Article, Historical

D. Sukhbaatar: "Lost Mongols" part-I

Picture: Photographer Elbegzaya.L 

My Kalmyk people who have gone away

My closed and dissected Buryat, Tuva, and Southern \Inner\ Mongol people

Let's bless and meet in our warm homeland

Let's love and cherish our Khamag Mongol

Our Lord \Bogd\ Chinggis Khaan and his grandson Khubilai and the Great Kings of the Golden lineage united forty countries eight centuries ago, with a conference of scholars, tens, hundreds, thousands of cavalry, Ikh Zasag law, post office, equal respect for many religions, free trade, protected the Silk Road, strengthened international relations, created astronomy, architecture, stamp, vertical Mongolian script, they founded the world's largest and most powerful Great Mongol Empire, which combined literacy and religion, and played a significant role in world civilization and existed for 168 years.

Mongolia's Kublai Khaan established the Great Yuan Dynasty of Mongolia and brought it to its peak of prosperity. However, his descendant Togoontumur Khan failed to keep the Great Yuan Dynasty of Mongolia strong. For the first time, the talented Mongolian general Togto was able to quell the Red Turban Rebellions in southern China. However, the Mongol king removed General Togto from his post and appointed an incompetent man as general of the Mongol army. For the first time, the uprising was partially suppressed, but The Red Turban rebels were gaining more strength.

In 1368, a large Mongol army of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty was besieged and defeated in southern China by Zhu Yuanjan's numerous Red Turban rebellions army, and the Great Yuan Dynasty was destroyed when the rebel army captured Daidu (Beijing), the capital of the Great Yuan Dynasty. This was the result of the Mongol emperor giving the Chinese the right to worship freely. The Chinese joined the "White Lotus" religious movement with all their Chinese heads and united vigorously under the slogan "Cut off the heads of every Mongolian."

Thus, the decline of Mongolia began at that time, and our empire disintegrated and lost its territory to a foreign state for hundreds of years. In 1911, when the establishment of Bogd Khanate Mongolia, it remained a country with an area of ​​3.0 million square kilometers. This was the native land of Mongolia, which has been inhabited for thousands of years and cannot be lost in the future.

However, Mongolia kept losing its territory around Baikal with Buryat Mongols to tsarist Russia from 1680. In the end, when the age of the Soviet government the Uriankhai region of the Sayan Mountains was conquered in 1944, and 2,500 square kilometers of Mongolian Uvs, Zavkhan, and Khuvsgul aimags in 1958 with a total area of 22.4 million square kilometers and a population of 294 million were captured to the Soviet Union, a northern neighbor. We had lost our native Mongol lands, from the western Tarvagatai Mountains, Ili Murun, and Khukh Nuur, from the Upper Mongol \Deed Mongol\, Khulunbuir, Barga, Khingan, and Kharchin Horchin in the east in Southern \Inner\ Mongolia with the land of 1.8 million square kilometers to China which has an area of ​​9.5 million square kilometers and a population of 1 billion in 1949 and now six million Mongolians and hundreds of millions of livestock have been cut off and belonged to the southern neighbor. Mongolia lost its native lands in the twentieth century to two neighboring countries and left behind 1,200 kilometers from the sea.

It is the greatest tragedy and shame that to lose such a native Mongolian land with its people to a foreign power. We Mongolians are not to blame for others, we are to blame. The failure of Mongolia to defend its entire country from foreign aggression was due to the lack of a strong state, a strong army, a strong king, a general, a lack of unity, and a lack of patriotism. Moreover, Mongolians are endowed with innate military knowledge and courage.

After the end of the twentieth century, when world communism was thrown into the dustbin of history, the Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 states, the two divided Germanys reunited, China recaptured Hong Kong and Macao, and the two Koreas sought reunification. However, the world does not know or talk about the territory and people of Mongolia lost to the two neighboring powers. Until now, they have clung to their old ways “There are only Russian Mongols and Chinese Mongols in the world. Only Russia and China know Mongolia.” If we, modern Mongolians, do not tell the true history of Mongolia to the world, who else will?

