Talk:Damdin Sükhbaatar

Short name

Are there any references for him being called Sükh instead Sükhbaatar? Not that I know better, just wondering. Yaan 18:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

That info seems to be taken from here. --Latebird 21:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

That site has at least one biography completely wrong: Davaadorj is from Hovsgol, he didn't fight in Khalkhin Gol (he was still a child then, i think he was born in the late 1920s), and his death in 1948 is no mistery at all: He died in a border incident at Baitag Bogd (or something similar), at the border between Khovd and China. that is also the reason that he was made ulsyn baatar and he got a statue in (hint) 1968. Yaan 141.5.15.8 07:06, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I didn't say the source was right, it was just the only one I could find supporting the theory (the article was almost a copy of that source in some early versions). Mongolian names commonly being composites of two words, it seems likely that Sükhbaatar is indeed his original name, and Sükh just a shortened nickname. --Latebird 07:22, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we need better sources. Until then, I'll leave the page as it is. Yaan 12:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I got a better source: Urgunge Onon's Mongolian Heroes of the XXth century, which basically contains translations of MPR biographies pf certain prominent figures of Mongolia's struggle for independence. It mentions no "Sukh" either, so ... Yaan (talk) 12:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Suhkbator is tailored name. His given name Sukh meaning Axe and Bator or Baatar means Hero. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.160.50.4 (talk) 08:30, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

1921

Some issues:

• Was the Mongolian People's Party really founded before Sükhbaatar etc. went to Russia, or later?
• What is the correct name of the town captured by the MPRP in March (I assume March 18th is the correct date?): Kyakhta/Khiagt, Altanbulag, Maimaicheng, Troitskosavsk?

• • (a) Kyakhta/Khiagt is the name of the town captured by the partisans. Perhaps there grow a lot of hiag--couch grass. Also they called it Maimaachin--denoting that there were a lot of Chinese trades people. They traded with Russia. The modern name of this town is Altanbulag. Don't know when they change the name to Altanbulag (Golden Spring, the spring of the revolution). According to the mytholology it was the idea of Sükhbaatar to rename the town. This town is located on the Mongolian side of the Russo-Mongolian border. (b) Another Kyakhta/Khiagt is located on the Rusian side of the border. It was called town Troitskosavsk before 1934. It was joined with A trade village Kyakhta/Khiagt and was renamed into Kyakhta/Khiagt. Now suspection arises: maybe this last Kyakhta/Khiagt is actually the cradle of the revolution?! Rumours say there have been a lot of movements of the border lines between Russia and Mongolia and between China and Mongolia--of course always to the benefit of the stronger ones. There have been a lot of tricks of the Communist mythologies and the real history is very obscured.

• What about the liberation of Ulaanbaatar - wasn't it already deserted when the Soviets(?)/MPRP(?) took the town?

• • Wasn't there a Baron Ungern's garrison? or had they all left Urga to fight the Red Army?

• On another note, when did the Mongolian People's party change its name?
  • It added the adj. "Revolutionary" in 1925 when it was firmly put on the Leninist platform (Lenin's theory of revolution) by ComIntern. Before 1925, it was in no way Communist. It could be described as somewhat national democratic party, with many factions of course. The ComIntern caused them execute Bodoo in 1922 and Danzan in 1924. This way, they rid the party from the rightists. After 1925, MPRP became largely leftist and it immediately enforced Communist reforms (forceful collectivisation in the agriculture) which met strong resistance. To relax the resistance, Comintern punished its leftist marionettes and brought a bit more rightist persons into the party. Later, these were also executed in USSR.

Gantuya Eng

If anyone knows, please add to article Yaan 10:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Place of birth

First, very nice rewrite, thanks!

Just a detail that looks strange:

Sükhbaatar was born in Maimaicheng (the Chinese part of Ikh Khüree)

Since Maimaicheng derives from a chinese term for "trading town", a "part of the capital" doesn't look like a very good match. The only place with a similar name (during the Qing dynasty) that I can find is Altanbulag, Selenge. This one also seems to fit the rest of the description much better. --Latebird (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

There were at least two Maimaichengs, one near Khiagt and one near Khüree. And Sükhbaatar grew up in the Maimaicheng near Khüree, Onon is very clear about this. The Mongolian transliterations are a bit different (something like Maimaa khot), I took the pinyin transliteration of 买卖城 (buy+sell+city), which I think could be the original name of that settlement. "mai-mai" as in "buying and selling" is also the origin of the name given by Onon (p.189, footnote no. 5), so I think we can use this variant instead of Maimaacheng, Maimaakhot, or Maimaa city. Actually, I am a bit unsure which "mai" (selling or buying?) comes first, but this is only of interest when giving the name in chinese characters or giving these diacritical marks that indicate intonation. See also the section called "The Mai-mai-ch'eng" here.

I see that calling Maimaicheng part of Khüree might be a bit inaccurate, since it was actually a separate town, some km apart from the twon around the Bogd Khan's seat. This might actually warrant a slight rewording.

