlled the territory
west of Lake Baikal, was led to believe by the reports of its officers in
Buryatia that Semenov was part of a larger Japanese strategy in the global
political space. According to the officers in Irkutsk loyal to the Omsk
government, the Japanese were getting ready to go to war with the United
States; in order to secure iron ore from Eastern Siberia and prevent an attack
from China, they were plotting an uprising in Mongolia, and Semenov had been
chosen to lead it.17 On the other hand, reports dispatched to Tokyo from the
Japanese Military Mission in Omsk maintained that the Mongol uprising was
Semenov’s plan and had neither been initiated nor was it being led by the
Japanese military. The reports claimed that the rumors about a Japan-backed
Mongol uprising were part of Semenov’s plan to solidify his control over the
region east of Lake Baikal.18 Until recently, Soviet and Russian historians
have considered Semenov to have been the chief architect of the Mongol
uprising. Semenov was credited with formulating pan-Mongolism, or the idea of a
greater Mongolian state, which would unite all Mongol-speaking people.19 Hence,
both Russian and Western historians have considered the cooperation between
Semenov and the Japanese military as the crudest example of Japan’s insatiable
imperialism and the personal greed of bloody warlords. Semenov did indeed
entertain the idea of becoming the head of the Great Mongolian State and spread
the rumor that he was, in fact, a Mongolian prince, but he was not the one who
first put forward the idea of pan-Mongolism as a geopolitical goal, nor did the
Japanese have a coherent imperial policy for Siberia.20
Often overlooked is the role that the Buryat
politicians played in the construction and development of the pan-Mongolist
movement. In fact, it was the Buryat national elite who first conceived of
pan-Mongolism, prior to the 1917–1919 period. Most of the Russian-educated
Buryats were also employed in government offices overseeing the implementation
of Tsarist Eastern policies in China, Tibet, and Mongolia.21 Most importantly,
future nationalist leaders such as Tsyben Zhamtsarano, Tsydn-Eshi Tsydypov, and
others were directly involved in Outer Mongolia’s move to independence, and
knew from the inside the geopolitical interests of big powers in the region.
They were aware that after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, in which many
Buryats participated, including Tsydn-Eshi Tsydypov, Japan began extending its
influence in Inner Mongolia. In the Third Russo-Japanese Entente of 1912, the
Russian Empire as well as Britain and France acknowledged the eastern part of
Inner Mongolia as belonging to the Japanese sphere of influence. In 1911, with
the fall of the Qing Empire, Outer Mongolia and its leader, the Bogdo Khan,
declared independence from China and the establishment of a state for all the
Mongols. Diplomatic negotiations then ensued between the Russians, the new
leaders of Outer Mongolia, and the unhappy Chinese, in which the Buryats acted
as consultants and translators. (Tsyben Zhamtsarano was, e.g., a consultant to
the Russian ambassador in Urga.) Outer Mongolia tried to seek Japanese help in
1912 and 1914, but Japan preferred not to interfere in the Russian sphere of
interest. Moreover, Japan did not consider the Mongolian drive for independence
as a genuine act, but rather as the result of Russia’s diplomatic machinations
to extend its power into Mongolia following the Qing dynasty’s collapse.22 Not
finding any support with Japan or with Russia, according to an agreement
reached between Russia and China in 1915, Outer Mongolia remained under China’s
suzerainty, although with a high level of independence. A new attempt at a
greater Mongolian unity and independence came only three years later, initiated
by the Buryat political elites who were either witnesses of or directly
involved in Outer Mongolia’s earlier endeavor to gain complete independence. By
the end of 1918, as no warring party could claim overwhelming authority in the
region, the Burnackom had abandoned its goal of achieving administrative and
territorial autonomy within the Russian state, and instead started to pursue a
different, more ambitious goal: the creation an independent Mongolian state,
which would unite Buryatia and Outer Mongolia. Despite the Mongols’ earlier
failure, the Buryats were more confident about their own success. Elbek-Dorzhi
Rinchino, former head of the Burnackom, for example, was sure that “the
significance and prestige” of the Buryats had increased during the Russian
Revolution, because between 1917 and 1919, the Burnackom was in sole control of
Buryat affairs for almost two years. Importantly, the Western-educated Buryat
national leaders often thought of the Mongols and other peoples of central Asia
as primitive and rejected the theocratic governance of Outer Mongolia as not in
accord with the progressive notion of modern secular nationhood. Rinchino expressed
a widely held assumption among the Buryat politicians that they would play a
special leading role in the new state as “the most cultural [group] among
Mongol people.”23
The Buryats based their “superiority” not only on the
fact that they had Western education and were fluent and literate in both
Mongolian and Russian (and sometimes other European languages), but, according
to them, that they possessed an articulate national self-consciousness, which
other Mongol peoples had still to achieve. If initially the Buryat national
leaders saw their Western education as a “weapon” against Russian imperialist
policies, in 1919 they considered Western education, together with the
possession of national self-consciousness, as indispensable tools in the
political and national struggle for the unity of the Buryat-Mongol people. With
the decline of the Eurocentric (and in this case Russia-centric) order in the
post-World War I period, and the simultaneous emergence of alternative
political visions, the Buryats were able to imagine themselves as the
civilizational leaders of the Mongol people, in the same way that the Japanese,
a decade earlier, had imagined themselves as the moral leaders of Asia.