We, the modern Mongolians, do not mean to take back the territory of this great power established by our ancestors, we do not mean to re-establish the empire, we do not mean to take back the lost land and start a territorial dispute. But why did the Great Mongol Empire perish? Why did the united Mongol divide into many parts and lose most of its native land? Why has the Mongolian nation deteriorated over the last six centuries? I just want to analyze and reconstruct the true history and evaluate our mistakes and points. We want to evaluate the past and build the future. We want to develop our independent country, believe in common sense, and live a secure life. We do not want our history and culture to be taught by foreigners.

For the past century, Soviet and Chinese Reds have slandered Mongolian history with class, partisan, and communist ideologies. Mongolian history was distorted by the Soviets or Chinese and written at their own discretion. Now is the time for us Mongolians to write our history, we are writing our history.

We Mongols want to rebuild our lost history and culture. The Mongols of the Xiongnu period and Chinggis Khaan are described by Russian and Western historians as "barbar" and "barbarians", and in Chinese history as "savage Hu". In fact, scholars have written that the word "citizen" in the Middle Kingdom means "slave."  Only for the sake of reviving the true history of Mongolia, for the sake of reviving the traditional culture and religion of Mongolia, for the sake of reviving the Mongolian mother tongue, vertical Mongolian script, art and customs, some foreign and domestic historians, politicians, reds and heretics insults and curses us “Pan-Mongolisms”, “hopefuls for the establishment of the Great Mongol Empire”,“ nationalists ”,“ conservatives ”,“ religious superstitions ”, and “separatist separatists”.

Books and movies about Chinggis Khan and the Mongols written abroad show that Mongolians are necessarily cruel and rude nomads. But despite this, we Mongolians will only establish the truth of history, revive our traditional culture and religion, and create art, movies, and books. We Mongolians won’t agree with the centuries of distortion of our history and slandered us as savage nomads, the most backward people, an endangered nation, illiterate, Buddhist, and ignorant.

Who were we Mongols? Who are we now? Can we Mongols develop and become a strong country? The time has come to prove to the world that We Mongols must first establish our true history. We must openly admit our mistakes in analyzing why the Great Mongol Empire disintegrated. Why did the Mongols decline for 600 years after the collapse of the Great Mongol Empire in 1368, and how can they be revived now? must be determined.

As a young Mongolian intellectual, I have been researching historical facts since the eighties of the last century, regarding How the fate and destiny of my lost Mongols unfolded in the course of history, what happened in the end, and how my lost Mongols suffered under the rule of a foreign power. This historical article is based on these facts.

Why study this topic? I met a Kalmyk soldier who served in the Soviet Army when I was a university student in Baku, the Soviet Union, during the socialist era. While talking to him, the Kalmyk soldier did not even know Mongolian history, not even a single Mongolian word. So why did the Mongolian nation spread all over the world and not know its native language, history, and culture? decided to study I first wrote a historical article about Kalmykia, Buryatia, Tuva, and Southern \Inner\ Mongolia in 1988, when I was working for the Khentii aimag executive administration, entitled “Occupied Mongols” and kept it on my desk for a while without telling anyone.

At that time, there was a closed socialist society with an ideology, so there was a time when a person who said something critical, let alone wrote an article criticizing the Russian Soviet Union, was imprisoned. This historical article was first published in 1990 in a newspaper in Khentii aimag, in 1991 in Ulaanbaatar in the newspaper “Mongolian Voice”, and then in 1999 in my first book “Occupied Mongols”. Since 1990, many new facts, information, and sources have been found, so thirty-two years later I re-enriched my article, “Occupied Mongols” entitled “Lost Mongols,” which is about Southern \Inner\ Mongol, Buryat Mongol, Kalmyk Mongol, Tuva / Uriankhai / Mongol, and Altai Mongols, I am presenting to you, the reader, a new article in 2020.

Publicist: Lawyer, journalist, publicist, historian, and theologian Sukhbaatar Dorj.

Translated by Zolzaya N.