Övör Mongol Atlas

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Inner Mongolian Republican Provisional Government

state · 1945

Short-lived western Inner Mongolian body proclaimed at Sunit Right Banner in September 1945 by former Mengjiang officials at the Japanese collapse, absorbed within months into the Chinese Communists' Inner Mongolian Autonomous Movement Association.

This entry rests on two CIA field-intelligence reports of 1947, and their limits should be stated plainly. They are contemporaneous but unevaluated informant reporting, anti-Communist in orientation, and they hedge the body’s own name (one calls it the “Inner Mongolian Republican Temporary Government,” the other the “Inner Mongolian Independent Republic Provisional Government”). One thing they are clear about is that this was a western Inner Mongolian body, distinct from the separate Eastern Mongolian Autonomous Government founded at Wangye Temple (Ulanhot) in the east. The two should not be conflated; see the Khafungga entry for the eastern movement.

At the Japanese surrender, Chahar and Shilingol officials, together with former officials of Demchugdongrub’s Mengjiang government, gathered at the Chahar Secondary Yellow Banner under a leader the report names Buyandalai (rendered “Buin-Dalai”) and summoned banner delegates to an “Inner Mongolian Liberated Areas Meeting,” forming an Inner Mongolian Liberated Areas Association (Source E). The stated purpose was to help the Allies expel the Japanese; the report judges the actual aim to have been to shift allegiance in time and gain recognition as anti-Japanese (Source E). The Provisional Government was inaugurated on 9 September 1945 at Sunit Right Banner, with a short constitution the report characterizes as “democratic and ultimately socialistic.” Soviet and Outer Mongolian handlers influenced it indirectly before stepping back to avoid international complications (Source E).

Its independence was brief. On 10 October 1945 a Soviet commander and Nie Rongzhen, of the Eighth Route Army’s Jin-Cha-Ji headquarters, signed an agreement admitting Chinese Communist troops to Inner Mongolia. The Communists first “changed a few personnel,” relieving Buyandalai, then sent about twenty men to take over the remainder, moved the headquarters to Kalgan, and dissolved the body into Ulanhu’s (Yun Tse’s) Inner Mongolian Autonomous Movement Association, with none of the original members receiving responsible positions (Source E).

A second report (Source F), reporting the government as having “died out” in September 1945, tracks its members’ fates with careful analyst caveats at nearly every name. Buyandalai was rumored killed by Eighth Route Army soldiers on the way to Kalgan, but the report says this was disproven and places him in Nationalist custody, unable to say whether as protection or detention. Damurun, Jodbajab (with his family), and Mugdenbu were all captured by Soviet or Outer Mongolian forces and sent to Outer Mongolia, Mugdenbu later released and made commander of the Temurtu district Self-Defense troops. A Finance-Department member the report calls Jirgalang could not be located (Source F). The same report notes that Demchugdongrub’s eldest son was captured with the family and sent alone to a middle school in Ulan Bator, a thread the Demchugdongrub entry develops.

How exactly this western body related to the Eastern Mongolian Autonomous Government, and to Ulanhu’s movement into which it was folded, is left open here. The sources describe the absorption but not a clean institutional lineage.

Sources