How the State Made Monks into Enemies

Introduction

The destruction of Mongolia’s Buddhist establishment in the late 1930s was not simply an attack on religion. It was also the culmination of a state-driven panic that portrayed Buddhist monks as members of a vast hidden conspiracy threatening the country’s survival. Over many years, Mongolia’s socialist government moved from criticising monasteries as economically outdated to presenting senior clergy as organisers of counter-revolution, foreign espionage and armed rebellion. That narrative helped make extraordinary violence appear both necessary and legitimate. Between late 1937 and 1939, thousands of monks were executed, almost every monastery was closed or destroyed, and one of Mongolia’s most important cultural institutions was devastated. Modern historians argue that this campaign should be understood not merely as Soviet repression imposed from outside, but as a political process in which Mongolian leaders, Soviet advisers and state institutions together constructed an image of an internal enemy.[cam.ac.uk]cam.ac.ukUniversity of CambridgeMongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation | University of CambridgeFebruary 27, 2015…Published: February 27, 2015

Why monasteries looked like rival centres of power

For centuries, Buddhist monasteries had been far more than places of worship. They owned land and livestock, educated much of the population, provided medical care, preserved literature and art, and influenced political life. Before the socialist period, Mongolia had hundreds of monasteries and tens of thousands of monks. The Buddhist establishment therefore represented an organised institution that reached across the country and commanded loyalty independent of the new revolutionary state.[University of Cambridge]cam.ac.ukUniversity of CambridgeMongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation | University of CambridgeFebruary 27, 2015…Published: February 27, 2015

This did not automatically make conflict inevitable. Christopher Kaplonski’s archival research shows that the socialist government spent well over a decade trying different methods to weaken monastic influence before resorting to mass killing. Policies included heavy taxation, restrictions on recruiting young monks, propaganda campaigns and selective prosecutions. Violence was not the government’s immediate response; instead, officials gradually redefined the Buddhist establishment from a political competitor into an existential threat.[University of Cambridge]cam.ac.ukUniversity of CambridgeMongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation | University of CambridgeFebruary 27, 2015…Published: February 27, 2015

The authorities also faced genuine political anxieties. Mongolia was a small state caught between the Soviet Union, China and expanding Japanese influence in East Asia. These international pressures made accusations of foreign collaboration especially potent, allowing officials to present domestic religious leaders as potential agents of hostile powers rather than simply ideological opponents.[University of Cambridge]cam.ac.ukUniversity of CambridgeMongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation | University of CambridgeFebruary 27, 2015…Published: February 27, 2015

From criticism to claims of hidden conspiracy

The crucial shift came when criticism of monasteries evolved into allegations of secret organisation. Rather than arguing that monks represented an outdated social order, state propaganda increasingly claimed that senior clergy were coordinating underground networks to overthrow socialism.

Show trials played a central role in this transformation. Kaplonski argues that the highly publicised trials of 1937 presented an elaborate conspiracy involving leading monks, former aristocrats and political figures supposedly plotting together against the revolutionary government. These proceedings were less about establishing individual guilt than about persuading the public that an extensive hidden enemy already existed. By portraying respected religious leaders as organisers of treason, the trials helped prepare society to accept exceptional violence.[AnthroSource]anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.comj.1548 1425.2008.00038.xPrelude to violence: Show trials and state power in 1930s Mongolia - KAPLONSKI - 2008 - American Ethnologist - Wiley Online L…

This conspiracy narrative reflected a classic mechanism of political moral panic:

Historians caution that this narrative should not be confused with evidence of a genuine nationwide conspiracy. While some monks opposed socialist reforms and a number became involved in earlier uprisings, the state’s sweeping claims transformed diverse local conflicts into a single imagined counter-revolutionary organisation.[AnthroSource]anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.comj.1548 1425.2008.00038.xPrelude to violence: Show trials and state power in 1930s Mongolia - KAPLONSKI - 2008 - American Ethnologist - Wiley Online L…

How ordinary religious life became criminalised

One striking feature of the campaign is how everyday religious practice gradually entered the criminal sphere.

