Word: urga
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...14th century, when its conquering Khans ruled from Indonesia to the Danube, this ancient heartland has become the newest area in the growing clash between the two Communist rivals. Long an inaccessible province of China, Outer Mongolia became the first Soviet satellite when the Reds pursued the Whites into Urga (later Ulan Bator), and remained to establish the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924. For the next generation, Moscow monopolized Mongolia's diplomatic and trade relations to the exclusion of all foreigners, and particularly the Chinese. Mongolia's wool and hides went westward to Russia, in exchange...
During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks had no time for the Mongolian steppe lands. But in 1921 a Tsarist refugee, the fantastic "Bloody Baron" Michael von Ungern-Sternberg, made Outer Mongolia's metropolis, Urga (pop: 50,000), a base for operations against Russia. So the Bolsheviks liquidated him and moved into Urga, which they renamed Ulan Bator Khoto (Mongol for "City of the Red Hero...
...interpolated that hardly anything is known by the outside world concerning what goes on within the immense expanse of Outer Mongolia. Urga (the capital of Outer Mongolia) keeps an envoy in Moscow accredited to the Soviet Union. This man, notoriously secretive, refuses to talk with foreigners. Until recently he was accounted a nonentity in the Moscow diplomatic picture. However, there are indications that his status has altered. When Marshal Tito visited Moscow, the Mongolian envoy was invited to greet him at the airport by the protocol department of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and was introduced to the Yugoslav leader...
...other three routes, none as heavily-used as the Silk Road, are: 1) the 1,800-mile Sian-Urga motor road, once a caravan trail across the limitless sands of the Gobi Desert, 2) the 1,350-mile rail and road route from Kunming down to British Burma, and 3) the newly-built Chinese railroad from Kunming to Laokai, which connects with the French Indo-China railroad. Hundreds of miles of other new roads connecting these main routes to many parts of the new "New China" have also been built...
...which Joseph Stalin has not altogether had his way. Stubborn, the Mongols have gradually talked their Russian patrons out of many Communist innovations unsuited to such nomads as themselves. Today Urga is emphatically the capital of Outer Mongolia, not a mere dependency of Moscow. Mongol Premier Gendun, while he was Dictator Stalin's guest, drove a friendly bargain in Moscow but a bargain definitely to Outer Mongolia's advantage. But for the Russian arms, Russian machine guns and Russian bombing planes which have been rushed to Urga and were last week spectacularly unlimbered, Japanese-Manchurian Armies would soon...