Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal

Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal (Юмжаагийн Цэдэнбал; 17 September 1916 – 20 April 1991) was a Mongolian politician who served as the leader of the Mongolian People's Republic from 1952 to 1984.

Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal (originally Tserenpil) was born on 17 September 1916 to an unwed Dörbet mother in Bayan Chandamani Uula banner (modern Davst District, Uvs Province).

In October 1929, he and 21 other Mongolian students were selected to study at a special rabfak (preparatory school) in Irkutsk in the Soviet Union.

In 1931, he joined the Mongolian Revolutionary Youth League.

After graduating from the rabfak, Tsedenbal attended the Institute of Finance and Economics in Irkutsk, from which he graduated in July 1938.

The Mongolian students were invited for sightseeing in Moscow, where Tsedenbal was noticed by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

In September 1938, he returned to Mongolia and began working as an instructor at the Ulaanbaatar Financial College, a technical school attached to the Finance Ministry.

After he was recommended to Mongolia's leader, Khorloogiin Choibalsan, by Soviet intelligence officer and diplomatic representative Ivan Alekseevich Ivanov, in 1939 Tsendenbal joined the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), and became deputy finance minister that March.

From July 1939 to March 1940, Tsedenbal was concurrently Mongolia's minister of finance and chairman of the board of the state bank (Bank of Trade and Industry).

In December 1939, Tsedenbal joined Choibalsan and Ivanov for a meeting with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow.

He served as general secretary of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (the ruling party) from 1940 to 1954 and again from 1958 to 1984, chairman of the Council of Ministers (head of government) from 1952 to 1974, and chairman of the Presidium of the People's Great Khural (head of state) from 1974 to 1984.

Tsedenbal rose to prominence in the 1940s as a member of leader Khorloogiin Choibalsan's inner circle, and succeeded him as premier after his death in 1952.

There, Choibalsan promised to purge sitting MPRP secretary Banzarjavyn Baasanjav to replace him with Tsedenbal, which was done in February 1940.

In March 1940, at age 24, Tsedenbal was elected a member of the Central Committee, member of the Presidium, and general secretary at the MPRP's Tenth Congress, becoming the country's number-two leader.

During World War II in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945, Tsedenbal served as head of the Political Directorate and deputy commander-in-chief of the Mongolian People's Army, with the rank of lieutenant general, and was awarded the Soviet Order of Lenin.

Mongolia did not declare war on Nazi Germany after its invasion of the USSR, but supported the Soviet war effort by financing a tank regiment and a fighter squadron, and by donating horses, winter clothing, and money.

Some Mongolian workers and students under training in the Soviet Union joined the Soviet Red Army.

Tsedenbal was appointed chairman of the State Planning Commission in 1945 and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1948.

As premier, he immediately visited Moscow and Beijing (where the People's Republic of China had been established in 1949), and signed agreements which created the Trans-Mongolian Railway and an alliance between the countries.

The Mongolian Politburo formally approved joining the Soviet Union.

Though he was part of Choibalsan's inner circle, unlike him Tsedenbal was not enthusiastic about pan-Mongolian unification, and around 1950 instead supported the proposal advanced by several young party officials that Mongolia join the Soviet Union in order to achieve socialism.

Tsedenbal was responsible for the introduction of the Cyrillic script for writing the Mongolian language, replacing Mongolian script.

Following Choibalsan's death in January 1952, Tsedenbal allied with second secretary Dashiin Damba to defeat a bid for power by hardliner Chimeddorjiyn Sürenjav, who was exiled to Moscow.

Tsedenbal was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) on 27 May 1952.

While attending Stalin's funeral in March 1953, Tsedenbal presented the request to the Soviet leadership, which rejected and rebuked it.

In 1954, Tsedenbal lost the position of general secretary to Damba (who gained the title of first secretary).

The two men split over the Mongolian response to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's speech criticizing Stalin in April 1956.

The Mongolian Politburo initially created a special commission, headed by Bazaryn Shirendev, to re-examine the purges of the Choibalsan period.

While Damba supported the commission, Tsedenbal repeatedly blocked its work.

In 1958, Tsedenbal ousted and internally exiled Damba, taking over his position (Tsedenbal regained the title of general secretary in 1981).

Tsedenbal resisted de-Stalinization, and ousted and internally exiled several of his rivals in the 1960s.

His policies were aimed at making Mongolia a loyal political and economic partner of the Soviet Union.

In 1961–1962, as Khrushchev intensified the Soviet de-Stalinization drive, a "Rehabilitation Commission" was appointed, whose work Tsedenbal also criticized.

In 1962–1963, Tsedenbal began expelling several rivals and critics from the MPRP on charges of "nationalism".

In 1962, Mongolia's Politburo was organizing celebrations for the 800th anniversary of the birth of Genghis Khan when the Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda criticized the "Mongol–Tatar yoke" imposed on the Russian people by the "reactionary" Genghis.

The politburo canceled the celebrations, and the member in charge of organizing the celebrations, Daramyn Tömör-Ochir, was scapegoated by Tsedenbal, ousted, and internally exiled; he was followed by Luvsantserengiin Tsend.

For example, in 1963, the Mongolian Politburo banned the film Tümnii Neg ("A Million in One"), which dealt with the purges.

Tsedenbal was the longest-serving leader of modern Mongolia and any Eastern Bloc country, serving until his expulsion with Soviet support in 1984.

Due to Tsedenbal's stubborn resistance to de-Stalinization, a statue of Stalin stood in front of the Mongolian National Library until 1990.

He retired to Moscow and died in 1991, and has had a controversial legacy since the 1990 democratic revolution.