ABSTRACT
The war and Mongolia's position in the world The year 1940 was a critical one in Mongolia's evolution, marked by the adoption of a new constitution and a new programme of socialist development. The war which followed did not touch Mongolia directly till August 1945, but nevertheless it slowed down the tempo of her development, and 1948 is the most convenient starting point for the review of her recent progress. It was only then, the first year of the first five-year plan, that a real beginning was made in the programme of modernization which had brought about such a decisive change in Mongol society as compared with the pre-war years. And even so, it was not till the mid-'fifties, when foreign aid programmes, stimulated by China's intention to regain something of her lost position in Mongolia at Russia's expense, began to compete with each other to finance reconstruction, that any significant progress became apparent. Without wishing to belittle in any way the effort put into their country's modernization by the Mongols themselves, it is safe to assert that by I 966 more than ever before the Mongol economy was being carried by the more developed countries of the communist world. The USSR shoulders the major part of the burden, but the other countries of eastern Europe, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in particular, do their share as well. It is east Europeans and Russians who are, for example, responsible for financing and building the industrial complex being laid out at the new town of Darkhan, between Ulan Bator and the Russian frontier. Russian, Chinese and east European money, expertise, equipment and labour, supplied free or at low charges often remitted, have alone made possible the changes in Mongolian society which we shall look at in this chapter.
