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| August 2005, Mongolia at 800 Conference GLOBALIZATION’S IMPACT
ON MONGOLIAN PART I: The Mongols, this previously unheard-of
nation that unexpectedly PART II: The historic science was the science,
which has been badly affected, PART III: For decades, Mongolia had subordinated
national identity to Soviet As the three quotations indicate, identity issues for the Mongolian peoples have always been complicated. As 2006 approaches, all eyes will turn to Mongolia’s 800th anniversary of statehood, which commemorates the 1206 kuriltai that confirmed Temujin’s hard-won military battles by naming him Khan--after decades of tribal leaders failing to form stable confederations which maintained the loyalty of their nomadic followers. At this momentous 1206 assembly, he took the sacred name of ‘Chinggis’, re-organized his army and administration, and chose the name Mongol (AKA Monggol) for both the united tribal entity (undes—nationality) and associated geo-political territory (ulus-nation). The mystery of the meaning of the word monggol fittingly embodies the mystery surrounding exactly who and what it represented. This same ambiguity continued through the centuries as the Mongolian Empire rose and waned, as the Mongol people united and split, and challenges the nation even into today’s globalized times. Mongolia’s globalization specialists are spending much time identifying priority sectors and developing objectives. For example, Dr. Nyamtseren has noted, “For any country it is inevitable to be involved in the global process of integration. Mongolia needs to analyse carefully an [sic] international economic global trends, find out where exactly Mongolia stands at this moment, how positively or negatively the trend affects Mongolian economy and to identify its own developmental concept, strategy and policy.” (Nyamtseren, 2000, pg. 140) However, it appears that economists and policy planners, Mongolian and foreign alike, first must step back and look at the issue of what is democratic Mongolia’s identity to be and how will integration into the world marketplace and community strengthen and preserve this identity. Athough this paper will concentrate on examining the impact of globalization on establishing a modern Mongolian identity, the issue must be placed within the historical context of discussion by others of the nature of earlier Mongolian identities. L. Munkh-Erdene at Hokkaido University analyzed Mongolian nationalism in the late 19th century to mid-1920s, prior to the firm establishment of socialism. He emphasized that the prime basis for Mongol statehood was the Borjigid lineage (Mongol ovogton) which perpetuated “the Mongol ulus as an historical community.” (Munkh-Erdene, 2004, pg. 2). Native Mongol chronicles glorified Chinggis Khan and his descendants as having divine origin and the Mongol people (Blue Mongol) were the heart of an Empire made up of other inferior peoples. Intermarriage with the conquered Chinese people during the Yuan Dynasty was prohibited to keep the bloodlines pure.
Chinggis and his lineage were the cement connecting the various Mongol peoples, regardless of geography. In later centuries after the breakup of the Mongolian Empire, Chinggis became the object of a special religious cult, particularly centered on the Ordos region of China where a sanctuary existed, supposedly housing his relics. In Mongolia proper, the importance of the Borjigid lineage continued through the Manchu Qing period, buttressed by a close tie to the Buddhist Church. According to Mongolian theory, the Borjigid line was a co-ruler of the Qing Empire through alliance with, not conquest by, the Manchu royal line. Mongols during the Qing period had a policy prohibiting intermarriage with Chinese. When this policy finally was changed by the Manchu Court, the Mongolian nobles in Urga who led the revolution sought independence from the Qing and its successor the Republic of China to preserve their lineage (their one origin, one blood). Some modern Mongol researchers believe that the Mongolian noble class did have a well established Mongol ulus and Mongol ovogton identity, and were seen by the Mongol commoners (arats and shabi) as exemplifying a very different identity from the Manchu-Chinese officials they hated. For all classes there was a genuine fear of Chinese cultural and physical assimilation which would lead to the disappearance of ‘Mongolness’. (Munkh-Erdene, 2004, pg. 3) However, Atwood does not believe the Mongols
before 1911 understood the concept of nationality--defined by customs,
language and ancestry, as different from citizenship, which is defined
by residence with one sovereign government. (Atwood, 1994) Kaplonski
seems to agree with Atwood, because he suggests that the Mongols
did not have a strong sense of ethnicity prior to the 20th century,
but rather only an identity based on “a limited locality,”
such as a tribe or even specific geographical location. (Kaplonski,
1998, pp. 36-37) Both viewpoints are disputed by Munkh-Erdene, who
maintains that during the late Qing period a new Mongol “ideology
included also anti-colonial, anti-assimilation, and anti-Chinese
elements…It was not and could not be a western type of civic
nationalism.” (Munkh-Erdene, 2004, pg. 4) Yet, Munkh-Erdene
does note that perhaps with the Khiagta Agreement in 1915 there
is a distinction in the way Mongols used undesten (nationality)
for Mongols in Mongolia proper, versus ovogton (all Mongol peoples
in general). He also indicates that Jamsarano in the late 1920s
refers to his ‘Mongolian tribes’ (undesten), which signifies
both his nationalism and his understanding of nation.
