HQ Why the USSR never annexed Mongolia?

Khanzeer

Banned
Most assuradly they could.. Just absorbing Mongolia would do that.

Problem is the soviets would have to do the fighting. There isn't that many Mongolians to fight the Chinese.

Even today there is only 3 million Mongolians and kilometer after kilometer of step land.
Whilst there are millions of Chinese.

So any war is Soviet backed, run and fought.

So if your looking for a full on Soviet vs China was.. That's a good start along with the other disputes
Very true but not all wars need to ww2 style wars of attrition
A smaller more mobile technologically advanced mongol army could be significant threat to Chinese esp in the 60s 70s when their own armed forces were lagging behind and China was in midst of cultural revolution.
A smaller leaner Mongolian army and airforce can annihilate a few Chinese units in border clashes raising their prestige and shake Chinese confidence
Furthermore a fellow communist country accusing China of imperialist designs will further tarnish China image in the eyes of the world
 
Last edited:
The answer is simple; what would the USSR gain....?

Nothing.

The USSR could have annexed Mongolia if it wanted to, but it would have been far more effort than it was worth; much better to have a buffer state to shorten their border with China.
 
Another thing left mostly unspoken is that the last thing Russia wanted is more Asians. There was clearly alarm in the USSR that it was becoming "too Asian" and Russian would no longer be the majority .
Not really. There was some concern that the Muslim population was growing quickly, but this was considerably later than the time when the annexation of Mongolia was considered. But I'm not aware of there being too many "Asians". It's not as if they're some unified group.

It would still mean more Asians per Russian and that is the last thing they wanted. To put it bluntly in many respects the USSR was the Russian Empire with some window dressing. Instead of the Tsar you had the Chairman of the Communist Party, instead of Boyars you had Second Secretaries. It wasn't like the Russian Empire was a Free Market bastion of democtacy.
This is a substantial exaggeration. The whole division of minority areas into separate republics was completely antithetical to the view of the Russian Empire.
 
Not really. There was some concern that the Muslim population was growing quickly, but this was considerably later than the time when the annexation of Mongolia was considered. But I'm not aware of there being too many "Asians". It's not as if they're some unified group.


This is a substantial exaggeration. The whole division of minority areas into separate republics was completely antithetical to the view of the Russian Empire.

By the 1970's there were a number of Russians worried about there being "Too many Asians not enough Slavs".

The First Secretaries outside of Russia had little more power than to blow their own nose. ALL the Five Year Plans came out of Moscow. If Moscow decides Minsk should be making steel then it will make steel even if it makes no sense. If it decides Latvia needs to catch more fish than it will raise the quota even if there are no more fish to catch.
 
By the 1970's there were a number of Russians worried about there being "Too many Asians not enough Slavs".
Could you give some examples?

The First Secretaries outside of Russia had little more power than to blow their own nose. ALL the Five Year Plans came out of Moscow. If Moscow decides Minsk should be making steel then it will make steel even if it makes no sense. If it decides Latvia needs to catch more fish than it will raise the quota even if there are no more fish to catch.[/QUOTE]
Even this was always true (if the First Secretary could have influence in the central government and in Brezhnev's effective control declined in some places, especially Central Asia) but what I meant is that having separate republics (especially Ukraine and Belarussia) was against the general policy of "an undivided Russia" which was the dominant outlook of the leadership of the Russian Empire. Even with the Republics having little power, they still preserved (and in some cases strengthened) national identities and hindered assimilation
 
To put it bluntly in many respects the USSR was the Russian Empire with some window dressing. Instead of the Tsar you had the Chairman of the Communist Party, instead of Boyars you had Second Secretaries.
Boyars didn’t exist in the Russian Empire. No seriously — the Russian Empire was formed by Peter the Great (1st Russian ruler to hold title of emperor rather than tzar or knjaz) who abolished the boyars.
And lol @suggestions that free market democracies aren't ipso facto assimilationist Empires themselves.
Indeed, even pro-Western pundits argue as much.

For example, look at this Novaya Gazeta article by Alexi Polikovskii where he essentially claims that “the West” is a force of history and you either bend at the knee and join it or you’re thrown into the dustbin of history:

https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2014/06/04/59847-pochemu-rossiya-ne-zapad
 
Top