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‘An Ambiguous Area’: Mongolia in Soviet-Japanese relations in the mid-1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2019

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BRIAN BRIDGES*
Affiliation:
Centre for Asian Pacific Studies, Lingnan University Email: bbridges@ln.edu.hk
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Abstract

The Mongolian People's Republic (MPR) became the focus of intense competition between the Soviet Union and Japan in the 1930s, when it was more commonly known as Outer Mongolia. The Soviet Union viewed the MPR as an ideological and strategic ally, and was determined to defend that state against the increasingly adventurist actions of the Japanese military based in northern China. Japanese ambitions to solve the so-called ‘Manmo’ (Manchuria-Mongolia) problem led the Soviets to initiate ever-closer links with the MPR, culminating in the 1936 pact of mutual assistance which was intended to constrain Japanese pressure. Using unpublished Japanese materials as well as Russian and Mongolian sources, this article demonstrates how the Soviet leadership increasingly viewed the MPR as strategically crucial to the defence of the Soviet Far East.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 730 - 758
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

This article is a much-revised and updated version of a paper previously presented at the International Centre for Economic and Related Disciplines at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which is available as International Studies discussion paper 1982/II. I am grateful for the helpful comments by Professor Ian Nish and colleagues at the original symposium and by the three anonymous reviewers of this journal.

References

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45 Friters, Outer Mongolia, p. 237.

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47 Moscow Daily News, 3 January 1936. Mongolian sources report disagreements in private between Stalin and Gendun. After becoming drunk on one occasion, Gendun apparently told Stalin that he (Gendun) was the heir of Genghis Khan and would not to be pushed around; Stalin reportedly swore revenge. See Rupen, R., Mongols of the Twentieth Century, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1964, p. 250Google Scholar; Lkhagva, ‘What was Stalin's real attitude’, p. 127; and S. Sandag and Kendall, H. H., Poisoned Arrows: The Stalin-Choibalsan Mongolian Massacres, 1921–1941, Westview Press, Boulder, 2000, p. 77Google Scholar.

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49 TNA, Manchukuo Annual Report, 22 December 1936, file F1051/1051, FO371/21001; Butler to Eden, 14 April 1936, file F2511/54/10, FO 371/20235.

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52 D.V.P. vol. XVIII, pp. 538, 601.

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59 Friters, Outer Mongolia, p. 144; D.V.P. vol. XIX, pp. 105–106. The Russian version of the interview was published in Izvestiya on 5 March 1936.

60 D.V.P. vol. XIX, pp. 122, 132–134, 196.

61 On 20 February Litvinov had warned Yurenev that Moscow's information was that although the agreement ‘has not yet been formalised … the signature will take place in the near future’. Ibid., pp. 96–97.

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65 D.V.P. vol. XIX, p. 197.

66 Ibid., pp. 282–283; Kazakevich, Sovetsko-Mongolskie Othnosheniya, pp. 341–344; JFMA, ‘Sorenpo chukaminkokukan fushinryakujoyaku kankei ikken’, file B.1.0.0.C/R2.

67 D.V.P. vol. XIX, pp. 282–283.

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69 Ibid., pp. 98–100; Snow, E., Red Star Over China, Pelican, London, 1972, p. 505Google Scholar.

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84 TNA, Dening to Eden, 24 July 1936, file F5647/54/10, FO 371/20235.

85 Japan Chronicle, 24 and 29 April 1936.

86 JFMA.‘Manshu in kansuru yoheiteki kansatsu’, vol. 13, ‘Kyokuto soren no senryakuteki tokusei in kansuru kansatsu’.

87 Batbayar, ‘The Japanese Threat’, pp. 185–186.

88 Nishi (ed.), Nihon gaikoshi, pp. 169–173, 176–177; Lensen, G. A., The Strange Neutrality: Soviet-Japanese Relations during the Second World War 1941–1945, Diplomatic Press, Tallahassee, 1972, pp. 15–18, 279Google Scholar.

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91 A Czech scholar wrote that Soviet troops were stationed in the MPR from September 1936, but Morozova, Socialist Revolutions, p. 96, suggests 1937. See Sima, J., ‘International position of Mongolian People's Republic’, Pacific Community, 4 (4), July 1973, pp. 569–70Google Scholar. According to Kuromiya, ‘Stalin's Great Terror’, p. 788, troop numbers had grown to almost 60,000 by the end of 1938.

92 Morozova, Socialist Revolutions, pp. 96–100. Kuromiya, ‘Stalin's Great Terror’, p. 787, estimates that around 3 per cent of the total MPR population were executed in the 1937–1939 ‘Great Terror’.

93 Sandag and Kendall, Poisoned Arrows, p. 78. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1962.

94 D.V.P. vol. XVIII, p. 670.

95 TNA, Chilston to Eden, 3 April 1936, file F1864/54/10, FO 371/20235.

96 D.V.P. vol. XVI, p. 574.

97 TNA, Clive to Eden, 15 February 1936, file F881/54/10, FO 371/20234.

98 Crowley, Japan's Quest, pp. 295–300.

99 Hata, ‘Japanese-Soviet Confrontation’, pp. 157–178. Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 240, describes the ‘shattering psychological effect on the army’ of this defeat.

100 D.V.P. vol. XVI, p. 299.

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