Stalin had told Genden multiple times that he should get around to destroying Buddhist temples and purging the monks, but Genden refused to do so. Genden resented growing Soviet ambitions to control Mongolia and use it as their own satellite state, and at some point, Genden called the Soviets “Red Imperialists.” When Genden was in Moscow in 1935, he had a few too many vodkas (he was a very heavy drinker) and shouted at Stalin, “You bloody Georgian, you have become a virtual Russian Czar!” Yeah, that’s right. Genden told Stalin what everyone else was thinking years before they even knew they were thinking it.
But that’s not all: The tension swiftly escalated into physical conflict, and as the story goes, Stalin kicked Genden’s walking stick, Genden literally slapped Stalin across the face in return, and smashed Stalin’s pipe on the table. Thus he proved, in case anyone had forgotten, that the Mongolians have no fear, and they will slap mass-murdering dictators if they feel like it. Also that they hate smoking. (Kidding!)Though one moral of this story might sound like, “You will do Awesome things if you get drunk enough,” another moral is definitely, “You will face the consequences for your drunken antics.” Back in Mongolia, Genden was voted out of office for threatening Mongolian-Russian relations, and a couple years later Stalin had him arrested and executed for being a Japanese spy and conspiring with Buddhist radicals. Although, I guess, if you’ve got to die (and you pretty much were going to die soon under that regime), you might as well have smashed Stalin’s pipe while you were alive.
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