Growth of The Mongolian People's Party
News of von Ungern-Sternberg's seizure of Urga again influenced Soviet plans. A plenary session of the Comintern in Irkutsk on February 10 passed a formal resolution to aid the "struggle of the Mongolian people for liberation and independence with money, guns and military instructors". With Soviet support, the MPP was now a serious contender for power. The Party, hitherto rather amorphous and loosely connected, required better organisational and ideological definition. A party conference (subsequently regarded as the first congress of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party) met secretly on 1-3 March at Kyakhta. The first session was attended by 17 persons, the second by 26. The Party approved the creation of an army command staff headed by Sükhbaatar with two Russian advisors, elected a central committee chaired by Danzan with one representative from the Comintern, and adopted a party manifesto composed by the progressive Buryat Jamsrangiin Tseveen.
On 13 March, a provisional government of seven men was formed, soon to be headed by Bodoo. On 18 March, the Mongolian guerrilla army, its ranks now enlarged to 400 through recruitment and conscription, seized the Chinese garrison at Kyakhta Maimaicheng (the Chinese portion of Kyakhta). A new confidence now animated the Party. It issued a proclamation announcing the formation of the government, the expulsion of the Chinese, and the promise to convene a congress of "representatives of the masses" to elect a permanent government. A propaganda war of sorts between the provisional government and the Bogd Khaan's court followed: the Party saturated the northern border with leaflets urging people to take up arms against the White Guards; the legal government of the Bogd Khaan government barraged the same area with warnings that these revolutionaries were intent upon destroying the Mongolian state and shattering the very foundations of the Buddhist faith.
The new Soviet government, isolated as it was by international community, was anxious to establish diplomatic relations with China. It had sent a representative to Beijing; the Chinese government reciprocated with its own to Moscow. Perhaps the principal reason that the Soviets had hesitated to aid the Mongolians too openly was fear of prejudicing those negotiations. But by early 1921 whatever restraints there were upon open Soviet support for Mongolia had ended: China suspended talks with the Soviet government in January 1921; the Chinese government appeared to be incapable of dealing with von Ungern-Sternberg; and in early March it had refused Soviet military assistance against the White Guards. It was then that the Russians became firmly committed to the Mongolian revolution.
The material expression of this commitment was an increase in the flow of Soviet advisers and weapons in March to the MPP. In March and April, Soviet and Far Eastern Republican units were transferred to Kyakhta, while the Mongols doubled the number of their guerrillas to 800. Von Ungern-Sternberg's forces attacked Kyakhta in early June. He encountered a body of Red Army troops army several times larger than his own, and the White Guards were thrown back with heavy losses. On 28 June, the main Soviet expeditionary corps crossed the border into Mongolia, and on 6 July, the first Mongolian and Russian units entered Urga.
The Mongolian revolutionaries went to work immediately. On 9 July, they sent a letter to the Bogd Khaan's court, announcing that power was now in the hands of the people: "The disorder which reigns presently is as much due to the shortcomings of the leaders as to the fact that the existing laws and situation do not correspond any longer to the spirit of the times. Everything, therefore, except religion, will be subject to gradual change." The following day, the Party's Central Committee issued a resolution declaring the formation of a new government headed by Bodoo, with the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu as a limited monarch. On 11 July, he was ceremoniously installed on the throne of Mongolia.
Read more about this topic: Outer Mongolian Revolution Of 1921
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