NOVEMBER 5, 1921
Question 1 from the Mongolian delegation: “Comrade Lenin, what is your view on the establishment of a People’s Revolutionary Party in our country, and what, in your opinion, is most crucial for us?”
Comrade Lenin explained to our delegation the international situation facing our country and pointed out that, due to Mongolia’s geographical location, imperialist powers—should war break out—would seek to seize our nation and turn it into a staging ground for military operations against another state. Therefore, Comrade Lenin stated, the only truly correct path for every working person in your country is to struggle for national and economic independence in alliance with the workers and peasants of Soviet Russia. Such a struggle cannot be waged in isolation; consequently, the formation of a party of Mongolian aarats is a prerequisite for the success of their struggle.
Question 2 from the Mongolian delegation: “Will the national liberation struggle be victorious?”
Comrade Lenin’s response:
“I myself have been engaged in revolutionary movements for thirty years, and from personal experience I know how difficult it is for any people to free themselves from both external and internal oppressors. Yet despite the fact that Mongolia is a pastoral country—and the vast majority of its population consists of nomadic herders—it has achieved remarkable successes in its revolution, and most importantly, it has secured these achievements through the…

CONVERSATION WITH THE DELEGATION OF THE MONGOLIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC
establishment of its own People’s Revolutionary Party, whose mission is to become a mass-based organization and to remain free from alien, extraneous elements.”
Question 3 from the Mongolian delegation: “Should the People’s Revolutionary Party be transformed into a Communist Party?”
Comrade Lenin’s response:
“I do not recommend this, for one party cannot simply ‘transform’ itself into another.” After elucidating the essence of the Communist Party as the party of the proletariat, Comrade Lenin said: “Revolutionaries still have much work to do in building up their state, their economy, and their culture—much more remains to be accomplished before the pastoral elements can be forged into a proletarian mass that will, in time, help bring about the ‘transformation’ of the People’s Revolutionary Party into a Communist Party. A mere change of nameplate is both harmful and dangerous.”
Comrade Lenin extensively developed for our delegation the idea that non‑capitalist development of the Mongolian People’s Republic is both possible and necessary—and that the primary condition for embarking on the path of non‑capitalist development is the intensification of the work of the People’s Revolutionary Party and the government. Through this work, and through the growing influence of the Party and the state, cooperatives will flourish, new forms of economic organization and of national culture will take root, and the aarats will rally around the Party and the government in pursuit of the country’s economic and cultural advancement. Only from those isolated pockets of a new economic order—created under the influence of the Party and the government—will a new, non‑capitalist economic system emerge in pastoral Mongolia.
First published in 1934 in the book “The Ninth Congress of the Mongolian
People’s Revolutionary Party (September 28–October 5, 1934).”
Ulaanbaatar, published by “Modern Mongolia.”

Printed according to the text of the book.