1929 Tuvan coup d'état

It occurred in January after the Tuvan government under Prime Minister Donduk Kuular attempted to implement nationalist, religious and anti-Soviet policies, including making Tibetan Buddhism the official religion.

Donduk, who opposed the influence of Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on his country, also favoured the introduction of religious education for all Tuvan youths.

In January 1929 during the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee, five of the youths educated in Moscow launched a successful coup d'état, deposing Prime Minister Donduk and his faction.

The new government launched a cultural revolution, not only purging about half of the Tuvan People's Revolutionary Party and coming down on the country's feudal landowners through collectivisation (as well as ending the New Economic Policy), but also persecuting lamas and other religious figures and destroying Buddhist temples and monasteries.

One of plotters, Salchak Toka, became the pro-Stalinist supreme leader of the country as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Tuvan People's Revolutionary Party.