VLADIMIR LENIN STATUE

This statue of Lenin was erected circa 1950 by the Soviets in honor of its first Premeir and world revolutionary. It is a true relic of Mongolia's past.  He died at age 54 of an earlier assassination attempt where he took two bullets including one through his jaw and neck that was not removed for some time. Additionally, he suffered three strokes thereafter which essentially rendered him inactive during his reign of two years. Before his death he wrote a will denouncing Stalin but it was naturally suppressed by Stalin and his gang.

Now for the rest of the story.  My interpreter who is 31 and a lawyer, Khailun, explained that her great grandfather was executed by the KGB in Moscow in 1936 as part of Stalin's purge of all intellectuals to be found in Mongolia.  Her gr-grfthr was one of the few educated men in his country at the time and for this reason alone he was killed,  Thousands of others were rounded up and also purged.  Of course Stalin and Lenin started purges in Russia going back to the eraly 1920's.  At the time of her ancestor's death, Stalin decreed that no child of a purged person would be permitted any education.  But her grandfather got around that problem by getting adopted by a peasant family, changing his name and then was able to get a college education.   She tells me that every family has at least one person who was purged or executed for disobeying the Soviets.  Naturally there is still strong resentment against Soviet Russia.  She tells me that she was one of the last people to study and speak Russian and that when the wall went down in Berlin and a revolution of sorts occurred in Mongolia it became very unfashionable to speak Russian and that language has been duscarded with English being taught as a second language.  And so it goes...