Also, the biography is actually not very explicit about where exactly Sükhbaatar was born. On p.143 it says "in the vicinity of Ikh Khüree", but on the following pge it says that when they deserted their home banner in 1892, the family "asked for help from their aquaintance Davaa, who was living in the city of Maimaa, and they settled in Davaa's small house". The author's preface on p. viii says that Sükhbaatar was born "in the city of Amgalangbaatar near the capital city", and the already mentioned footnote no.5 on p. 189 begins with "The city of Maimaa, presently called 'Amgalangbaatar', is about 8km to the east of the capital". So I think this bit is still well enough supported by the reference.

Hope this answers your question, Yaan (talk) 18:13, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the rewording makes it much clearer. Of course it would also be interesting to learn more about that Amgalanbaatar/Maimaicheng/Maimaa khot, but that's a seperate story... --Latebird (talk) 19:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... The article Kyakhta claims that the Altanbulag up there was also called "Maimachin". That would be somehow weird, if really two places of the same name had been renamed again to the same name... --Latebird (talk) 14:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I stated above that "there were at least two Maimaichengs". Actually, there seems to have been another one at Hovd (and there are even some more spelling variations like Naimaachin (!) etc.). But they were renamed to different names: The Maimaicheng near Khüree was renamed to Amgalanbaatar (or Amgalan Khot, something with Amgalan anyway), and the Maimaicheng near Kyakhta (Khiagt is the Mongolian spelling) was renamed to Altanbulag (actually, I am not entirely which of the towns up there is the old Maimaicheng, but in any case there is none whose name contains the word "Amgalan"). Hope this helps... Or do you want some more sources for Khüree having a Maimaicheng nearby? Pozdneyev should be good enough, shouldn't he?

If the confusion is about in which Maimaicheng Sükhbaatar was born, I seem to remember that Bawden had to say something about this too, or more precisely about how Sükhbaatars father managed to stay in the town rather than being sent back to his home banner. I will look it up, OK? Yaan (talk) 12:54, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I see you redirected Maimaichin to Altanbulag in Töv. I think this is incorrect: The Maimaicheng near Khüree should now be the eastern part of Ulaanbaatar. There is a reproduction of a 1900(?) bird's eye view of Ulaanbaatar in the Dschingis Khan und seine Erben exhibition catalogue, and a map based on that bird's eye view in H.Barthel, Mongolei - Land zwischen Taiga und Wüste. You should create a disambiguation that redirects to Ulaanbaatar, Sükhbaatar or Altanbulag, and maybe Khovd. Yaan (talk) 13:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I was trying to clean up the DAB page Altanbulag and its incoming links, and only figured a little too late that I'm still confused about Maimaicheng/Maimachin/etc. Does your map give you enough information to fix that? Maybe we need a seperate DAB page for it where we can point the spelling variant redirects? (added: I see you already suggest that, got confused by your use of "redirects" at first). --Latebird (talk) 18:06, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

patronymic

Is there a reason for giving the patronmic in the nominative form? I don't really care either way, just found it a bit curious given hw many pages have been moved to the genitive patronymic forms. Yaan (talk) 12:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That's just the best spelling I could find for one of the last renames (didn't know much about Mongolian genitive forms yet then). On the other hand, this is one of he relatively few cases where the nominative patronymic is somewhat more common in western literature than the genitive form. I don't object to a rename, though. --Latebird (talk) 18:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I think I'll leave it alone until someone with a stronger opinion comes around. Yaan (talk) 15:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

he was a dictator like Stalin

The article makes no mention that he along with his totalitarian system was responsible for the systematic destruction of Mongolia's culture and history, the deaths of thousands of innocent people and politicians in opposition, and the destruction of almost all of Mongolia's monasteries just to name a few things. Words like "his statue graces" is POV and some might regard him as a hero and others as a villain. The article needs to reflect that. Gryffindor (talk) 22:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess you might be confusing him with Choibalsan. By the time all those monasteries were destroyed, Sukhbaatar was dead for more than a decade. In fact he did not even witness the establishment of the Mongolian People's Republic. I think one might wonder if he was really much more than a figurehead for the comintern, one might also wonder about whether he had a role in the Bodoo/Chagdarjav affair (though some people conveniently claim this one was more the work of Danzan), but responsible for the death of thousands he is not.

In fact it has been noted that he was not the only important figure that passed away in 1923/24. In that light, he might even be one of the revolutions' victims!

And yes, I think most Mongolians have a quite positive attitude towards him. There are even many Mongolians who have a positive attitude towards Choibalsan, because they believe things like he played an important role in keeping Mongolia independent. Sukhbaatar was never a brutal dictator himself, and his merits re. Mongolia's independence are much more obvious than Choibalsans. Go figure. There is a reason why Sukhbaatar is still on the banknotes, if only on the small ones.

Why don't you just find some sources that call him a villain and then write a criticism section. Regards, Yaan (talk) 22:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

You are right, I did confuse him with Choibalsan, my bad. Nevertheless the article sounds a bit like a glorification of him, I am always a bit sceptical about putting revolutionary heros only in a positive light. A more neutral and objective evaluation would do good. I've put in some missing citation marks now in the article. Gryffindor (talk) 06:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

If you think the tone of the article is not neutral enough, just change it a bit. I guess it does not really help that I relied quite a lot on a translated socialist source when writing the article (see under references). I don't know if you will find much criticism on him. If anything, some of the myths made up about him during socialism have been busted or at least criticized, like the stuff about his meeting with Lenin, or the number of Chinese soldiers in Khiagt. Yaan (talk) 18:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

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