Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

SUBBOTNIKI. This was the term used in Soviet society to describe performers of voluntary, unpaid work for the state (literally, “Saturdayers,” after the day on which such labor was usually performed), as well as the days themselves. The movement (sometimes termed “Bolshevik Saturdays” or “Communist Saturdays”) was said to have begun spontaneously, on 12 April 1919, among 13 Bolsheviks and 2 other workers at Moscow’s Sortirovochnaia railway depot (part of the Moscow–Kazan′ Railway), who donated 10 hours’ labor to the repair of three locomotives. Their efforts were subsequently praised by V. I. Lenin in his pamphlet Velikii pochin (“A Great Initiative,” 28 June 1919), and the practice became widespread during the autumn of 1919, at the height of the advances toward Moscow and Petrograd of the White forces of A. I. Denikin and N. N. Iudenich, respectively. A “Week of the Front,” in January 1920, saw a further growth in the practice, and on 1 May 1920, the first All-Russian Communist Saturday was held. On that day, even the highest Bolshevik leaders joined the shock workers, including Lenin, who helped to clear building rubble from the Moscow Kremlin, a scene depicted in a famous (and much copied) painting by V. G. Krikhatskii, Lenin at the First Subbotnik, which features Lenin “helping” to carry a very large log. Subbotniki were also the focus of V. V. Maiakovskii’s poem Khorosho (“Good”). Undoubtedly the Subbotniki reflected to some degree the revolutionary enthusiasm of the Russian working classes, but they were also exploited by the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Soviet state to mobilize the country, and the “voluntary” nature of Saturday labor became tainted with obligation and even compulsion.

Sükhbaatar (SUHEBATOR) Damdin (2 February 1893–20 February 1923). One of the key figures in Mongolia’s struggle for independence and a military leader of the Mongolian revolution of 1921, Sükhbaatar (“Axe Hero”) was born in the chiefly Chinese trading settlement of Maimaicheng, near Urga (Ulaanbaatar). His father was a laborer. After some years of work as a drover and brief religious schooling, during the revolution of 1911 he was drafted into the Mongolian Army, and from 1912 was trained in the Russian military school at Khujirbulan, before serving on Mongolia’s eastern border. In 1918, for reasons that remain unclear, he was transferred to a government printing office.

In 1919, when China seized the opportunity of the civil wars in Russia to reincorporate Mongolia into its territory, Sükhbaatar joined one of the groups that would form the Mongolian People’s (i.e., Communist) Party on 25 June 1920. The following month, he (along with Khorloogiin Choibalsan) was part of a Mongol delegation that conveyed a letter from the Bogdo Khan to the Soviet authorities in Irkutsk, requesting assistance against the Chinese. When the renegade White forces of Roman Ungern von Sternberg entered Mongolia in late 1920, Sükhbaatar returned to Mongolia and was placed in command of the Mongolian People’s Partisans (9 February 1921). He was also elected to the new Provisional Government of Mongolia (13 March 1921). On 18 March 1921, he succeeded in driving the Chinese out of Khiatka, a day still celebrated as Army Day in Mongolia. Over the following months, he commanded Mongolian forces, in alliance with the Red Army and the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, in battles against the Chinese and Ungern, capturing Urga on 6 June 1921, and on 11 July 1921 was named minister of war in a new Mongolian government. On 5 November 1921, he was one of the signatories of the Soviet–Mongolian Treaty of Friendship in Moscow, where he met V. I. Lenin.

Sükhbaatar died suddenly, in early 1923, amid rumors of antigovernment plots, and theories persist that he was poisoned. In 1924, the Mongolian capital was renamed Ulaanbaatar (“Red Hero”) in his honor, and many statues of him were commissioned and raised (including an impressive equestrian one in Sükhbaatar Square, in the capital, that was coated in bronze in 2008). His portrait also adorned numerous Mongolian postage stamps, coins, and banknotes, and his name was given to a province, a district, and a city in Mongolia. In 1954, his remains were exhumed from his grave at Altan Ölgii and reinterred in a grandiose mausoleum (modeled on that of Lenin) on Sükhbaatar Square in the capital. When the mausoleum was dismantled in 2005, Sükhbaatar’s remains were cremated, and his ashes were reburied at Altan Ölgii.