Editing Mongolia (section)

== Buddhism in Pre-Revolutionary Mongolia ==

Tibetan Buddhism spread among the Mongols from the sixteenth century onward, eventually displacing earlier shamanic practice as the dominant religious framework of the Mongolian steppe. By the early twentieth century, Buddhist monasteries functioned as the country's schools, hospitals, libraries, and courts, and monastic education was, for most Mongolian men, the only education available. At the apex of this system stood the Bogd Gegeen (Jebtsundamba Khutuktu), the line of reincarnate lamas who had served as Mongolia's religious leaders since the late seventeenth century. The Eighth Bogd Gegeen (1869–1924) proclaimed Mongolian independence from Qing China in 1911, becoming head of an unusual theocratic autonomy that was itself only one of several competing state projects debated for the region in the years around the collapse of the Qing and Russian empires.<ref>Sablin, Ivan (2016). ''Governing Post-Imperial Siberia and Mongolia, 1911–1924: Buddhism, Socialism, and Nationalism in State and Autonomy Building''. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–6.</ref> He ruled as head of state until 1921, when the revolutionary government reduced him to a constitutional monarch under MPRP supervision; he retained that ceremonial role until his death in 1924.

Population figures from the interwar period illustrate the scale of the institution. In 1914, out of a total population of 611,098, some 128,428 people were lamas.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 49.</ref> By 1921 there were approximately 150 monasteries and 115,000 lamas in the country, of whom about 40,000 lived permanently within monastery walls; some estimates for the same period put the proportion of lamas among adult Mongolian men as high as one in three.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 49; Kaplonski, Christopher (2015). "Criminal Lamas: Court Cases against Buddhist Monks in Early Socialist Mongolia". In: Wallace, Vesna A. (Ed.), ''Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and Society'': 243–260. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 244.</ref> By 1926, lamas numbered 91,650 and made up 13.4 percent of the total population and more than a quarter of the male population.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 49.</ref> As late as 1935, monks still constituted roughly 48 percent of the adult male population, and the annual income of the Buddhist church nearly equaled that of the Mongolian state itself.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 63.</ref>

Because Buddhism had no rival tradition in Mongolia, whether in the form of another confession, a secular philosophical school, or an atheist intelligentsia, the country presented Soviet-aligned authorities with a religious landscape unlike any other in the socialist world. Soviet diplomats surveying Mongolia in the 1920s observed that no record of a native tradition of freethought or unbelief could be found there.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 49.</ref> This near-total religious homogeneity, combined with the institutional centrality of the monasteries to Mongolian civic life, meant that any attempt to reform, restrict, or eliminate Buddhism in Mongolia was necessarily an attempt to remake the country's entire social order, not merely to discipline a religious minority.