Army History - 1919
World War I diverted Russia's attention from Mongolia. Russia's principal effort with respect to Mongolia and China was to call a tripartite meeting in Kyakhta, on the Siberian side of the Mongolian-Russian border, in 1915. Chinese and Mongolian representatives attended with considerable reluctance, but eventually a treaty resulted. Its principal military effect was to limit Chinese forces in Mongolia to a 200-strong guard for the residence of the Chinese high representative at Yihe Huree. Between 1914 and 1919, the Mongolian army languished, but it retained some semblance of order. During these years, the expenditures for the army varied from 20 to 25 percent of the total government budget. Although an agent of the Communist International, also called the Comintern, said while visiting Yihe Huree in 1919 that there was no army, 2,000 troops were actually on the rolls.
The Chinese took advantage of the Russian preoccupation with their own revolution at home to reinforce their consular guard at Yihe Huree in 1918--in violation of the 1915 Treaty of Kyakhta. The Russians protested, but with the collapse of effective White Guard forces in Siberia in late 1919, the Chinese brought in 3,000 more troops. In October 1919, General Xu Shucheng arrived with an army of 4,000 (later increased to 10,000); he suppressed the autonomous government, carrying out numerous executions, looting, and other atrocities. Thus the army of autonomous Mongolia came to an end after a scant eight years of tenuous existence. The army was to live on, however, in a small cadre of demobilized Russian-trained soldiers that was led by Sukhe Bator and aspired to again free Mongolia from Chinese rule.
Sukhe Bator -- whose name means Ax Hero -- was poor and jobless when he was called up at the age of nineteen as one of the first conscripts for the new army in 1912. His lack of wealth and position reportedly was more than compensated for by intelligence and vigor. Sukhe Bator soon became a junior noncommissioned officer (NCO). During border clashes with the Chinese, he distinguished himself in combat and was promoted to senior NCO rank. As a member of a machine gun company, a technical and prestigious assignment for that time, he was associated closely with Russian instructors, and he learned some Russian. He also reportedly was a natural leader, liked and respected by his peers, and he was an accomplished practical soldier.
In late 1918, the recently demobilized Sukhe Bator, anticipating the return of the Chinese, formed a group of like- minded army friends to plan a new revolution and encouraged discharged soldiers to await his call. In November 1919, under the aegis of Russian Bolshevik agents in Yihe Huree, Sukhe Bator's group joined with a similar small group of revolutionaries led by Choybalsan. In 1920 Sukhe Bator and Choybalsan, with about fifty followers, escaped the returning Chinese forces and moved to Siberia where they received further military training.
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