The spirit of Genghis Khan, which had been protected and exalted for centuries by loyal lamas (the name Tibetans and Mongols give to Buddhist monks), disappeared in 1937 at a Buddhist temple located on the banks of the Ay River at the foot of the Black Shankh Mountains in Central Mongolia. Throughout the 1930s, Stalin’s supporters executed thirty thousand Mongols because they opposed their culture and religion. Soldiers systematically turned monasteries into ruins, killed monks, violated nuns, broke sacred objects, looted libraries, burned holy books, and demolished temples. According to rumors, someone secretly rescued the symbol of Genghis Khan’s spirit kept at the Shankh Temple, smuggled it away to the capital Ulaanbaatar to hide it, and from there Genghis Khan’s spirit was lost.
In 1962, the country issued small stamp series in commemoration of the eight-hundredth anniversary of Genghis Khan’s birth. Tomor-ochir, the government’s second highest-ranking official, authorized the construction of a monument on the banks of the Onon River to mark Genghis Khan’s birthplace and supported the organization of a conference attended by scholars to evaluate the good and bad aspects of the Mongol Empire’s history. Both the stamp and the monument depicted the image of Genghis Khan’s lost sulde (spirit banner), the horsehair banner with which he conducted his conquests, and the place where his spirit rests in peace.
Even after approximately eight centuries, the sulde carried very deep emotional meanings for both the Mongols and the peoples they conquered. So much so that the Russians interpreted the depiction of the sulde on the stamp as a nationalist awakening and a potential threat. The Soviets reacted irrationally out of fear that their satellite states might choose an independent path or, worse, that Mongolia might grow closer to China, another neighbor who had once been the Soviet Union’s best friend but had become an adversary. Communist authorities in Mongolia blocked the printing of the stamps and the work of scholars. Party officials accused Tomor-ochir of treason, claiming he tended to idealize Genghis Khan’s role, dismissed him from office, exiled him within the country, and later killed him with an axe. The communists focused on the work of Mongolian scholars, whom they labeled Chinese spies, saboteurs, and troublemakers. In the subsequent anti-nationalist campaign, authoritarian archaeologist Perlee was imprisoned. Perlee was held under extremely harsh conditions for secretly researching the history of the Mongol Empire and for being Tomor-ochir’s teacher.
All teachers, historians, artists, poets, and singers connected to the history of Genghis Khan’s era were in danger. Authorities secretly executed some of them. Other scholars lost their jobs and were expelled from their homes with their families into the harsh Mongolian climate. They also lacked medical care and many were exiled to various remote areas across Mongolia’s vast open spaces.
During these purges, Genghis Khan’s spirit banner was completely lost and was most likely destroyed by the Soviets to punish the Mongol people.
Genghis Khan – Jack Weatherford
https://dtarihi.com/cengiz-hanin-1937de-kaybolan-ruh-sancagi-stalin-30-000-mogolu-neden-idam-etti/