Editing Mongolia (section)

=== Peljidiin Genden and the defense of the church ===

The Khubsugul (Khövsgöl) Uprising brought down the "left" leadership responsible for the preceding years' forced collectivization and religious suppression, and brought to power Peljidiin Genden (Пэлжидийн Гэндэн; 1892/1895–1937), who served as Mongolian Prime Minister from July 1932 until March 1936.<ref>Roshchin, Sergei K. (Рощин С.К.) (2008). ''П. Гэндэн. Монгольский национальный лидер. Штрихи биографии'' [P. Genden: Mongolian National Leader — Biographical Sketches]. Moscow: Institut Vostokovedeniya RAN, p. 11.</ref> Genden had risen through the Revolutionary Youth League and the MPRP to become a leading figure of the party's "Countryside Faction" by the late 1920s, and he had participated, without particular enthusiasm, in the leftist assault on monastic property earlier in his career; on this point he was no different from the rest of the party leadership, which by the late 1920s was united in treating the lamas as a problem requiring a solution, even if its members disagreed sharply on the remedy.<ref>Kaplonski (2014), ''The Lama Question'', p. 134.</ref> What distinguished him from his colleagues was not doctrine but origin and instinct: born to a herder family and raised in a religiously observant household, he retained throughout his political life what his biographer describes as an inherited reverence for religion and respect for the clergy.<ref>Roshchin (2008), ''П. Гэндэн'', p. 11.</ref> Kaplonski describes Genden's public conduct across these years as "chameleon-like," moving between the roles of young radical, property-confiscating leftist, and protector of the church without any single role exhausting his character.<ref>Kaplonski (2014), ''The Lama Question'', p. 18.</ref> Genden left no philosophical writings and made no systematic argument for the compatibility of Buddhism and Marxism-Leninism; his defense of the church was political and instinctive rather than theoretical.

Genden's own acquiescence in the anti-religious campaigns of the "left" period, prior to his premiership, is described by his biographer as "a deal with his conscience": he held private reservations about the pace of collectivization and religious suppression from at least October 1930, but conformed publicly with the majority position at the Eighth MPRP Congress that year.<ref>Roshchin (2008), ''П. Гэндэн'', p. 67.</ref> By the time of his election as Prime Minister in July 1932, he had become, in his biographer's assessment, "the most stable and robust politician" of the period and the informal leader of internal opposition to the leftist line.<ref>Roshchin (2008), ''П. Гэндэн'', p. 79.</ref>

As Prime Minister, Genden ended the forced laicization of monks, adopted a more differentiated policy toward different strata of the clergy, and had the state declare that it renounced interference in religious affairs on the sole condition that the church not interfere in the affairs of state.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 63.</ref> The party's own rules were amended to remove the requirement of Marxist-Leninist ideological conformity and to explicitly permit members "free conscience in matters of belief," including the making of voluntary offerings to lamas.<ref>Bawden (1968), ''The Modern History of Mongolia'', p. 357.</ref> Under this more tolerant policy, the monastic population rebounded sharply from the depleted levels of the "left" period: to 82,529 lamas in 1933, 87,774 by early 1934, and roughly 90,000 by the middle of the decade, with some 18,000 men, including 441 demobilized soldiers and officers, entering the monkhood in 1933 alone.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 63.</ref>

Between December 1932 and January 1936, Genden met with Stalin seven times in Moscow, and the surviving record of these meetings documents his sustained resistance to Soviet pressure on the "lama question." At a December 1933 meeting, Stalin characterized the Buddhist clergy as a "state within a state" that no sovereign government could tolerate, and at a November 1934 meeting he proposed a strategy of gradual "encirclement" of clerical influence through secular schools and medical services rather than frontal assault.<ref>Roshchin (2008), ''П. Гэндэн'', pp. 108, 114.</ref> By December 1935, the confrontation had sharpened into open accusation, with Stalin framing the issue as a stark choice between the lamas and Mongolian national independence, a framing Genden's four years in office had consistently refused to accept as a genuine either/or.<ref>Roshchin (2008), ''П. Гэндэн'', p. 119.</ref> At a final meeting on January 7, 1936, Genden appeared to abandon open resistance, and that same evening, at a reception at the Mongolian legation in Moscow, an argument broke out between Genden and Stalin so heated that it gave rise to a persistent story, still repeated today, that Genden smashed Stalin's pipe or struck him outright. Both Roshchin and Kaplonski treat the story with considerable skepticism, Roshchin concluding that it is "probably a literary hyperbole, an invention, a legend," and Kaplonski identifying it simply as "Mongolian political folklore."<ref>Roshchin (2008), ''П. Гэндэн'', p. 125; Kaplonski (2014), ''The Lama Question'', p. 141.</ref> Genden was removed from office in March 1936, ostensibly for reasons of ill health, and was arrested by the Soviet secret police in Sochi in July 1937. He was executed in Moscow that November.<ref>Roshchin (2008), ''П. Гэндэн'', pp. 131, 135.</ref> Genden's removal opened the way to the final destruction of the Mongolian church over the following three years: Bawden judges bluntly that his fall "opened the way to the final solution," and Kaplonski treats it as one of the clearest instances of direct Soviet intervention in Mongolian domestic political life.<ref>Bawden (1968), ''The Modern History of Mongolia'', p. 368; Kaplonski (2014), ''The Lama Question'', p. 142.</ref> The October 1937 show trial that formally opened the terror against the sangha named Genden, in absentia, alongside the Yonzon Khamba (the country's most senior lama and head abbot of Ulaanbaatar's monasteries), the Khamba's deputy Damdin, and the former Minister of War Demid, as co-defendants in a single case.<ref>Kaplonski (2015), "Criminal Lamas", p. 249.</ref>