Zolbingiin Shijee

Zolbingiin Shijee
Золбингийн Шижээ
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Party
In office
March 13, 1931 – June 30, 1932
Preceded by Peljidiin Genden
Succeeded by Bat-Ochiryn Eldev-Ochir
Personal details
Born 1901
Bortala, Xinjiang
Died July 27, 1941
Moscow, Soviet Union
This is a Mongolian name. The given name is Shijee, and the name Zolbingiin is a patronymic, not a family name. The subject should be referred to by the given name.

Zolbingiin Shijee (Mongolian: Золбингийн Шижээ; 1901 – July 27, 1941) was a Mongolian revolutionary who served as secretary of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party from 1930 to 1932 and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the MPRP from March 13, 1931 to June 30, 1932. Considered one of the more extreme leftists of the MPRP,[1] he was expelled from the party in 1932 for his role in the "Leftist Deviation" and exiled to the Soviet Union where he was arrested and shot for counterrevolution in 1941.

Early life

Shijee was born in present day Bortala, Xinjiang in 1901.[2] He was a partisan fighter in the Outer Mongolian Revolution of 1921 and then became prison director. In 1923 he joined the MPRP and worked for the Central Committee. By this time Shijee had become one of several younger, more radicalized party members from rural areas recruited by the Soviets to challenge the MRPR "old guard" (others included Tsengeltiin Jigjidjav, Ölziin Badrakh, Bat-Ochiryn Eldev-Ochir, Jambyn Lkhümbe, and Peljidiin Genden).[3] He was enrolled in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow and while there was employed to agitate Uyghur people Hui students and organize supplies of arms and revolutionaries as part of Soviet plans to establish a puppet government in the Xinjiang region in the East Turkestan Republic. It was also during this period that Shijee first met Badrakh,and the two discussed the possibility of creating an autonomous republic of non-Khalkh Mongol regions of Dörvöd (present day Uvs Province, Tannu Uriankhai, and Xinjiang.[4]

Shijee returned to Mongolia in 1928 and progressed through a rapid series of promotions within the government: first he was elected secretary of the Central Council of the Mongolian Trade Unions, then appointed head of Internal Security Directorate from 1928 to 1929, and then made chairman of the board of the State Bank from 1929 to 1930. He was one of several “new leftists” promoted into party leadership positions during the Eight Party Congress in 1930,[5] when he was elected member of presidium (or politburo) of the MPRP and one of three secretaries of the party Central Committee (a position he would hold until June 30, 1932). From March 13, 1931 to June 30, 1932 he was first secretary of the Central Committee.

Recognized as one of the party's most extreme leftists,[6] Shijee actively pushed Soviet tailored policies that aggressively forced herders onto collective farms, suppressed private trade, and seized property of both the nobility and the Buddhist church. As a result, one third of Mongolian livestock was decimated,[7] over 800 properties belonging to the nobility and the Buddhist church were confiscated, and over 700 head of mostly noble households were executed.[8] When violent uprisings spread across western Mongolia in 1932 as a reaction to the harsh policies, Moscow ordered a curtailment of the unpopular initiatives and pinned the blame for the excesses of what became known as the “Leftist Deviation” on Shijee and other hardline leftists within the party leadership, including Ölziin Badrakh, and Prime Minister Tsengeltiin Jigjidjav. All were officially expelled from the party in May 1932.

Shijee was exiled to Moscow where in 1937 he was arrested on charges of counterrevolution. Shijee's father, a simple herder in Mongolia, was also arrested.[9] He was sentenced to death by military collegium of the USSR Supreme Court on July 9, 1941, and shot July 27, 1941.

He was rehabilitated in 1963.

Notes

  1. ↑ Bawden, C.R. (1989). The Modern History of Mongolia. London: Kegan Paul International Ltd. p. 326. ISBN 0-7103-0326-2.
  2. ↑ Sanders, Alan J. K. (2010). Historical Dictionary of Mongolia. Scarecrow Press. p. 222. ISBN 0810874520.
  3. ↑ Baabar (1999). History of Mongolia. Cambridge: Monsudar Publishing. p. 284. ISBN 9992900385.
  4. ↑ Sanders 2010, p. 222
  5. ↑ Morozova, Irina Yurievna (2009). Socialist Revolutions in Asia: The Social History of Mongolia in the Twentieth Century. US: Taylor & Francis. p. 73. ISBN 0710313519.
  6. ↑ Bawden 1989, p. 296
  7. ↑ Palmer, James (2008). The Bloody White Baron. London: Faber and Faber. p. 235. ISBN 0-571-23023-7.
  8. ↑ Becker, Jasper (1992). Lost Country, Mongolia Revealed. London: Hodder and Stoughton. p. 123. ISBN 0-340-55665-X.
  9. ↑ Baabar 1999, 363
Party political offices
Preceded by
Peljidiin Genden		 General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Party
March 13, 1931 - June 30, 1932 		Succeeded by
Bat-Ochiryn Eldev-Ochir

Category:1901 births Category:1941 deaths