An American in Mongolia: Part IV

Society & Political Life

Times are not always the same; the grass is not always green. –Mongol Proverb

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Democracy since 1990 has triggered a revitalization of Mongolian traditional culture, though it hasn’t served to preserve it. The free market capitalist system that was adopted alongside of the democratic governmental system has been a destructive force for Mongolian culture while helping to bring innovative industries and foreign aid to stimulate the economy. Whenever tackling a topic as potentially controversial and confusing as this one, particularly as an outsider, and therefore a cultural illiterate, the very first thing to define is terms. The governmental system of democracy itself hasn’t necessary brought ill affects (that is, the degradation of/or) upon Mongolian culture and society per-say. However the free market economic system that was adopted along side of the democratic governmental system certainly has helped to bring contemporary era (style) globalization to Mongolia.

I use the peculiar phraseology of contemporary era style globalization because it can be argued that the Mongols, and Chinggis Khan5 in particular, were the first harbingers of the menace of globalization, and were the founders of the concept. Author and anthropologist Jack Weatherford was one of a six-person team of researchers from various disciplines and nationalities (American, British, Russian, and Mongolian) who had the privilege of being involved in the interpretation and translation of The Secret History of the Mongols, one of the only historical accounts by Mongols about the Mongols written in the newly introduced Mongol Script during the reign of Chinggis Khan. In his book about the journey and all that he uncovered, Genghis Khan: and the Making of the Modern World, he makes observations garnered from field research at historical sites. It is his reading of the Secret History that lead me to make this claim about the Mongols and the early manifestations of globalization. He describes in detail the creation and regulation of paper currency throughout the many states governed by the Mongols, religious freedoms granted to all of the satellite states, diplomatic immunity ensured by proto-passports, and a complex and effective minuteman system: from Baghdad to Kiev to Beijing to Istambul.

With contemporary age globalization inevitably comes Mongolia’s consumption and absorption of varieties world popular culture with dimensions of Mongolia’s long, previously, and carefully (both voluntary and involuntary) preserved values and tradition getting lost or assimilated into the swiftly evolving, post-modern, multi-cultural, high-tech hodgepodge that as of yet is difficult to come to terms with. Indeed it seems in our day and age “free market” and “democracy” (a word usually used in reference to what is actually a republic) are treated as synonyms, or are at least always associated with one another, and while they may well be intrinsically intertwined, they are definitely not the same thing.

Certainly, there are always unintended consequences of every institutionalized system, economic or governmental. In this case the democratic system has opened up a great deal of space for citizenry to take up traditional cultural practices that were once deemed too nationalistic, religious, or bourgeois to exist under socialism. At the same time, it seems that socialism has had the crippling effect upon Mongolians that they are still uncomfortable with deviating from the usual; that is, exercising their full creative potential, engaging civically and spiritually and ethically. A great deal of history and tradition was also lost during the reign of the M(ongolian) P(eople’s) R(evolutionary) P(arty), an extended claw of Soviet repression, perhaps forever.

Of course, one would be foolish to ever assume that society or culture is static.


Even in a closed society, and indeed in a society that is practicing painstakingly well-monitored isolationism as an experiment in socialism as a satellite of the Soviet Union, there will be small tremors of creativity in the realms of the spiritual, the artistic, and the righteous. The Mongols have a lengthy history of being declared under various ruler-ships while also at one time claiming an empire that encompassed most of the known world. The Mongols have never been a static society. They have instead nurtured an attitude of openness, tolerance and interest in visitors and foreigners. This attitude is expressed in daily elaborate rituals of hospitality, and is a symptom not only of nomadism, which is inherently an isolated and individualistic existence anyway (while at the same time very much oriented towards community), but also of this history of fluctuating boundaries and imperial regimes. Thus, the Mongols are particularly susceptible to the influence of other cultures, pragmatically oriented as a herder must be to fulfill the needs of her difficult existence, she can easily integrate that which is practical when it is introduced to her.