After the 1921 communist revolution in Urga, power was first consolidated in the hands of the revolutionaries by the deliberate crushing of aristocratic rule. However, the arrest and execution of many in the noble class, including those claiming direct relationship to Chinggis Khan, was a peculiar problem for the new socialist government. How could the Borjigid descendants be liquidated without liquidating the Mongol state? One solution to the problem was to abolish the use of all family and clan names in 1925: “It was purely for political reasons, to eliminate the influence of the nobility and destroy the hereditary status of their children. Two or three generations later, people here didn’t even know they had lost their clan names.” (“In Search of Sacred Names,” 2005) One of these people without memory of a clan name is Enkhbayar, former Prime Minister and recently elected new President of Mongolia. During the early socialist period Mongolia
needed to find a new identity, since it was tearing down its old
Borjigid aristocratic one. The Mongol land had to be glorified,
as well as the communist revolutionaries who had achieved independence
and beaten back the foreign occupiers of the last years of the Autonomous
period. One major contributor to forging the new identity that was
strongly linked to the physical Mongolian landscape was the poet
D. Natsagdorj, who was the editor of the newspaper A People’s
Warrior. Educated in Leningrad, Berlin and Leipzig, he wrote articles
about Mongolian history and the new MPRP for German magazines. In
1929 he returned to Mongolia where he wrote A Short History of Mongolia,
and translated many foreign novels. In the 1930s he wrote his best
dramas, including Admist Sad Hills, songs, and his great poem My
Motherland. His works were used by the communist state to extol
the new Mongolian identity: “In these poems filled with inspiration
the great poet sculpted the beautiful image of Native Land dear
to every Mongolian heart.” (Erdenebilig, 1986, pg. 21) In
fact, he was lauded as the inventor of a new genre in Mongolian
literature—propaganda poems. But supporters of the traditional Borjigid lineage standard of Mongol identity did not completely disappear under communism. Mongolia’s leading intellectual of the 20th century, Bimbaev Rinchen (1905-1977), was arrested in the late 1930s for being a ‘nationalist’, ‘Pan-Mongolist’ and anti-revolutionary. Even after his release he did not hide his respect for Chinggis Khan as a far-sighted world political leader. Rinchen’s life motto was “Mongolia must be Mongolian,” and some Mongol writers believe he was a strong influence on the young leaders of the 1990 Mongolia democratic revolution. (Sandag, 2000, pp. 149-151) Meanwhile, the Japanese in the 1930s believed that they could influence communist Mongolia to move toward their camp by promoting Pan-Mongolism and Chinggis Khan, following the same policy as they were pursuing in Inner Mongolia. The Mongolian leader Demid, who was accused of siding with the Japanese, was said to have proclaimed: “Let the Khalkhas return and restore the times of the Great Chingis; the Great Japan will help.” (Soni, 2002, pg. 120) Under pressure from Stalin, such leaders were systematically purged from the Mongolian Government. Several decades later in 1962 Mongols sought to reclaim their national identification with Chinggis on the 800th anniversary of his birth in Khenti aimag. A stone monument was secretly erected by the government, and a conference was organized by the Academy of Sciences to assess his historical role. While the conference was in progress, a critical telegram from Soviet Academician Zhukov, who maintained Chinggis Khan had only played a ‘reactionary’ role in Mongolian history, was sent to B. Shirendev at the Academy. Nevertheless, some Mongol intellectuals proceeded with their favorable re-evaluation of Chinggis’s role. Head of the Historical Committee, Academician Natsagdorj gave a lecture entitled “Chinggis as the Founder of the Mongol State,” which was reported on by the Party newspaper Unen. He stressed the positive benefits Chinggis had brought to Mongolia including unification, statehood, law codes, and literacy, versus the destructiveness of his military campaigns. Ts. Damdinsuren wrote a strong report against some of the critical Soviet scholars. (Dashpurev, 1992, pp. 61-62) Commemorative stamps even were issued by the Government.