The Buryat leaders were aware that without powerful
allies their plans would be difficult to realize. They saw Japan as the most
powerful player in the region, and had high hopes that they could interest
Japan in cooperation. As Rinchino wrote: Most important for the realization of
our program is the establishment of contact with Japan and Semenov. Semenov is
useful to us as long as the Japanese stand behind him, who have their own plans
for Siberia, Manchuria, and Mongolia. Semenov has authority and power only
because of Japan’s backing. Our most important task, therefore, is to establish
direct contact with the Japanese, while contact with Semenov is less
significant.24
Rinchino’s writings revealed that, for Buryat leaders,
cooperation with Semenov was only a convenient way to get closer to the
Japanese military. Eventually, they optimistically thought, Semenov would
complete his part and disappear as a power contender from the political scene,
while the Buryat national government would establish its authority in the
region. The Buryat leaders hoped that once they made direct contact with the
Japanese, they could play on the Japanese interests to achieve their political
goals.25 They thought that Japan would like to have united Buryatia and Outer
Mongolia as an independent buffer state between Soviet Russia and Manchuria.
The Buryats made their move to secure Japan as an ally in late 1918. When the
Fifth National Congress of the Buryat-Mongols of Eastern Siberia was convened
in Verkhneudinsk, between November 18 and December 3, 1918, Buryat politicians
invited a Japanese officer, Captain Suzue Mantarō, to attend in a bid by
to gain access to the Japanese command. The Buryat hosts organized a feast in
Suzue’s honor and apparently gained his favor, since he eagerly transmitted
their suggestions for cooperation with Japan and supported their appeals. The
Buryat politicians expressed a desire to send local students to study in Japan,
and to organize tourist trips.26 The plan related to students was submitted to the
vice chief of staff in Tokyo by the Japanese staff in Siberia in January
1919.27 Moreover, in the same month, Burnackom, now Burnarduma (Buryat National
Duma), established a Mining Department to investigate the mineral wealth of
Transbaikalia, especially the lands of the Buryat people. The Mining Department
invited Japanese mining specialists, who actively participated in its
operations. The region’s natural resources, the Buryats rightly believed, would
be a key factor in attracting foreign assistance.28 However, the Buryats were
misguided by the promises the Japanese officers in Siberia made to them.
Encouraged by the Japanese military and business interests, the Buryats
overestimated Japan’s commitment to supporting the creation of the Mongol state
and were little aware of conflicting agendas within the Japanese
establishment.
The Mongol State and Japan
The Japanese government, the military, and the
business sector were united in their understanding that the Japanese Expedition
to Siberia presented an excellent opportunity to extend the Japanese railway
networks from Korea and southern Manchuria into northern Manchuria,
Transbaikalia, and the Russian Far East. They had serious disagreements,
however, in regard to Japan’s foreign policy priorities, which finally
overwhelmed any coherent imperial strategy in the region. The Army, the party
most supportive of Mongol independence, was also not unified in how to proceed.
