What if the USSR formally incorporated Outer Mongolia as a Union Republic before WWII?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
By many in the interwar era, it was regarded as such.

The maps in Frank Capra's WWII propaganda film, "The Battle of Russia" showed no border between Outer Mongolia and the Soviet Union.

What short-term, medium-term and long-term differences would it have made if Outer Mongolia were made a Union Republic of the USSR in the 1920s or 1930s?

Would there have been any short term cost on the USSR that was avoided by not having Mongolia in the Union?

Is it enough to decisively change any policies of the Chinese Nationalists or the Japanese?

Could it somehow impair the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to come to power?

If there is a Communist China, could it make a Sino-Soviet split worse?

Presuming the USSR ends as it did, would it change post-Cold War PRC policy in Inner Asia in any significant way?
 
If global relations continue unchanged, then the Sino-Soviet split is more severe, and potentially reaches bloodier heights than just border clashes.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
For one, Mongols are going to experience the harsh taste of fighting the Nazis in WWII; indeed, unlike with the Western Allies, the Nazis never showed even a remote trace of chivalry when they were fighting the Soviets!
 
For one, Mongols are going to experience the harsh taste of fighting the Nazis in WWII; indeed, unlike with the Western Allies, the Nazis never showed even a remote trace of chivalry when they were fighting the Soviets!
Weren't the Mongolians a participating force in the Soviet campaign in Manchuria?
 
All this does is upset China unnecessarily. (In its 1924 treaty with China, the USSR had maintained the fiction that Mongolia was part of China.) Eventually, the USSR did force Chiang to recognize Mongolian independence (though Chiang later went back on it) but at least it offered him the fig leaf of a "referendum" solemnly validated by Chinese observers--487,409 to *zero* for independence! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_independence_referendum,_1945

In OTL the idea of incorporating Mongolia into the Soviet Union was floated from time to time, but more by Mongolians than by the Soviets, as I pointed out at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ahc-mongolian-ssr.352879/#post-10705074 As I note there, the one thing that would make a real long-term difference would be if the Soviets changed the boundaries of Mongolia after annexing it--eg., by adding the Buryat ASSR to it.
 
Weren't the Mongolians a participating force in the Soviet campaign in Manchuria?

Mongolia declared war on Japan on August, 9, 1945--the last declaration of war in World War II. In the few remaining days of war, they helped to liberate Inner Mongolia. And of course years earlier they had fought alongside the Red Army at Khalkhin Gol.

Incidentally, Choibalsan wanted to have Mongolia declare war on Germany; but Stalin told him that Mongolian forces were not numerous enough to make a difference. https://books.google.com/books?id=FWmmBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA143
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I had heard about mongol troops serving with the red army in Germany but I guess they were buryats or tuvans or Kalmyks i.e. Soviet citizens.

Another reason to turn down MPR troops would be the opposite, that given their training and equipment they were a nontrivial force in the Far East and leaving them at home helped serve as insurance against Japan violating the neutrality pact.
 
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