Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party

(MPRP; Mongol Ardyn Khuv’sgalt Nam). The foundations of the party were laid in June 1920, during an upsurge in the national liberation struggle of the Mongolian people stimulated by the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, when two underground revolutionary groups (founded in Urga, now Ulan Bator, in mid-1919) merged into a single revolutionary organization, the Mongolian People’s Party. The members of both groups came from different social strata. The basic interests of the arats (livestock workers) were represented by the consistent revolutionaries led by D. Sukhe-Bator and Kh. Choibalsan, who supported the national liberation movement with a view to its development into a popular revolution and advocated an alliance with the working class of Soviet Russia, with its vanguard, the RCP (Bolshevik), and with the Comintern.

The organizational structure of the MPRP, called the Mongolian People’s Party until 1925, was established at the First Congress, held Mar. 1–3, 1921, in Kiakhta. The congress elected the party Central Committee (CC) and adopted a political platform defining the tasks of the coming revolution—the abolition of imperialist oppression, independence, the establishment of a people’s government, and the democratization of society. It also endorsed the development of working contacts with the Comintern. The MPRP was soon accepted into the Comintern as a sympathetic party. Under the leadership of the party the anti-imperialist, antifeudal Mongolian People’s Revolution of 1921 triumphed.

V. I. Lenin’s conversation with a delegation of Mongolian revolutionaries in November 1921 played a vital role in defining the aims of the Mongolian revolution and strengthening the party on the basis of Marxist principles. Lenin’s advice on fundamental questions of the revolutionary struggle of the Mongolian people underlay the party’s programs and practical activity. Overcoming the stubborn resistance of the feudal lords, the party consistently carried out measures for the revolutionary transformation of society between 1921 and 1924. Serfdom and the unrestricted rights and privileges of the feudal lords were abolished.

The Second Congress (1923) introduced several amendments into the program and party rules reflecting the new tasks of the revolution. It formulated the proposition that the party had become the guiding force of the state. Leninist principles of party membership and the principle of democratic centralism were incorporated into the party rules.

Especially important in the history of the party was the Third Congress (1924), which established as the party’s general line the development of Mongolia toward socialism along a noncapitalist path, with the fraternal internationalist aid of the USSR. Thwarting the efforts of nascent capitalist elements to divert the party from its chosen path, the congress indicated the necessity of deepening the antifeudal revolution in the interest of the arat class and strengthening Mongolian-Soviet friendship. In accordance with the decision of the third plenum of the CC convened in June 1924, the Great People’s Khural held in November of that year proclaimed Mongolia a people’s republic and adopted the country’s first constitution.

The second program of the MPRP, adopted at the Fourth Congress in 1925, stated in concrete terms the party’s tasks in implementing its general line of noncapitalist development. The tasks included the abolition of the feudal class, the achievement of economic independence, the restriction of capitalist elements and their removal from the economy, the development of the state and cooperative sectors in the economy, and the emancipation of the working people from spiritual enslavement to Lamaism.

In its efforts to implement the general line of the country’s development along a noncapitalist path, the MPRP overcame a rightwing deviation within the party in 1928 and a “left-wing” deviation in 1932 with the aid of the Comintern. By the late 1930’s the tasks of the democratic stage of the Mongolian people’s revolution had been resolved under the leadership of the MPRP. In the course of the country’s socioeconomic development, a young working class and national intelligentsia appeared in the MPR alongside the arat class. In its early years the MPRP had been an arat peasant party in its social composition, but by the 1940’s it was a party of the working class and working arat.

The transition of the Mongolian revolution from the democratic to the socialist stage was reflected in the decisions of the Tenth Congress of the MPRP held in 1940. The congress adopted a third program, which defined the party’s main tasks in establishing the foundations of socialism. On June 30, 1940, the Eighth Great People’s Khural, convened after the party’s Tenth Congress, ratified a new constitution incorporating the successes achieved by the Mongolian people on the path of non-capitalist development under the leadership of the MPRP. During World War II the MPRP was the organizer and guiding spirit of a nationwide movement to aid the Soviet people in their struggle against Hitler’s Germany, as well as of the Mongolian people’s active participation in the crushing defeat of Japanese militarism.

In the postwar period the Mongolian people, led by the MPRP, achieved great successes in socialist construction and in strengthening the international position of the Mongolian People’s Republic. The first and second five-year plans, (1948–52, 1953–57), the three-year plan (1958–60), and the third five-year plan (1961–65) for the development of the country’s economy and culture were successfully completed. The successes in industrial development enabled the Thirteenth Congress of the MPRP (1958) to state that the Mongolian People’s Republic had been transformed from a livestock-raising country into an agricultural-industrial nation. In accordance with the resolutions of the Thirteenth Congress, the organization of agriculture into cooperatives was accelerated; the process was successfully completed by the late 1950’s. The plenum of the CC of the MPRP convened in December 1959 announced that with the completion of the organization tfarats into production cooperatives, socialist production relations had triumphed in all branches of the economy. The Mongolian people’s historic victories were reflected in a new constitution adopted in July 1960 by the first session of the fourth convocation of the Great People’s Khural. The establishment of socialist production relations marked the complete victory of the party’s general line for the country’s noncapitalist development toward socialism. The Fourteenth Congress of the MPRP (1961) decided that the Mongolian People’s Republic had entered a new phase of development—the period of the completion of the construction of socialist society. In this phase the material and technical basis of socialism was to be fully established.

The Fifteenth Congress of the MPRP (1966) adopted a fourth program, aimed at completing the construction of socialism in the Mongolian People’s Republic, and confirmed the directives for the fourth five-year plan (1966–1970). As stated in the program, the party must strive to develop fully the productive forces of socialist society using modern scientific and technical achievements, to ensure rapid economic growth, to raise the level of socialist culture, to improve socialist social relations, to strengthen the communist upbringing of the working people, and, on this basis, to improve the material well-being and raise the cultural level of the people. The party aims to transform the Mongolian People’s Republic into an industrial and agricultural country. The Sixteenth Congress of the MPRP (1971) adopted directives for the fifth five-year plan (1971–75). The directives were successfully carried out. The Seventeenth Congress of the MPRP, held in 1976, affirmed the Main Trends in the Development of the National Economy and Culture of the MPR for 1976–80.

Delegations of the MPRP took part in the work of the international conferences of communist and workers’ parties held in Moscow in 1957, 1960, and 1969. The MPRP approved the documents adopted at these conferences.

The MPRP is organized on the principle of democratic centralism. The highest body is the Congress, which is convened every five years. (For a list of the congresses of the MPRP see Table 1.) Between congresses the party’s work is directed by the CC and its organs, the Politburo and the Secretariat. The first secretary of the CC of the MPRP is lu. Tsedenbal. In January 1976 the party numbered more than 67,000 members and candidate members. The press organs of the CC of the MPRP are the newspaper Unen and the journal Namyn am‘dral