Archival court cases examined by Kaplonski include prosecutions over organising traditional religious festivals, involving children in ceremonies and even accusations that Tibetan medicine was being used to poison people. These cases illustrate how ordinary monastic activities increasingly became evidence of supposed criminal intent rather than accepted religious practice.[OUP Academic]academic.oup.comOUP AcademicCriminal Lamas: Court Cases Against Buddhist Monks in Early Socialist Mongolia | Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and…

Such prosecutions blurred the distinction between belief and political crime. The issue was no longer whether particular acts violated specific laws, but whether religious influence itself constituted evidence of counter-revolutionary intent. Once that assumption became established, almost any connection to the monastery system could be interpreted as participation in a hostile network.[OUP Academic]academic.oup.comOUP AcademicCriminal Lamas: Court Cases Against Buddhist Monks in Early Socialist Mongolia | Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and…

Repression, destroyed institutions and contested responsibility

The panic reached its most destructive phase between late 1937 and mid-1939.

Within roughly eighteen months:

For many years, public memory explained these events almost entirely as orders imposed by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet NKVD. Soviet influence was unquestionably decisive, and Soviet advisers played major roles in the repression. However, more recent scholarship argues that this explanation is incomplete.

Kaplonski’s research suggests that Mongolian institutions actively developed the legal arguments, propaganda campaigns and conspiracy narratives that justified persecution. Rather than treating Mongolia as merely a passive victim of Soviet command, he argues that the violence emerged through interactions between Soviet pressure and Mongolian state-building, political struggles and administrative choices.[cam.ac.uk]cam.ac.ukUniversity of CambridgeMongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation | University of CambridgeFebruary 27, 2015…Published: February 27, 2015

This interpretation does not reduce Soviet responsibility. Instead, it emphasises that the persecution depended upon local officials, courts, investigators and political leaders who transformed fear into policy.

Why historians describe this as a state-created panic

The campaign against Mongolia’s Buddhist clergy illustrates how governments can manufacture a sense of hidden danger powerful enough to justify extraordinary repression.

Several features distinguish it from spontaneous public hysteria:

• the conspiracy narrative was promoted from above through courts, propaganda and official institutions rather than emerging mainly through rumour;
• allegations continually expanded despite limited evidence of a unified underground organisation;
• exceptional measures became normal because the alleged enemy was portrayed as impossible to detect by ordinary legal standards;
• the destruction of religious institutions was presented as a defensive necessity rather than ideological persecution alone.[AnthroSource]anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.comj.1548 1425.2008.00038.xPrelude to violence: Show trials and state power in 1930s Mongolia - KAPLONSKI - 2008 - American Ethnologist - Wiley Online L…

For historians of political violence, Mongolia’s “lama question” therefore represents more than religious repression. It demonstrates how an insecure state can redefine a longstanding social institution as a concealed internal enemy, allowing fear of conspiracy to legitimise mass persecution. The episode remains central to understanding Mongolia’s twentieth-century history because it combined ideological conflict, genuine political insecurity and carefully constructed narratives of hidden treason into one of the country’s greatest human and cultural catastrophes.[cam.ac.uk]cam.ac.ukUniversity of CambridgeMongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation | University of CambridgeFebruary 27, 2015…Published: February 27, 2015

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Endnotes

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Published: February 27, 2015

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Title: Chris Kaplonski
Link:https://cambridge.academia.edu/ChrisKaplonski

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Additional References

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Published: September 1, 2020

15. Source: youtube.com
Title: Torture and execution of Prime Minister of Mongolia who publicly slapped Stalin
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeNXueH1fI8

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Title: Mongol Empire, Tibetan Buddhism, and Communist Suppression
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17. Source: youtube.com
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Title: KAPLONSK I CH
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Published: December 1, 2024

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