ABSTRACT
The history of Mongolia in the twentieth century is one of colossal strain. From the 1920s to the 1990s significant social transformations took place and new political systems, groups and elites emerged. Thus, from the end of the Qing Empire in 1911, the theocratic monarchy formed rapidly. After ten years it underwent the revolutionary uprising and became a republic in 1924. In the 1940s, the country irrevocably stood in the way of building socialism, and after enduring its crisis transformed into an open society that many observers believe to be one of the most democratic in Asia. At first glance, the speed of change appears to be amazing. Mongolia’s participation in major historical trends of the twentieth century (the Asiatic Renaissance and socialist revolution, civil and world wars, building its socialist state and its painful collapse, democratisation processes and the shock therapy of transition to a market economy) is evident. However, careful study of Mongolia’s history and thoughtful analysis reveal a pattern among all these changes. Events, however contradictory they may seem, are related and the past can be seen in the present. Russia has partly written off, partly restructured the debt of the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) to the former USSR, being motivated by its strategic interests in the region, and China has searched for possibilities to restore its pre-socialist dominance over the Mongolian economy and elite, while in Mongolia the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) has managed to maintain and consolidate its rule with a new democratic rhetoric. This book on the twentieth century history of Mongolia depicts socio-
political change in the socialist period with a special focus on the continuity of the social system and power models and the transformation or reconfiguration of social structures in crisis. My main approach is of a historian aiming at a longue durée vision and testing her findings with the instruments that recent discussions in social, political and behavioural sciences can suggest. These discussions deserve broader consideration by scholars in Mongol studies, which comprise key issues in the field and will be covered in the Historiography Sketch. The first decades of the socialist revolution are viewed as a transformation
period with various outcomes and analysed in particular detail. Within just
about thirty years (1921-1952) the Mongolian revolutionaries went from a tactical alliance with lamas and nobles (the noyon) to liquidating them as a social stratum, while the sharp struggle between ‘leftists’ and ‘rightists’ within the MPRP resulted in political change from monarchy to republic and led further to Kh. Choibalsan’s dictatorship and the reorientation of society from ‘non-capitalist development’ to building socialism. An explanation of how that rapid conversion actually took place would help us to understand the no less radical recent change in Mongolia, when at the beginning of the 1990s the country adopted a new Constitution and became a parliamentary republic, launching drastic reforms of reorienting the state to democratic and market economy institutions. By 2000, the MPRP had reconsolidated power; at the same time, along with democratic parties, it shaped nation-building policies and Mongolia’s new international image. At present, the country’s prospective participation in the East Asia energy and resource game may speed up the political system’s shift to a presidential republic and change the current balance of power, as well as the course of social reform. While studying these captivating periods of twentieth century Mongolian
history, I was preoccupied with a number of fundamental questions. How to determine continuity and change? What social structures and power models to outline? How far back in history to go to find the roots of elements notably present in twentieth century Mongolian society? What, if any, systemic preconditions make radical reform possible? Does reform destroy the social relations’ matrix? Instead of a schematic identification of ‘old’ and ‘new’ elements in Mon-
golian society, I start with an assumption that revolutionary change and transfer to the ‘non-capitalist way of development’ in the 1920s-1940s did not have an essentially novel character, but resulted from the merger of traditionally systemic and external factors. The integrity of Mongolian society provided by constant systemic elements (and firstly by nomadic pastoralism) becomes the key focus in my analysis. Acceptance, integration or rejection of external influences (for instance, Bolshevism) depends on various stabilising and destabilising factors latently present in the social structure. As far as the systemic balance was broken in the 1920s under the influence of fluctuating and random elements, fertile ground was created for the external innovations to take root in Mongolia and finally restructure the entire system. I endeavour to identify what external factors caused the strongest reaction among the internal ones that led the system to its structural transformation. In defining internal factors (and constant systemic elements) I tried not to go into discussions of ‘traditional society – modernisation’ or Asian ‘underdevelopment’, to avoid qualitative characteristics. I concur with theoreticians who call for more interaction between struc-
ture and agency. I view the social system and its agents first in terms of dynamics and second in historical perspective. By the 1960s, Mongolian society had been framed according to the USSR pattern, and the national nomenklatura was created. Evidently, such social change was not feasible
without individual contributions by the distinguished personalities of those times. The MPR had its own ‘heroes’ who provoked active social change during the whole twentieth century. Although the portraits of Mongolian revolutionary activists are important, they are not the main object of my analysis, since those individuals were in most cases produced by the society itself: sensing social potential and public trends, they were often capable of anticipating the direction of change and sometimes acted against the existing order. This book does not focus on whether and how those figures could influence the idea of reform and national development and frame the loyalties of social groups, and my critique of applying post-modernist discourses to the long-term historical process will be elaborated in the Historiography Sketch. I searched for the preconditions for social change in the dislocation of
Mongolian society’s structural elements and try to depict the most complete picture of diverse tendencies, identifying the key line of transformation. I use the approach briefly described above to analyse the original historical data extrapolated from the former Soviet and Mongolian archives1 and to a lesser extent statistical committees and field interviews.
