A small wooden house that has stood for almost a century on the south side of Peace Avenue in central Ulaanbaatar was demolished in October 2019. The house had been the home of Mongolian Prime Minister P.Genden (1895-1937) and has long severed as the Memorial Museum for the Victims of Political Persecution. Demolition of the museum sparked public criticism; this was spearheaded by the ‘P.Genden Fund’, an NGO led by the politician’s grandson S.Bekhbat. According to him, the wooden house was no longer able to be used for the museum due to chronic aging which had affected 95 percent of the structure. The absence of the museum, however, will be temporary. It will be reconstructed and covered by glass. The 90-year-old, wooden house is to be reconstructed on the 1-4 stories of the tower.

However, construction of a 22-storey apartment building on the site of the museum has, allegedly, started illegally and without proper permission. On 25 March, officials from the Specialized Inspection Agency and Police Department stopped construction reports the Ulaanbaatar Governor’s Office.

Very few people were able to stand up to Soviet leader Josef Stalin in person. P.Genden was one such man. During meetings in Moscow the Mongolian Prime Minister was outspoken in his defence of political independence and his unwillingness to destroy the institutions of the Buddhism in his country. Stalin saw Genden as an obstacle – the Mongolian PM’s days were numbered. P.Genden was executed in Moscow on 26 November 1937. Following his death, a terrible purge was unleashed in Mongolia.

The number of people killed in the Mongolian purges is usually estimated to have been between 22,000 and 35,000 people, or about three to four percent of the country’s population at that time. Nearly 18,000 victims were the Buddhist lamas P.Genden was trying to protect.

P.Genden’s daughter G.Tserendulam opened the Memorial Museum for Victims of Political Persecution in 1992 for remembrance of the bloody event of the murder of tens of thousands of Mongolians by the communist leaders from the 1930’s to the mid 1950’s.