

On 26 January 1920, Ivan Smirnov – Chairman of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee – sent an encrypted telegraph regarding Tuva to Moscow stating: " The Mongols have entered the province and ejected our peasants from the villages. In the 5th Congress of the Russian population in Uryankhay Krai in the summer of 1918, it was decided that the power would be transferred to the Uryankhay Regional Council of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers' Deputies, and with backing from the Russian SFSR, that a Soviet power would be established and would recognize the Tuvan people and allow them to create their own national state.

ĭuring the subsequent Russian Civil War, both Russian Whites and Reds, Mongols, as well as Chinese soldiers seeking to retake Mongolia and Tuva, were engaged in combat in the region. After the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the establishment of the Russian Republic, both it and Uryankhay Krai reaffirmed its status as a Russian protectorate. After a period of political uncertainty, the new republic became a protectorate of the Russian Empire in April 1914, known as Uryankhay Krai. As the Qing dynasty fell in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, revolutions in Mongolia were also occurring, leading to the independence of both Mongolia and the Tuvan Uryankhay Republic.

Since 1759, Tuva (then called Tannu Uriankhai) had been part of Mongolia, which in turn was a part of the territory of the Chinese Qing dynasty. Widely considered a puppet state of the Soviet Union, after a period of increased Soviet influence, in October 1944, the polity was annexed into the Russian SFSR (the largest constituent republic of the Soviet Union) at the request of the Tuvan parliament, ending twenty-three years of independence. The Soviet Union and Mongolia were the only countries to formally recognize it during its existence, in 19 respectively. The country was located in the same territory as the former Tuvan protectorate of Imperial Russia, known as Uryankhay Krai, north-west of Mongolia, and now corresponds to the Tuva Republic within the Russian Federation. The Tuvan People's Republic ( TPR Tuvan: Тыва Арат Республик, romanized: Tywa Arat Respublik Yanalif: Tьʙа Arat Respuʙlik, IPA: ), known as the Tannu Tuva People's Republic until 1926, was a partially recognized socialist republic that existed between 19.
