Conclusion

The election system reform of 1952 reflected the self-confidence of the political elite. The Ninth Great People’s Khural bestowed equal election rights to all citizens, but due to the absence of choice, the right to vote was meaningless. On 13 June 1954, the MPR’s citizens ‘unanimously’ voted for the MPRP’s candidates promoted by the party itself to the new Great Khural. The Twelfth MPRP Congress in November 1954 adopted a new five-year

plan for 1953-1957, emphasising the acceleration of arad household cooperation. To achieve this, it was vital to increase the attractiveness of all types of cooperatives and the reform of 1955 became a crucial step in this respect. According to the resolution of the MPRP CC and the Council of Ministers, an industrial specialisation was introduced in the goskhozes with an industrial brigade as a key form of labour organisation. Socialist collectivism was reaffirmed: without affiliation with a brigade, party cell or any other socialist institution, a person did not exist. Was there anything really new in these socialist collective practices for the Mongolian nomadic pastoralists? To attain a common social, socio-economic and political goal any society, group or polity rediscovers its common ground, especially during war, battue hunts or natural disaster. Over centuries, the Mongols had formulated mechanisms of consolidation (next to the principle of dispersal1). The normative social order and hierarchies in relationships (the social cult of bagsh, darga, ‘natural-qan’) did not dissolve during socialist times. In a certain way the new socialist structures and institutions, although imposed from above, did not essentially contradict the corporative system and patterns of social relationships in nomadic pastoral society. In 1955, the state and party structures reinforced their efforts to improve

the pastoral economy, whose development they sought solely by supporting cooperatives. A quota on the number of cattle owned by one household was introduced and legalised only for cooperative members. A Common Statute on Agricultural Cooperatives was published. That document once again postulated the already known quintessence of the new socio-political order: party and state organs possessed the supra-legal power to interfere in ruling

the economy. In 1954-1957 activist-volunteers recruited by urban party cadres were sent to the hödöö to increase agricultural productivity. Though those volunteers’ ‘village raids’ became regular,2 they still were not on the same scale as state-controlled urban-rural labour migration in the USSR. Mongolian ‘volunteers’ were often born in the hödöö and might have even desired to return to their homelands after completing their education in the city. The government started encouraging the realisation of industrial plans on

a daily basis and organising competitions among working people. Pensions were introduced for the elderly and invalids. As a result of these measures, the quality of labour in the cooperatives finally increased after 1955 in parallel to their growing social prestige. Beginning in 1957, particularly successful employees were nominated for the ‘the MPR’s labour hero’ title; after 1959, the system of state rewards broadened and became more complex, so that in the mid-1970s annual courses were even organised for the arad to learn about all existing payments and awards. By the end of March 1959, 99.3 per cent of households were integrated into cooperatives.3 This number evidently taken by Rosenberg from the official sources should not be deemed precise. However, there is much more behind the numbers: the prevailing majority of the population received social guarantees, various rewards for their work and some access to social privileges. By the 1960s, the life of an average Mongolian arad had qualitatively changed. Loyalty to the existing political regime, party and local administration, and the motivation to work harder, were supported economically and by social moral norms of employment in the socialist sector of economy, the only legal sector in the MPR. Official recognition of achievements in work and social life in the form of medals, prizes and other awards became the driving force of the socialist system of the 1960s-1970s. People were now personally motivated and involved in supporting the collective economy. Beyond pure profit motives, they liked the idea of being important participants in the processes of social and economic development. Naturally, such ideas were a mere ideological product. Nevertheless, the loyalty to collective social ideals, however illusory, given the effectiveness of the MPRP ideological campaigns, already lived a life of its own, giving a new image to the society as a whole. That was social adaptation in socialist Mongolia in the twentieth century. (The extreme repressive political measures of the 1920s-1940s remained in the past, and after Choibalsan’s death, citizens did not experience such strong social shocks.) Social protests do not often emerge when people’s lives are improving, but

that is what happened in the early 1970s. General material well-being increased. Medical, educational and other social institution networks spread throughout the country. The free veterinary service was particularly valued by the arad. Improved industrial technology and new equipment supplied by the USSR increased labour productivity. Gradually, the five-year plans (and the three-year plan of 1958-1960)

became more concrete. The local darga and arad demonstrated their motivation not to fail and preferably to surpass the norms of production imposed

on them from the top. More and more people were becoming involved in socialist competitions. The USSR and other socialist countries (particularly CSR, GDR and

PPR) increased investment capital in Mongolian industries, especially oil and mines. The Soviet Union supplied Mongolia with machine tools, motor vehicles, agricultural equipment and airplanes, and guided the construction of airports and broad-gauge railways. By the end of the 1950s, the improvement of the trade and service sector

was on the agenda of public discussions. New modern terms and concepts appeared, that 15 years earlier no one could have even foreseen, such as rationalisation and automation. In 1960, a new Constitution was ‘unanimously adopted’. It proclaimed

the MPR as a ‘socialist state of workers, cooperative arad and working intelligentsia, based on the union of the working class and the cooperative arad’.4 That statement only reaffirmed the official falsification of twentieth century history. The vanguard proletariat was said to be the driving force in revolutionary change in the first part of the century. In reality, as described in previous chapters, a thin social stratum of workers was artificial, while the key contributors to revolutionary change in the early stages (1921-1928) were the ‘oppositional and reactionary class’ of the noyon and lamas.