The legacy of the failed attempt to resurrect Chinggis is seen by the fact that 10 years later, noted Mongolian historians Shirendub, Natsagdorj, Perle, and Bira in History of the Mongolian People’s Republic in 1973 criticized Chinese historians for being “apologists for Genghis Khan and his bloodthirsty deeds.” (pg. 54). They quoted Tsedenbal and the January 1963 report by B. Lkhamsuren at the Republican Conference on Problems of Ideological Work. The official history admitted there was some progressive significance to Chinggis Khan organizing the tribes in a single organic state, yet cautioned that “attention must be drawn to the quite obviously ruinous effects of the Genghis Khan conquests both on the peoples who were subdued and on Mongolia itself, the population of which was reduced and its productive forces dispersed over foreign lands.” (History of MPR, 1973, pg. 54 and nt. 120, pg. 518) The anti-Chinggis Khan line and disassociation of the founding father with the Mongol state continued to be maintained by the Mongolian government and intellectual establishment until the end of the socialist period. This was explained in the official history as: “The political unification of Mongolia in a single state could have helped towards a further advance in the country’s productive resources and its economic and cultural progress. The obstacle to this, however, was the aggressive policy of the Mongol feudal leaders headed by Genghis Khan, who turned the people into warriors and the country into a military camp. The aggressive campaigns of Genghis Khan and his successors against the peoples of China, Iran, Russia and other countries were a supreme disaster, since they held up for a long time the progressive development of those peoples. During these campaigns enormous material and cultural assets were destroyed and tens of thousands of people were wiped out. The aggressive wars of the Mongol feudal leaders also had the effect of halting the growth of the productive forces and culture of Mongolia itself and brought the Mongolian people nothing but sufferings.” (History of MPR, 1973, pg. 13) ________________________ In the 1989-1990 struggle by the young Mongolian democrats against communism, the leading political parties put forth a number of demands, one of which focused on Mongolian identity issues. They called for “The revival of traditional Mongolian culture, re-introduction of the old Mongolian script, rehabilitation of Genghis Khan and encouragement to Buddhism.” (Soni, 2002, pg. 223 quoting Faber, 1990, pg. 426) The founding father of Mongolia, dead 800 years, was suddenly pulled from the rubbish heap of history by young, historically ignorant Mongols seeking both to criticize their communist elders and find a new nationalistic identity. Rock musicians sang songs dedicated to the Great Khan. The nation’s number one band, Hongkh, stood next to a giant portrait of Chinggis and mournfully sang an apologia for the lack of respect of previous generations: “Will you forgive us?/For we used to focus/Only on the black spots of your life,/Distorting the record of history/And thus deceiving future generations.” (Kristof, 1990, pg. 23) The term “Bodgo Ejen” (saintly/holy/august Lord/Ruler) was found increasingly in opposition political newspapers and documents. (Ardchilal, 1990, pg. 4) This phenomenon was certainly initially home-grown. Mongol writers such as Sh. Sandag, when reviewing the communist past, have claimed that one of the main reasons Mongolia maintained its independence during the 20th century was because any country that produced such great world leaders as Chinggis Khan and Khubilai Khan could not have its statehood and cultural identity extinguished. (Sandag, 2000, pg. 170) In the beginning of 1990, prior to the downfall of the communist government, an organization called the “Palace of Chinggis Khan,” which was meant to represent the ovogton or large extended family descended from the world conqueror, was established by Khalkha Mongols claiming direct descent from him. This private social and cultural association was given much publicity in official and non-official newspapers as having the goal of the perpetuation of the memory of Chinggis. Yet