Western Culture Creeps Into Soviet-Dominated Mongolia

At the Young People’s Cultural Center on a Sunday night, Mongolian girls with glitter on their cheeks and boys wearing narrow ties swivel to the disco beat of American singers Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston.

Upstairs, a 12-piece band belts out Mongolian hits from the 1930s as a more middle-aged crowd, some dressed in the traditional robe-like del and high black riding boots, swirl around the room.

In the winter, the capital of Ulan Bator is accessible only by plane from Moscow or a 30-hour train ride from Beijing. But despite the isolation, signs of Western influence are seeping into this stolidly socialist nation of 2 million.

Foreign visitors must pay hotel and transportation bills with U.S. dollars and are frequently stopped on the street by money-changers offering twice the official dollar rate for the Mongolian currency, the tugrik.

British Whiskey, U.S. Radio

At the “dollar store” in Ulan Bator, Mongolians with American or other Western money listen to a tape from a San Francisco radio program while buying British whiskey, American toiletries and Japanese radios.

English, still rare in a country where studying Russian is mandatory, is taught on prime-time national television with a series arranged through the British Embassy.

The foreign influence, however, is predominantly Russian. Thousands of Soviets--engineers, technical advisers, traders and soldiers--live and work in Ulan Bator. The visage of Lenin peers from statues and billboards around the city, and a war memorial jutting into the skyline from the top of a hill is dedicated to Soviet, not Mongolian, soldiers.

Central Ulan Bator--which means “Red Hero”--is a collection of Soviet-financed, columned government buildings and utilitarian apartment complexes, most painted in pleasant pastel shades of pink and yellow. Mongolia must import most of its consumer goods, and 80% of its trade is with the Soviet Union.

Mongolia adopted the Russian Cyrillic script in 1946, and all schoolchildren must study Russian from the 4th grade on. Study of the Mongolian script, suppressed for decades, was revived about four years ago, but classes begin only in the 7th grade.

Signs in the native script are rare, in contrast to China’s Inner Mongolia, where shops and offices frequently carry signs in Mongolian for the Mongolian minority of 3 million.

About 6,000 Mongolian university and research students, the nation’s best and brightest, study in the Soviet Union.

Drove Out Chinese in 1921

The dependence on Soviet political and cultural reinforcement goes back to 1921, when Soviet forces helped Mongolia drive out the Chinese who had occupied the country for more than 200 years and set up the world’s second Communist state.

Soviet-style socialism was in part Mongolia’s salvation, creating a well-cared-for and well-educated nation. The cost to Mongolian heritage, however, was high.

At the turn of the century, the Mongolian population was only 500,000 and in danger of being wiped out. Literacy was about 1%. Forty percent of the male population lived in the nation’s 750 Buddhist lamaseries--one reason for the declining population.

A Stalinist purge of the 1930s resulted in the closure of all monasteries and the murder of many monks. Today, the Gandan Monastery in Ulan Bator, with 160 monks, is the only functioning Buddhist temple in the country.

In the 1940s, the Mongolian script was suppressed, and in the 1950s there was a campaign to ban wearing of the native

costume.

Plans to celebrate the 800th birthday of the great Mongol warrior Genghis Khan in 1962 were scaled down as a result of Soviet displeasure.

Mongolian culture persists in both the del , the usual form of dress in the countryside, and the ger or yurt, the round, canvas-colored tent that is still home to about half of Ulan Bator’s 500,000 people.

In the countryside, semi-nomadic herding remains the main way of life despite collectivization of herds of sheep, horses, cows and camels.

“We need more settled animal husbandry to supply cities with meat and milk,” said O. Shagdarsuren, rector of the Mongolian State University.

Nomadic Values

But Shagdarsuren, who grew up in a herdsman’s family, said Mongolia should keep its nomadic ways. “In settled husbandry, people live for the animals. In nomadic husbandry, the animals are always working for man.”

Mongolia is also working to ensure that its human population, which occupies only a tiny part of this Western Europe-sized nation of steppes, deserts, forest land and mountains, will continue to grow.

A mother giving birth to her fourth child receives a 15-day vacation at a state rest house and is eligible for retirement at 50. More births mean greater salary and pension benefits, and a woman with eight children is awarded a “first class medal of famous mothers.”