Activities and affiliations

Government and administration Mongolia state institutions 1868–1928 ○ Died of illness in office, (13 Feb or 13 Nov)

First prime minister of the Mongolian People's Republic, diplomat of the old regime

On 23 September 1924 a constitution-drafting commission chaired by Prime Minister Tserendorj was set up, and on 26 November 1924 the first Great Hural unanimously adopted its 6-chapter, 50-article constitution declaring Mongolia's first republican order.

Born in 1868 at Kherlen Bayan Ulaan as a subject of the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu's Great Shabi, he learned Mongolian, Manchu, Chinese and Russian and worked as a scribe and translator in the Manchu administration in Khüree from 1885 to 1911. After the 1911 independence he entered the Foreign Ministry, serving as deputy foreign minister in 1913-1915 and first-ranked minister in 1915-1919. He signed the 1919 renunciation document under Chinese occupation and became deputy foreign minister in the revolutionary government of 1921. Appointed prime minister in 1923, he headed the 1924 constitution-drafting commission and became the republic's first prime minister. After 1926, as Moscow tightened control, he resisted the abolition of private property and the persecution of the Buddhist Church, and he died of illness in office in 1928; sources give his death as 13 February or 13 November 1928.

Government and administration Mongolia state institutions 1869–1924 ○ Natural death

The Tibetan-born reincarnate lama enthroned as the last great khan of Mongolia

'The princes feared him, the common people loved him.'

Born in Lhasa, Tibet, the 8th Jebtsundamba Khutuktu was, after the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, the highest living incarnation in Mongolian Buddhism. When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, Mongol nobles enthroned him on 29 December as the 'Bogd Khan' ('Holy Ruler') of a new theocratic state. Stripped of power when China abolished autonomy in 1919, he was reinstated as a limited monarch after the 1921 revolution and died of throat cancer on 20 May 1924, ending the monarchy. The first and last great khan of Outer Mongolia since the late 17th century, he held Mongols together amid upheaval through his religious charisma.