Anandyn Amar
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Anandyn Amar (Mongolian: Анандын Амар), (1886-1941) was the head of state of the Mongolian People’s Republic from 1932 to 1936 as well as prime minister from 1928-1930 and again from 1936-1939.
Early Life and Career
Amar, born in 1886 in present-day Khangal district of Bulgan Province, was the son of a poor nobleman. In his youth he worked his way up from being a local official. From 1913-1919 he worked in the foreign ministry of Autonomous Mongolia.
One of the founders of the Mongolian People’s Party, later to be renamed the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party or MPRP, member of the MPRP Central Committee and its Presidium, member of the 1st through 7th Small Khurals.
The Mongolian People's Republic
Between 1919 to 1921 he was minister of foreign affairs, minister of internal economic affairs in the provisional government of the newly founded Mongolian People’s Republic. From 1923 to 1928 Amar served as deputy prime minister and was subsequently appointed prime minister on February 21, 1928 upon the death of B. Tserendorj, a position he held until April 27, 1930.
From 1930 to 1932 Amar was chairman of the science committee and then from 1932 to 1936 he was elected chairman of the presidium of the Small Hural, the government body that exercised day-to-day control over affairs of state.
Amar was once again appointed prime minister (concurrently foreign minister ) on February 22, 1936. He remained in the position until March 7, 1939 when he was purged (arrested and convicted of counterrevolutionary activities).
Shortly after commencing his second term as prime minister in 1936 Amar, along with Dansrangiin Dogsom, came under suspicion of counterrevolutionary activity when he pardoned prisoners implicated in the Lkhümbe case in honor of the fifteenth anniversary of the revolution. (Jambyn Lkhüme was secretary of the MPRP Central Committee who had been arrested by the Inter Security Directorate on charges of counterrevolution, tried and executed in 1934. A number of other innocent people were also arrested at the time). Khorloogiin Choibalsan, who had recently been appointed minister of internal affairs, exclaimed “We have to get rid of this feudal trouble-maker Amar! [1]
Stalin had for a long time wished to remove Amar, but he was so highly respected that the Soviets dared not touch him. [2] Stalin believed that Amar had been engaging in espionage for Japanese intelligence. The Russians had long feared a Japanese attack across Mongolia that could cut the trans-siberian railway. Stalin had once remarked that if the Japanese had achieved such a victory, “the USSR would be finished” [3]
In September 1938 Choibalson traveled to Moscow and with Stalin. There he received new instructions regarding the next phase of the purge. Choibalson was ordered to have Luvsansharav, Secretary of the Mongolian Central Committee, remove Amar from his position through a government resolution that would accuse Amar of conducting poisonous activities against the state. After a sufficient propaganda campaign to destroy Amar’s reputation in Mongolia, he would be arrested.
Denunciation and Arrest
March 7 1939 Luvsansharav and Choibalson publicly charged Amar with counterrevolutionary activities at an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee and the State Small Khural. When Amar took the floor in his own defense he said
“Although I believe in religion, the one thing that I believe in even more is that Mongolia should stand firmly on her feet to become and independent country. I love my country. I have shown this with my work. I have been among the first to devote myself to the cause of my country’s development, and my heart is breaking to finally witness myself being called a trator and being subjected to castigation” [4]
At the end of the one day trial Amar was found guilty, forced from the prime ministership and expelled from MPRP. He was then arrested by ministry of internal affairs . In July 1939 Amar’s case passed to NKVD, and Amar was sent to Siberian town of Chita and then on to Moscow. There, Amar was tortured into making a full confession of all “his crimes”. Ironically, while awaiting trial in Moscow Amar was jailed with Luvsansharav, the very same person who had arrested him. Shortly after Amer’s trial Luvsansharav had been arrested when Moscow sought to tie up loose strings as the purges drew to a close.
Trial in Moscow
On July 10, 1941 Amar was tried by a Soviet troika and sentenced to death. Throughout the trial Amar insisted that, if the Mongolian People’s Republic were really an independent nation, he should be tried by a Mongolian court. His last recorded words were “it is typical that when a big power colonizes a small country, its leaders are arrested and persecuted. My personal experience demonstrates this attitude of the USSR towards Mongolia”. [5]
The exact place and date of Amar’s execution remains unknown, however some oral evidence suggests his body was thrown from an airplane. [6]
Rehabilitation
December 15, 1956, after reviewing Stalin’s purges, military collegiums found no evidence of Amar’s guilt. On January 25, 1962, he was rehabilitated, and on September 26, 1989, his membership in the MPRP restored.
Amar authored several books including “The tenth Anniversary and Scientific Production”(1931), “On the Development of the Mongolian National Script” (1933) and ”Short History of Mongolia” (1934).
References
- ^ Baabar, B., History of Mongolia, 1999, ISBN 999-0-038-5. p 354
- ^ Baabar, B., History of Mongolia, 1999, ISBN 999-0-038-5. p 367
- ^ Stalin to Chiang Ching-kuo, July 1945 as paraphrased in O. Edmund Clubb, China and Russia, p. 344.
- ^ Baabar, B., History of Mongolia, 1999, ISBN 999-0-038-5. p 367
- ^ ibid. p 369
- ^ ibid