In January 1919, Buryat and Mongol political leaders organized a meeting in
Dauria, on the border of Russia and Manchuria. Semenov and the Japanese officer
Captain Suzue were also in attendance. The purpose of the meeting was to
discuss the steps for the creation of the Mongol state. The Japanese informed
their command in Tokyo of the Buryat plans to institutionalize Buryat-Mongol
self-government (jiritsu), but said nothing of independence. Even though
Captain Suzue was in favor of wide-ranging support of the Buryat-Mongol
movement, the high command in Tokyo ordered that he remain an observer. The
General Staff also advised Suzue to convince Semenov not interfere in Mongol
affairs.29
Despite the disapproval of the Japanese Foreign
Ministry and hesitation of the General Staff, Buryat-Mongol politicians went
ahead with their pan-Mongolist project. On February 25, 1919, the Constituent
Congress of the unified Mongol state opened in Chita. The Congress, which
claimed to have representatives from Inner and Outer Mongolia, Hulunbuir, and
Buryatia, was co-chaired by a young lama from Inner Mongolia, Neise Gegen, and
the Buryat politician Dashi Sampilon. The Congress resolved that all people of
Mongol descent should be allowed to form a state in which they would enjoy full
rights. The capital was to be in the Hulunbuir city of Hailar, with the
Provisional Government seat temporarily located in Dauria station. The Congress
also established four ministries: Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, and
War.30 Captain Kuroki Chikayoshi, head of the Japanese Mission in Chita between
August 1918 and February 1919, and Captain Suzue, became the two foreign
advisors of the Dauria government. Captain Kuroki encouraged Buryatia’s
independence plans and promised Japan’s support. Unlike Kuroki, Captain Suzue
did not make any promises at the Congress. To further attract Japan’s
interests, the Congress, which also included Semenov, promised to Japan
exclusive trade rights and use of mineral resources, in addition to a contract
for the construction of a new railway. Although the Japanese government was
very interested in the mineral deposits of Transbaikalia and even sent mining
engineers to the eastern Baikal region, it refrained from expressing full-scale
support of the new state.31 Outer Mongolia’s response was also lukewarm. Outer
Mongolia did not participate in the Congress, but promised to join once the new
government was approved by the Paris Peace Conference, in particular by the
United States and Japan. In truth, however, the leaders of Outer Mongolia did
not trust Japan and the promises of its military, as the memory of Japan’s
dismissal of Mongols’ earlier plea for support in 1914 was still fresh.
Moreover, they did not favor Buryat leadership of a pan-Mongol state.32 Without
Outer Mongolia, however, united Mongolia was unable to aspire for a larger
unification.
It seems that one of the most important reasons for
the Army’s support of the pan-Mongolist movement was to stall the advance of
the United States in the region. The Japanese government was alarmed by the
arrival of the Russian Railway Service Corps (RRSC) in 1918, which was the
brainchild of the American Advisory Commission of Railway Experts. Both
operated under the aegis of the U.S. State Department. Originally, the RRSC was
intended to help the Provisional Government to modernize Russian railways for the
war effort. In March 1918, the RRSC reached an agreement with the CER General
Manager Dmitry Horvat and deployed 110 men to the CER.33 In early May 1918,
Semenov also asked for assistance from the RRSC unit on the CER, but the U.S.
State Department refused to offer him any support. The Japanese worried that
the RRSC and the U.S. State Department might wreck their chances for their own
railway expansion. At the January 1919 meeting in Dauria, the only concern of
the Japanese officers was the railway issue. Captain Suzue asked the Buryat
members if it was true that the Americans had been granted the right to build a
railway from Manchuria to south Mongolia. The Buryat and Mongol politicians
acknowledged that the Americans were indeed engaging in different sorts of
activities in the region, but that they were not aware of any plans for a
railway. The Buryat-Mongol representatives did not fail to add that, of course,
they would prefer such a railway to be built by the Japanese.34
The Buryat leaders of the Congress requested that
Lieutenant Colonel David Barrows, head of the Intelligence Office of the
American Expeditionary Forces, send out two telegrams, one to Woodrow Wilson
and another to the Paris Peace Conference, requesting international recognition
and support.35 The telegrams were never delivered, however, owing to Semenov’s
interference in the matter. Anxious not to be left out, Semenov told the Buryat
representatives that he would hand the telegrams to Barrows himself. According
to Rinchino, Semenov signed his own name on the telegrams as the sole
representative of the newly proclaimed Mongol state. Barrows returned the
telegrams to the Buryat Congress, pointing out that the American government
might consider helping a new national government headed by its national
leaders, but not a local warlord with a questionable reputation. Rinchino and
the others were furious at Semenov. Because the Buryats had to rely on Semenov
as an intermediary, they lost their chance to establish direct contact with the
United States, as well as Japan.
