Soldier, politician and nationalist leader, Suke Bator is the hero of the Mongolian Revolution of 1921. Suke Bator (Damdingiin Sükhe-Bator) was born in 1893 in a poor family. This former artilleryman and printer embraces Russian revolutionary ideas and in 1919 he creates a clandestine political group that merges with that formed by Tchoï Balsan (Khorloghin Choibalsan, 1895-1952).
Suke Bator and Tchoï Balsan organise a resistance movement against the Chinese that occupy Urga again. In 1920 they go to Moscow together with other five Mongolian representatives to ask the newly formed U.S.S.R. to help them. Suke Bator takes part to the creation of the Mongolian People’s Army and sets up the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) together with Tchoï Balsan in March 1921. Suke Bator plays a major role in the liberation of the autonomous Mongolia from the presence of the white Russians and the Chinese with the help of the Red Army. He becomes the War minister of the Mongolian provisional revolutionary government set up in July 1921. The “Mongolian Lenin” prematurely dies in 1923 allegedly poisoned by the counter-revolutionaries. Tchoï Balsan, the “Mongolian Stalin”, lives much longer than him and sets up a dictatorial regime very similar to the Soviet model.