Stalinist Repressions in Mongolia

The Stalinist repressions in Mongolia had their climax between 1937 and 1939 (Mongolian: Их Хэлмэгдүүлэлт, Ikh Khelmegdüülelt, "Great Repression"), under the leadership of Khorloogiin Choibalsan. The purges affected the whole country, although the main focus was on upper party and government ranks, the army, and especially the Buddhist clergy. One very common accusation was collaboration with supposed pro-Japanese spy rings.

Repression of the Buddhist establishment increased in December 1934, when Mongolian law was amended to ban religious teaching in schools, prevent children from entering monasteries, and ending the lamas' evasion of military service. Heavy taxes were also imposed on the monasteries. In the mid-1930s, before the Great Purge, there were some 800 Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia with 90,000 priests; in 1937 and 1938, most of the monasteries were ruined and between 16,000 to 17,000 priests were killed. According to one estimate, by 1939 the purges had killed 27,000 Monglians (about 3% of the population; about half the victims were monks. During the Stalinist repressions, "Mongolia's religious institutions were virtually all destroyed, their property appropriated, and the lamas either killed or secularized. Altogether, 2,265 monastery buildings were destroyed and over 71.5 tons of metal statutes shipped to the USSR for scrap."

The Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar was closed in 1938 at the height of the purges but reopened in 1944. It was the only monastery in Mongolia to remain functioning during the Communist era, and one of the very few that escaped destruction.

The number of people killed in the purges is usually estimated to have been between 22,000 and 35,000 people, or about three to four percent of Mongolia's population at that time. Nearly 18,000 victims were Buddhist lamas. Some authors also offer much higher estimates, up to 100,000 victims.

Mass graves were investigated in 1991 in Mörön, and in 2003 in Ulaanbaatar. The corpses of hundreds of executed lamas and civilians were unearthed, all killed with a shot to the base of the skull.

The "Victims of Political Persecution Museum" in Ulaanbaatar is dedicated to the victims of the purges. It was once the residence of executed Prime Minister Peljidiin Genden. In 1996 his daughter Tserendulam turned it into a museum. One of the exhibits is a row of skulls with bullet holes dating from the time of the purges.