Encouraged by the Japanese military advisors, the
Congress sent a delegation of five people via Japan to represent the new Mongol
state at the Paris Peace Conference. The delegation, however, got stranded in
Tokyo, because the Japanese government, after a prolonged consideration,
refused to issue travel documents for their trip to France. The reason for the
refusal was the vehement protest of Kolchak’s Omsk government, which objected
to any territorial autonomy for the regions of the Russian imperial proper.
Kolchak sent to the American authorities in Vladivostok a message in which he
claimed that united Mongolia would lay the foundation of a “yellow flood on
Europe,” and called the Buryats “the future Prussians of the Far East.” He also
voiced fears that the Kazakhs, Kalmyks, and Tibetans were going to join the
state, disrupting even further the balance of power in the region.36 The
French, British, and American representatives became alarmed at such prospects,
as they had the potential to undermine territories and peoples under their
sphere of influence. Moreover, they feared that the new state would not only
violate the territorial integrity of China and Russia, but would become in fact
a Japanese puppet-state. The United States in particular worked on preserving
the Open Door principle in Siberia and China, and specifically northern
Manchuria, against Japanese aggression. Weighing the potential complications
and especially the possibilities for Japan’s rise in the region, the Western
powers refused to express support for the Buryat-Mongol independence
movement.
On the other hand, never keen on antagonizing China by
supporting Mongolia, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs also refused to
support the delegation. Giving in to the Foreign Ministry, the General Staff
recalled Kuroki and promised to stop all relations with the Buryats. The
Foreign Ministry’s agenda in Northeast Asia increasingly diverged from that of
the Army. The former demanded in vain that the latter not support the
initiative to create a Mongol state because this would have a negative impact
on Japan’s relations with Russia and China. The Ministry became aware that the
Chita Congress in February 1919 aimed at the unification of the Mongol people,
with the Buryats occupying the center of such unification, and, most
importantly, that the Congress had declared the independence (dokuritsu) of
united Mongolia from both China and Russia. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs was largely concerned with maintaining friendly relations with China.
Japanese diplomats in North China supported the Manchurian warlord General
Zhang Zuolin, who warned that Japan’s involvement with Buryat-Mongol plans for
a Greater Mongolia would spoil the relations between China and Japan, as the
Chinese were by no means enthusiastic about such plans. Already in early 1918,
the emergence of Semenov’s Buryat-Mongol Division alarmed the Chinese state. To
reassert Chinese authority over Outer Mongolia in the summer of 1918, a Chinese
battalion entered Urga to reinforce the consular guard in violation of the 1915
Kyakhta agreement between Russia, China, and Mongolia. According to the
agreement, China granted Mongolia autonomy and promised to keep only a small
military escort in Urga. The renewed claims of the Chinese state over Outer
Mongolia, and its vehement opposition to the Buryat-Mongol independence
movement, only added confusion to the already complicated balance of power in
the region. Now, the Japanese diplomats had to reassure Zhang Zuolin that the
Japanese Army supported only self-government (jiritsu) for the Buryats, and
would not allow any independent state to exist beyond the Baikal region. In
other words, for the Foreign Ministry, the China policy was the priority;
therefore, it strongly disapproved of the creation of an independent Mongolian
state and of Japanese military involvement in such an enterprise.37
However, during the intervention, the Japanese
military developed the habit of independent actions, which often went against
orders from Tokyo. Thus, Colonel Kurosawa Hitoshi, who was Kuroki’s replacement
in Chita between February 1919 and August 1920, promised unofficial support in
the form of money and arms to the pan-Mongolist movement. It was known that the
Japanese military trained and supplied armed detachments in Inner Mongolia
organized by Neise Gegen, the leader of the new state.38 Despite the General
Staff’s assurance that there would be no contact with the Buryats, in April
1919, Dashi Sampilon, representative of Buryatia in the new Mongol government,
travelled to Irkutsk with a Japanese Army captain to convince Irkutsk Buryats
to support the “Mongol buffer state between the great powers of the white and
yellow races.”39 In May 1919, the Buryats attempted to send their own delegation
to make direct contact with Japan, but Semenov made sure that the delegation
could not move beyond Hailar.
