Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership Mongolia state institutions 1888–1938 ✕ Executed (details of sentence disputed)

Buryat revolutionary, drafter of Mongolia's 1924 constitution, victim of the Great Terror

At the third party congress in August 1924, as leader of the leftist faction he joined the rightists led by Dambadorj in accusing Danzan of representing bourgeois interests and dealing with American and Chinese firms; Danzan and Bavaasan were sentenced and shot within twenty-four hours.

A Buryat from Transbaikalia, he was elected first chairman of the Buryat-Mongol Central National Committee (Burnatskom) in April 1917 and helped lay the foundations of Buryat autonomy. In 1920 he became secretary of the Mongol-Tibet section of the Comintern's Far Eastern Secretariat. After the 1921 revolution he served until 1925 as chairman of Mongolia's Revolutionary Military Council, a government adviser, a member of the MPRP Central Committee presidium and a deputy in the Great and Small Khural. He helped draft the 1924 constitution and argued for the non-capitalist path at the third party congress, where he also joined in denouncing Danzan. Arrested in Moscow on 19 June 1937 (custody records date it 19 July), he was sentenced in 1938; sources disagree on the sentencing date and on when and where he was executed. A review of his case began in 1955 and he was rehabilitated in 1957.

Political and party leadership Mongolia state institutions 1895–1952 ○ Natural causes

Mongolian revolution and consolidation

In an August 1945 telegram to Stalin he vowed that the friendship of the Mongolian and Soviet peoples would remain indestructible forever.

A military and political participant in Mongolia’s 1921 revolution. He consolidated power through close Soviet ties and directed major purges in the late 1930s. State-building and political and religious repression are inseparable parts of his leadership period.