Changing Mongolia Rediscovers Its Soul

Khurlee, a 34-year-old herdsman, had journeyed 400 miles to turn the prayer wheels of Gandan Monastery.

“My father recently died, and I came to pray that his future life will be good,” Khurlee said.

Dressed in a sheepskin robe and black fur cap, he had spun dozens of the holy bronze cylinders, which are believed to send a prayer to heaven with each rotation.

Khurlee’s long trip was necessary because in the 1930s, in an extension of the Stalinist terror that was then sweeping the Soviet Union, all monasteries in Mongolia were either razed or closed, except for Gandan.

Other targets in nearly 70 years of Communist rule have included Mongolia’s ancient script and the honor of its greatest hero, Genghis Khan.

But the winds of change sweeping across East Europe and the Soviet Union have penetrated this landlocked Asian country. Earlier this month, the ruling Communist Party replaced its entire top leadership, installing reformers pledged to transform the country into a multi-party democracy. But the changes under way here go far beyond the emergence of political pluralism.

Today, Mongolia is a nation caught up in rediscovering its soul.

Most dramatic is the renewal of open respect for Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol nation, who united warring tribes nearly 800 years ago and set them to conquering most of Asia and part of Europe. Now he rides again as a symbol of resurgent nationalism.

“For the rest of the world, especially for Europeans, Genghis Khan is a symbol of conquest, plunder and rape,” said Dugersurengiin Suhjargalmaa, a journalist with the state-run Montsame News Agency. “For the Mongolians, he is not. First of all, he’s the founder of a unified Mongol state. Then came all his conquests.”

The Russians were among those who suffered from this long-ago Mongol assault. So it is not surprising that after Soviet-backed Mongolian revolutionaries took power in 1921, establishing the world’s second Communist state, Genghis Khan was condemned as a militaristic feudal lord.

“Saying Genghis Khan’s name out loud--officials felt it was insulting to Russian friends, who were dominated for about 200 years by the Golden Horde,” Suhjargalmaa said.

Over the years, as the Soviet Union held political, military and economic dominance over Mongolia, Russian views and Russian culture seeped into many aspects of Mongolian life.

Even the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian was adopted for the Mongolian language, replacing the traditional cursive script and thereby cutting off young Mongolians from their literary heritage.

Those who were angered by Soviet domination and the destruction of Mongolian culture have found in Genghis Khan a symbol of national greatness, one with convenient and not-too-subtle anti-Russian overtones.

When political dissidents met in Ulan Bator last month to proclaim the creation of an opposition party and criticize the ruling Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party for its dependence on the Soviet Union, most of the delegates wore small gold pins bearing the likeness of Genghis Khan.

Even among Communist officials, there is anger about what has been lost, paired with a resurgence of pride in all things Mongolian.

“We have forgotten our customs and national traditions, which were deeply rooted in our history,” said L. Had, chief of an agricultural cooperative centered in the village of Altan Bulag. “Until recently, we did not even celebrate lunar New Year. There was no openness about our society’s problems. We have lost the roots of our national heritage.”

In the past few years, Had said, people have begun again to freely mark sacred hills in keeping with the customs of Tibetan Buddhism, traditionally dominant in Mongolia.

It has been reported in the Western press that the approximately 750 Buddhist monasteries and temples that existed at the time of the 1921 revolution were all destroyed, with the single exception of Gandan. But this is not quite true.

Two of Mongolia’s greatest monasteries--Amarbayasgalan and Erdene Dzuu--were shut down and damaged, but not demolished. Situated to the west of Ulan Bator, in Bulgan province, both are of major importance in Tibetan Buddhism. Both are to reopen soon for religious activity by monks and other worshipers, according to the government and opposition activists.

D. Baasan, a Gandan monk, said significant buildings remain at about 40 sites out of the original 750. He predicted that these surviving structures eventually will reopen for worship.

“It will depend on the believers,” Baasan said. “There is no need to wait, but we need some restoration work. I think if people are active, it will take two or three years.”

Other aspects of traditional culture are also being revived. The national costume, a brightly colored knee-length silk or woolen robe, which had become quite rare in the cities, is enjoying a renewed popularity.

Attempts have been made by the state-run news media to encourage the use of Mongolian words to replace adopted Russian terms that have found their way into the language.

Ulan Bator’s last statue of Stalin was taken down in February, and some people have called for the figure of Genghis Khan to be raised in its place. In all Mongolia, there is today only a single monument honoring the nation’s most famous leader, and that is in the remote village of his birth, far from the capital city.

It is a situation that the popular rock group Honkh, whose songs have become anthems of the opposition political movement, laments in the lyric of the song “Forgive Us”:

Great Emperor, Lord Genghis, our ancestor,

We fear even to speak of you, for we have been told never to acknowledge having heard your name. . . .

They have collected only what was bad in your life, making blind history and leaving us, your descendants, confused. . . .

There are hundreds of monuments, but none for you. We want to shout your name, but we can’t.

We, descendants of the Mongols of the blue sky, have become so pitiful. Forgive us.

No new statues of Genghis Khan have appeared yet. But filming is scheduled to start soon for a movie on his life. Calendars bear his portrait, and a new hotel going up in Ulan Bator is to be called the Genghis Khan.

“It is supposed to be a five-star hotel,” Suhjargalmaa, the journalist, said.

She expressed concern that the new hotel might fail to be worthy of Genghis Khan, who after all was a severe disciplinarian.

“I am afraid it will turn into a two-star, and we will bring shame on his name,” she said, an irreverent twinkle lighting her eyes. “If so, he would be the first to cut off our heads.”