The Buryat-Mongol plans for a pan-Mongolian state were
never realized. Largely responsible for this was ataman Semenov, who could not
tolerate independent actions of the Buryat elites. Relations between the Buryat
politicians and Semenov deteriorated due to mutual distrust and accusations of
sabotage. The Japanese presence in Buryatia was mostly supported by the
military force, and they had to ally with Semenov. Bypassing Semenov and
establishing direct cooperation with the Buryat government was not feasible in
a situation in which military force ruled the day. The Buryat-Japanese affair
ended with the arrest and murder of Mikhail Bogdanov, a prominent Buryat
politician and historian, by Semenov in December 1919. Semenov also ordered
arrests of other Buryat politicians, who were warned ahead and went into
hiding. Meanwhile, beginning in September 1919, the Red Army was steadily
advancing into Eastern Siberia, and destroyed the Kolchak forces in February
1920. In spring 1920, the Bolsheviks established their regime in Buryatia.
Neither the Mongol state, nor the self-governing body of the Buryats,
Burnarduma, remained in existence.
The Buryat-Mongol Soviet Republic
The pan-Mongolism project became entangled
in complicated hierarchical relations with other powers in the region, which
sought to realize their own visions of regional order. The Japanese actions in
Siberia were much more nuanced and complicated since they were not simply aimed
at supporting the military warlord Semenov. The Japanese Army and government
engaged in negotiations with the Buryat-Mongol nationalist movement, which, as
they very well knew, had an enormous potential to wreck the whole fragile
balance of power in East Asia. However, in 1919, neither the Army General
Staff, the business establishment, nor the government was sure how and whether
Buryatia could be incorporated as a Japanese protectorate.
The Buryats’ independence activities and their
cooperation with the Japanese military had complicated and important
consequences for the Russians, Japanese, Mongols, Chinese, and, finally, the
Buryats themselves. The Russian Bolsheviks devised a strategy of “national
self-determination” which aimed at disarming nationalism by granting
territorial-political autonomy to various ethnic groups of former Imperial
Russia, but within the confines of the new Soviet Federation. By the end of
1920, Semenov’s army and the Japanese troops had left Buryatia. The Russian and
Buryat Bolsheviks entered the region, but worked in close collaboration with
national Buryat leaders to solidify the Soviet authority. An outcome of these
efforts was the establishment of the Buryat-Mongol Autonomous Soviet Socialist
Republic in January 1923. The Republic was established on the four national
principles: national territory, national language, national elite, and national
culture. The Bolsheviks’ commitment to these principles persuaded Buryat
national leaders to join the Soviet state-building project, as they were led to
believe by the Bolsheviks that the formation of an autonomous region might lead
to the creation of a united and independent Buryat-Mongol state that would
incorporate Outer Mongolia. The national Buryat leaders were also given high-ranking
positions, equivalent to the Minister of War, Minister of Education and
Culture, and Minister of Finance, in the newly established Mongolian People’s
Republic (1924). Disappointed in Japan, the Buryat leaders turned to the
Bolsheviks as another, possibly more effective means to unite the
Mongol-speaking peoples. On the other hand, by winning over the local elites,
the Soviets had not only recruited ethnic support for the revolution but also
secured Buryatia and Mongolia as a conceptual border between Russia and its
Asian neighbors. As the central authority disintegrated in the Russian East,
China initially saw an opportunity to restore its hold on Outer Mongolia. And
although China lost Outer Mongolia, which was transformed instead into a Soviet
client state, it managed to keep and integrate Inner Mongolia into its
provincial system. The pan-Mongolist movement, therefore, became one of the
major incentives for Chinese nation-building, forcing the issue of China’s
nationhood, territoriality, and ethnic composition to the forefront of its
concerns.40
For the Japanese, one of the consequences of the
Buryat-Japanese encounter in 1919 was that it awakened the Japanese military’s
interest in the political potential of Mongol nationalism. Until the Sino-Japanese
War of 1894–1895, the Japanese were vaguely aware of the Mongols and Mongolia,
and only in the 1920s did a narrative emerge of a special relationship between
Japan and Mongolia. It was not a coincidence that both public and scholarly
interests in Mongolia were promoted and often sponsored by the Army since the
early 1920s, as the Army regarded Buryatia and Mongolia to be of utmost
strategic importance. As early as 1918–1919, Buryatia represented the new
periphery of Japanese imperialism, where its strategy of getting involved with
a local anticolonial independence movement and utilizing it for its own
purposes was first tried out.