the organization was open to all Mongols regardless of bloodlines, because Chinggis is the father of Mongolia and thus the ancestor of all Mongols. Daily prayers with incense in his honor were resumed after a more than a 60 year hiatus at the capital’s Gandan monastery. The Mongolian Revolutionary People’s Party (MPRP), in the midst of rejecting communist and reincarnating itself as a social-democratic party in 1990, was facing a national election and thus desired to identify with the growing nationalistic movement of the Great Khan. It permitted a modest public celebration in honor of Chinggis Khan’s birthday in May with a special edition newspaper full of articles on Chinggis, including an article by an astrologer which concluded that the Great Khan was conveniently born on May 1st (traditional communist May Day). The newspaper also included the text of the poem, “The Tomb of Chinggis,” composed by national poet. R. Choinon in the early 1960s, but until then banned from print as too chauvinistic and nationalistic. The nationalistic frenzy was fed by the events surrounding the “750th Anniversary of the Secret History of the Mongols Conference” held in Ulaanbaatar in August 1990. Although planning for the event had started years before and the Mongolian Government had obtained UNESCO support to celebrate the anniversary of the writing of this unique Mongolian historical epic, only small articles were placed in Unen explaining the conference. A nine-part stamp series, with only one stamp of Chinggis’ image, was planned. However, the winds of political reform and revived Mongolian nationalism caused the conference’s activists and young scholars to glorify the nation’s founder. A ballet for children and an opera were commissioned; songs and poems were written. A special exhibit devoted exclusively to works glorifying Chinggis was presented by the Mongol Artists Union, timed to correspond with the conference on the Secret History. In a Pan-Mongolist gesture, art pieces also were collected from well-known Inner Mongolian artists. Images of Chinggis appeared in the ‘black market’ and portraits bearing his injunction: “If my body dies, let it dies, but do not let my country die,” appeared everywhere. Also, there was an artistic movement to modify Chinese-stylized image of Chinggis in the style of the official Yuan dynastic portrait to make him appear less sinicized, younger, and more Mongol in physical appearance. Thus the Secret History Conference for Mongols became an explosion of long suppressed joy and pride. With the Democratic Revolution of 1990, Mongolians were able to focus not only on re-defining national identity, but also on restoring their own personal tribal and family identities. In 1991 President P. Ochirbat began the process with a decree restoring family names. People were permitted to choose their own name, yet over 60% chose the name of the clan of Chinggis, the Mongol ovogton, Borjigid. (“In Search of Sacred Names,” 2003) This is an indication of the strong identification Mongols continue to have to a common ancestor or common bone that is connected to the Borjigid royal lineage. With the shift to democracy, Mongolia in the 1990s was exposed to the modern western world and the whole issue of globalization. At first glance, it might be assumed that globalization’s impact on modern Mongolia’s identity would favor new urban Mongols over the traditional rural culture. Connecting Mongolia with the technologically diverse western world with its instant media would seemingly promote the new over the old, challenging the image of Mongolia in the minds of its people. However, globalization also enabled international cultural and ecological NGOS, such as U.N. organizations, to serve as funders and vocal supporters of preserving the traditional Mongolian cultural elements which had been under attack for so much of the 20th century. It is really the impact of these international cultural agencies which have supported many Mongols inside and outside the government in their re-examination of the question of “what is Mongolia’s identity?” This is the government’s particular challenge when formulating development strategies for Mongolia, in order to maintain