ABSTRACT
Victory in the Second World War emboldened Mongolian society. As with many other peoples of Asia, the war forged a new collective identity among the Mongols as a people of a modern nation that opposed world fascism and won. The consequent increase of the USSR’s popularity in the international arena strengthened the Soviet-MPR alliance as well. The Mongols fully recognised their contribution as part of the socialist block headed by the Soviet Union and to the unifying victory of socialism over capitalism. (The 1940s in general were characterised by the growth of communist parties.) After the war, Outer Mongolia entered a period of international recognition. The main achievement was recognition by Guomindang China in January 1946 and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Chinese People’s Republic (CPR) in October 1949. The MPR also established diplomatic relations with the Korean People’s Democratic Republic (KPDR) in October 1948; with the People’s Republic of Albania (PRA) in May 1949; and with the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Polish People’s Republic (PPR), the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (PRB), the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSR), the Hungarian People’s Republic (HPR) and the Socialist Republic of Rumania (SRR) in April 1950. After three centuries of international relations, Mongolia achieved official
international recognition only in the middle of the twentieth century, thanks to the USSR’s promotion and support. The MPR became a fully legally established nation-state in the international arena, while at the same time Mongolian society was pulled into the Soviet orbit and Comintern and Soviet advisers brought the socialist experiment to the Mongolian steppes. Hardly any alternative ways of social development were open to the MPR in the second half of the twentieth century. Within the first five years after the war the social change that had begun in
1940-1941 continued: nomenklatura formation went on and social divisions among officials, soldiers, workers, arad and the intelligentsia deepened. Simultaneously, state control over the economy deepened and widened (including control over personal arad households) and pressure from new darga increased at the local level.
