Mongolian People's Republic

The Mongolian People's Republic was the communist state of Outer Mongolia, proclaimed in 1924 after the 1921 revolution that Soviet Russia had carried to victory, and the second communist state in the world after the Soviet Union itself. Wedged between the Soviet Union and China, it lived its whole life as Moscow's first and longest satellite, with the People's Revolutionary Party ruling from Ulaanbaatar, renamed Red Hero in 1924. Under Choibalsan the republic copied Stalinism faithfully, including the repressions of 1937 to 1939 that killed more than twenty thousand, while its army stood with the Soviets at Khalkhin Gol against Japan in 1939 and a 1945 referendum won Chinese recognition of its independence. Tsedenbal's long rule brought Soviet factories and the collectivization of the herds amid the Sino-Soviet split. When communism fell, Mongolia's revolution of 1990 stayed peaceful, and in 1992 the republic dropped its second adjective and became today's Mongolia.