The Buryats, however, had to endure all the
consequences of their failed attempt to gain independence. The most devastating
blow came during Stalin’s Great Terror of the late 1930s, when almost
all-Buryat national politicians were accused of anti-Soviet pan-Mongolist
activities and eventually were executed or died in labor camps. Since the Civil
War period, the Soviet state had been consumed with an ideological fear of
foreign influence on its border regions.41
The fear understandably intensified with the creation
of the Japanese puppet-state Manchukuo in 1932 near the Soviet Far Eastern
borders, which the Soviet leadership perceived to be politically and militarily
weak, as well as with the renewed Japanese attempts to influence Mongolian
politics. Coupled with constant concern about the resurgence of ethnic
nationalism, in 1935 the Soviet leadership embarked on large-scale ethnic
cleansing on its borders. In Buryatia, the Soviet authorities claimed that
Buryat pan-Mongolism was formulated by the Japanese military during the
intervention, and Buryat political elites and the Buryat Buddhist clergy were
accused of working for the Japanese intelligence in order to assist the
expansion of the Japanese empire. Moreover, to upset Buryat connections with
Mongol groups outside the Soviet Union, in 1937 the Soviet central authority
broke up the territory of the Buryat-Mongol Soviet Republic, which thereby
decreased in size by 40 percent. This decision was part of the general Soviet
policy to curb the authority of regional national governments and identities in
order to promote a unified Soviet identity. The story of the Buryat national movement
in 1919 moves us away from both empire-centric and Eurocentric views of the
history of East Asia in the early twentieth century. In the volatile post-World
War I period and in one of the most fiercely contested imperial arenas, the
Buryats managed to invert the projected colonial trajectory and carve for
themselves a space of independence. Albeit not without its cost, the national
space they imagined and struggled for was finally realized within the Soviet
Union. The Buryat-Mongolian identity as we know it now was worked out during
that crucial year of 1919.
1. On the rise of Buryat national self-consciousness
since the early 1900s, see Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
2. C. Ellis, T. Adams, et al., “Autoethnography: An
Overview,” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung 12:1 (January 2011),
http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.1.1589.
3. K. Kollmar-Paulenz, “Systematically Ordering the
World: the Encounter of Buriyad-Mongolian, Tibetan and Russian Knowledge
Cultures in the 19th Century,” in L’orientalisme des marges: éclairages à
partir de l’Inde et de la Russie, eds. Philippe Bornet et al. (Lausanne:
Université de Lausanne, 2014), 123–46.
4. Robert W. Montgomery, “Buryat Political and Social
Activism in the 1905 Revolution,” Sibirica 10:3 (Winter 2011): 1–28; Robert
Rupen, “Buryat Intelligentsia,” Far Eastern Quarterly 15:3 (1956): 383–98.
5. Anya Bernstein refers to the Buryats’ vision as
“Asian Eurasianism,” a vision of Eurasia not from the center but from the Russian
Asian periphery. A. Bernstein, “Pilgrims, Fieldwork, and Secret Agents: Buryat
Buddhologists and the History of an Eurasian Imaginary,” Inner Asia 11:1
(2009): 23–45.
6. Bato Batuev, O natsional’nom dvizhenii v Buryatii v
period bor’by za Sovetskuyu vlast’ (Ulan Ude: Trudy Vostochno-Sibirskogo
bibliotechnogo instituta, 1963), 12–8.
7. Ivan Sablin, Governing Post-Imperial Siberia and
Mongolia, 1911–1924 (London: Routledge, 2016), 77–82.
8. Jamie Bisher, White Terror: Cossack Warlords of the
Trans-Siberian (London: Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2005), 54–55.
9. A.V. Polutov, “Yaponskie voennye missii v
Manchzhurii, Sibiri i na Dal’nem Vostoke (1918–1922 gg),” Vestnik DVO RAN 4
(2012): 75–6, CyberLeninka.ru.
10. James Morley, The Japanese Thrust into Siberia,
1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957).
11. More practical reasons against the intervention
were that the expedition would force Russia to conclude a peace treaty with
Germany, and that the Allied forces might compel Japan to send troops to Europe
as an extension of the Siberian expedition. On public reaction, see Paul
Dunscomb, Japan’s Siberian Intervention, 1918–1922: “A Great Disobedience
against the People” (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).
12. Hara Kei, Hara Kei Nikki,
ed. Hara Kei’ichirō, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kangensha edition, 1950–51), 294–96,
346, 366.
13. Dunscomb, Japan’s
Siberian Intervention, 55–80.
