Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal (originally Tserenpil) was born on 17 September 1916 to an unwed Dörbet mother in Bayan Chandamani Uula banner (modern Davst District, Uvs Province).

In September 1938, he returned to Mongolia and began working as an instructor at the Ulaanbaatar Financial College, a technical school attached to the Finance Ministry.

[1][2] After he was recommended to Mongolia's leader, Khorloogiin Choibalsan, by Soviet intelligence officer and diplomatic representative Ivan Alekseevich Ivanov, in 1939 Tsendenbal joined the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), and became deputy finance minister that March.

[1][2] Eventually though, Baasanjav was rehabilitated in 1957 and acknowledged as unjustly slandered and punished and as one of several high ranking government officials who were the victims of an "out of control Interior Ministry".

Though he was part of Choibalsan's inner circle, unlike him Tsedenbal was not enthusiastic about pan-Mongolian unification, and around 1950 instead supported the proposal advanced by several young party officials that Mongolia join the Soviet Union in order to achieve socialism.

Following Choibalsan's death in January 1952, Tsedenbal allied with second secretary Dashiin Damba to defeat a bid for power by hardliner Chimeddorjiyn Sürenjav, who was exiled to Moscow.

As premier, he immediately visited Moscow and Beijing (where the People's Republic of China had been established in 1949), and signed agreements which created the Trans-Mongolian Railway and an alliance between the countries.

The Mongolian Politburo initially created a special commission, headed by Bazaryn Shirendev, to re-examine the purges of the Choibalsan period.

At a central committee meeting in December 1964, three members handling economic issues, Tsogt-Ochiryn Lookhuuz, Baldandorjiin Nyambuu, and Bandiin Surmaajav, argued that living standards were declining, and criticized the party's "petit-bourgeois" attitude.

From 1963, Tsedenbal condemned many areas of emerging intellectual endeavor, including abstract art, new appreciation of Buddhist literature, and survey-based sociology, among others.

In a note written in 1963, he rejected Chinese suggestions that Mongolia, by being relegated to mining and light industry, was becoming a colony of the Soviet Union.

On his 60th birthday in 1976, he received another Order of Sükhbaatar at a "grand ceremony", an exhibition about him was opened in Ulaanbaatar, and a bronze bust was unveiled in Ulaangom, the center of his home province of Uvs.

[15] Mongolia under Tsedenbal increased its participation in international organizations, attempting first in 1955 to have the MPR join the United Nations (with the request being vetoed by the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan) and being admitted into the UN in 1961.

In 1974, Tsendenbal resigned as premier, handing the office to his underling Jambyn Batmönkh, and became chairman of the presidium of the People's Great Khural (head of state).

In 1982, he dismissed Shirendev, then the president of the Academy of Sciences; in December 1983, he linked Sampilyn Jalan-Aajav, the deputy head of state, to the 1963 "anti-party" group and internally exiled him.

In December 1988, Batmönkh called for greater openness in political and social affairs and the press blamed Tsedenbal and his "administrative command" methods for the country's stagnation, following the line of Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union.

Mongolia's new government planned to try Tsedenbal and other members of the MPRP Politburo on various charges, but by February 1991 he was considered too ill to face trial.

[2][1] Tsedenbal died on 20 April 1991 at a Moscow hospital from "bile duct cancer, purulent poisoning and chronic liver failure.

[20] His funeral was held at the Officers' Palace on 29 April, and he was buried (after some debate) with military honors at Altan-Ölgii National Cemetery in Ulaanbaatar.

[25] His Russian wife, Anastasia Filatova, was often said to be the most powerful political figure in Mongolia[26] due to her close relationship with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

His granddaughter Anastasia Tsedenbal (Анастасия Зоригновна Цэдэнбал), born in 1985, graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow State University as an African researcher.