Mongolian Memories: Modern Mongolia and Its Twentieth Century History - Paperback

by Maaike Van Hoeflaken (Author)

The author lived and traveled in Mongolia from 1999 to 2006 working in development projects rebuilding the country's financial sector. In the course of her work she visited businesses and interviewed herders in the middle of the steppe, in their ger (yurt) or in the car. She also spent a great deal of time with her Mongolian colleagues listening in fascination to their stories about growing up in a mixture of communist ideology and traditional pastoralist traditions and read up on recent history. Using anecdotes from the years she lived, worked and traveled in Mongolia and interviews with elderly Mongolians as an entry point, Mongolian Memories demonstrates how twentieth century events shaped Mongolian society and, to this day, the livelihoods and thinking of the Mongolians. The book's historical narrative starts at beginning of the 20th century, when what is now Mongolia was a remote territory under Manchu control called Outer Mongolia. The geopolitical turmoil of the period - fall of the Manchu empire, Russian Revolution, WWI - enabled the Outer Mongolians to successfully fight for independence. The new nation started as a Buddhist state with its highest-ranking religious leader, the Bogd Khan, its head of state. In 1924, under influence of new ideas and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Mongolia became one of the first socialist people's republics. In the decades that followed, its increasingly authoritarian regime purged religion and all opposition to the Soviet-dominated communist ideal and became a satellite state of the Soviet Union. In 1939, the direction World War II would take was influenced by the Khalkh Gol battle on Mongolian territory when the Russians under command of General Zukhov, with support of the Mongolian troops, soundly defeated the Japanese. After World War II, Mongolia's economy developed rapidly with assistance of the Eastern bloc countries and - from time to time - the People's Republic of China as well. In just one century, the abjectly poor nomadic population of about six hundred thousand Mongols, unhealthy, illiterate, oppressed by the Manchus and their own nobles, and subservient to an archaic version of Buddhist Lamaist religion mixed with Shaman traditions, managed to build a nation, modernize their economy and vastly improve the levels of health, education, lifestyle and economic means of the whole population. Then the communist world imploded and the country transitioned from a centrally planned economy to the modern, market-driven and democratic state it is - including the deepening chasm between the haves and have-nots. An educated, independent and rowdy bunch of Mongolians numbering about 2.5 million stepped into the twenty-first century. They are uniquely Mongolian, modern and western oriented while retaining some of their nomadic pastoralist, animist and Buddhist roots - a fascinating mix brought to life in this book.