14. Polutov, “Yaponskie voennye missii,” 72–3.
15. Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nihon
gaikō bunsho, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1918).
16. Hara Teruyuki, “Japan Moves North: The Occupation
of Northern Sakhalin (1920s),” in Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the
Russian Far East, eds. Stephen Kotkin and David Wolff (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe,
1995), 58; Keishi Ono, “The Siberian Intervention and Japanese Society,” in
Japan and the Great War, eds. Oliviero Frattolillo and Antony Best
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 102. Also, Hagino Toshio, Nichiro
kokusai ringyō kankeishiron (Tokyo: Ringyō Chōsakai, 2001),
104–38; Sven Saaler, “Nihon no tairiku shinshutsu to Shiberia shuppei:
Teikokushugi kakuchō no ‘kansetsu shihai kōsō’ wo megutte,” Kanazawa
daigaku keizai gakubu ronshū 19:1 (1998): 267–72.
17. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) f.
P1700, op. 7, d. 4, l. 12.
18. Ivan Sablin, Governing Post-Imperial Siberia and
Mongolia, 1911–1924: Buddhism, Socialism and Nationalism in State and Autonomy
Building (London: Routledge, 2016), 115.
19. Historical research is complicated by the fact
that Semenov has not officially been rehabilitated; all materials concerning
his activities in Siberia are classified and stored in the FSB (former KGB)
archives in Moscow.
20. Leonid Kuras, “Ataman Semenov and the National
Military Formations of Buriat,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 10:4
(December 1997): 80–85.
21. Robert A. Rupen, “Cyben Žamcaranovič
Žamcarano (1880-?1940),” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 19:1/2 (1956):
126–45; John Snelling, Buddhism in Russia: The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev: Lhasa’s
Emissary to the Tsar (Longmead: Element, 1993); Alexander Andreev, Soviet
Russia and Tibet: The Debacle of Secret Diplomacy, 1918-1930 (Leiden/Boston,
MA: Brill, 2003); Ihor Pidhainy, “Tiber through the Eyes of a Buryat: Gombojab
Tsybikov and His Tibetan Relations,” ASIA Network Exchange 20:2 (2013): 1–14.
doi: 10.16995/ane.92.
22. Nakami Tatsuo, “Mongol Nationalism and Japan,” in
Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia, 1895–1945, eds. Li Narangoa and
Robert Cribb (London/New York: Routledge, 2003), 92–3.
23. R.D. Nimayev et al. eds., Elbek-Dorzhi Rinchino:
Dokumenty, stat’i, pis’ma (Ulan Ude: Komitet po delam arkhivov pri sovete
ministrov respubliki Buryatia, 1994), 126.
24. Ibid, 124.
25. Ibid, 126.
26. Its objectives were to “enlighten the Mongol
people” and develop friendly attitudes toward Japan among them. The Congress
organizers suggested to send ten students on a scholarship funded by the
Japanese government. After a year of Japanese, they would engage in three-year
professional training. The most talented students would continue their
education. The program was to begin in March 1919. The Buryats also invited
three Japanese doctors as medical advisors for one- or two-year visits.
27. Sablin, Governing Post-Imperial Siberia, 117.
28. Moreover, the fifth Congress sent a large monetary
gift to Bogd Khan, head of Outer Mongolia’s government, to gain his favor, and
tried to solidify contacts with Barga and Inner Mongolia.
29. Sablin, Governing Post-Imperial Siberia, 120.
30. GARF f. 200, op. 1, d. 406, l. 1–2.
31. Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of Japan (JACAR) Ref. B03051344900, Ref. B03051345000, Ref.
B03051345100, https://www.jacar.go.jp.
32. Sablin, Governing Post-Imperial Siberia, 120.
33. Leo Bacino, Reconstructing Russia: U.S. Policy in
Revolutionary Russia, 1917–1922 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999).
34. Jamie Bisher, White Terror, 105–107.
35. GARF f. 200 op. 1, d. 478, l. 48.
36. Sablin, Governing Post-Imperial Siberia, 142.
37. Ibid., 120–21.
38. Ibid., 131.
39. GARF f. 200, op. 1, d. 478, l. 177.
40. Xiaoyuan Liu, Reins of Liberation. An Entangled
History of Mongolian Independence, Chinese Territoriality, and Great Power
Hegemony, 1911–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
41. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire.
Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2001), 309–93.
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