Socialist and PostSocialist Mongolia: Nation, Identity, and Culture (Central Asian Studies)

The political system of early socialist-era Mongolia, established by the first Constitution in 1924, can be interpreted as a vernacular version of the Soviet system, in which the formally supreme representative body, the State Great Khural (“assembly”), was sidelined by the standing Presidium of the Small Khural and the Cabinet, and eclipsed by the non-constitutional party authorities. The establishment of this sham and nominal parliamentary system was a consequence of the Bolshevik new imperialism, the inclusion of the Mongolian People's Republic into the informal Soviet empire, which occurred through both military control and structural adjustments under the supervision of the Communist International. The 1924 Mongolian Constitution, however, was not a mere copy of its Soviet 1918 and 1924 counterparts but a transimperial document. In its text and especially in the history of its making, it reflected the entangled imperial transformations of the Russian and Qing empires and featured both indigenous (Khalkha and Buryad-Mongol) agency and vernacular political discourses. Khural existed as a non-representative yet deliberative consultative assembly in 1914-1919, while Tsebeen Jamtsarano attempted to make a Mongolian khural one of the many world parliaments, even though his draft constitution was affected by the practices of revolutionary Russia This book re-examines the origins of modern Mongolian nationalism, discussing nation building as sponsored by the socialist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and the Soviet Union and emphasizing in particular the role of the arts and the humanities. It considers the politics and society of the early revolutionary period and assesses the ways in which ideas about nationhood were constructed in a response to Soviet socialism. It goes on to analyze the consequences of socialist cultural and social transformations on pastoral, Kazakh, and other identities and outlines the implications of socialist nation building on post-socialist Mongolian national identity. Overall, Socialist and Post-Socialist Mongolia highlights how Mongolia's population of widely scattered seminomadic pastoralists posed challenges for socialist administrators attempting to create a homogenous mass nation of individual citizens who share a set of cultural beliefs, historical memories, collective symbols, and civic ideas; additionally, the book addresses the changes brought more recently by democratic governance.Chapters 2 and 3 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. This book re-examines the origins of modern Mongolian nationalism, discussing nation building as sponsored by the socialist Mongolian Peoples Revolutionary Party and the Soviet Union and emphasizing in particular the role of the arts and the humanities. It considers the politics and society of the early revolutionary period and assesses the ways in which ideas about nationhood were constructed in a response to Soviet socialism. It goes on to analyze the consequences of socialist cultural and social transformations on pastoral, Kazakh, and other identities and outlines the implications of socialist nation building on post-socialist Mongolian national identity. Overall, Socialist and Post-Socialist Mongolia highlights how Mongolias population of widely scattered seminomadic pastoralists posed challenges for socialist administrators attempting to create a homogenous mass nation of individual citizens who share a set of cultural beliefs, historical memories, collective symbols, and civic ideas; additionally, the book addresses the changes brought more recently by democratic governance. Chapters 2 and 3 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. "This book re-examines the origins of modern Mongolian nationalism, discussing nation building as sponsored by the socialist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and the Soviet Union, emphasizing in particular the role of the arts and the humanities. It considers the politics and society of the early revolutionary period and assesses the ways in which ideas about nationhood were constructed in a response to Soviet socialism. It goes on to analyze the consequences of socialist cultural and social transformations on pastoral, Kazakh, and other identities and outlines the implications of socialist nation-building on post-socialist Mongolian national identity. Overall, Socialist and Post-Socialist Mongolia highlights how Mongolia's population of widely scattered semi-nomadic pastoralists posed challenges for socialist administrators attempting to create a homogenous mass nation of individual citizens who share a set of cultural beliefs, historical memories, collective symbols, and civic ideas; additionally, the book addresses the changes brought more recently by democratic governance"-- Provided by publisher