Mongolia’s uniqueness and sovereignty, as the nation seeks to integrate itself more within the Asian region, which its long-standing Soviet ties prevented for over 70 centuries. Coming up with a modern reformulation of Mongolia’s identity for today’s globalized world is an issue that is discussed by Mongolia’s policymakers and strategic studies experts. For example, Dr. Ts. Batbayar from the Institute of Strategic Studies has written extensively on Mongolia’s search of a new post-Soviet identity. Noting that early Mongolian nationalism was submerged beneath the expansive push of both China and Russia, he claimed that in 1990 “independence rekindled the desire to rediscover Mongolian identity.” (Batbayar, 2002, pg. 17) For Batbayar, Mongolia’s identity must be a product of geography, of culture which includes Chinggis Khan, and of foreign policy. He believes that as Mongolia debates whether it belongs to Central Asia or Northeast Asia, it is actually debating if it will have a nomadic versus a modern identity. Batbayar and many other Mongolian policymakers have an obvious bias against nomadism—in fact implying that if Mongolia retains traditional nomadism, it cannot become modern. Thus, they reject the nomadic economic model which has sustained the nation and people in difficult climatic and geographical conditions over the centuries. Most of the western development and poverty alleviation experts who advise Mongolia, unfortunately to my mind, promote such a biased attitude. The embodiment of rejecting nomadism is Mongolian President Enkhbayar, who when Prime Minister famously stated: “It is not my desire to destroy the original Mongolian identity but in order to survive we have to stop being nomads.” (Murphy, 2001) However, some Mongolian economists, such as D. Byambasuren, are convinced that nomadism is one of the keys to Mongolian modern as well as traditional identity: “In the history of [sic] world, Mongols are known as nomadic herders, bearing the nomadic branch of traditional civilization tree at the edge of the 20-th century. Therefore, nomadic life values and culture are to appear as a main basis that determine national mentality and ways of survival of Mongols.” (Byambasuren, 2000, pg. 107) Also western anthropologists are confirming modern Mongolian anthropological views that Mongol nomads are freedom loving, individualistic, and quick learners. So, like the communists of a century ago, modern Mongolian policymakers have the dilemma of choosing what in traditional Mongolian culture to promote and what to denigrate and change. In the early 21st Century, it is apparent that the majority of these leaders choose to reject nomadism as a backward economic form, but somehow seek to retain and glorify the national father of Mongolian nomadism, Chinggis Khan. They can take this approach because, curiously, in the democratic era the Mongols have found that many westerners actually highly respect Chinggis Khan and his Empire rather than criticize them as ‘uncivilized’. We are now in the midst of a Chinggis Khan boom promoted by foreigners. The BBC has a one-hour documentary planned for release in 2005-6 that emphasizes his many contributions. New biographies by Jack Weatherford of MacCalester College and John Man of Britain have appeared., and are racking up good sales. Russian director Sergey Bodrov is planning a Hollywood-style epic on the young Chinggis called “The Mongol,” and there also is a much hyped film project on Chinggis announced by Hollywood actor, Steven Segal. British reporter Andrew Osborn has written that Chinggis, modern Mongolia’s sole historical figure capable of resurrecting a sense of greatness, is a “feel-good rallying point,” for a people increasingly disenchanted with the country’s supposedly democratic post-Communist rulers. (Osborn, 2005) Put less dramatically, Dr. Ts. Tsetsenbileg of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences maintains that: “Understanding how Mongolians view Genghis Khan throws light on how Mongolians view their own heritage and, to a certain extent, themselves. Within this rapidly changing world, Genghis Khan, if we acknowledge him without bias, can service as a moral anchor. He can be Mongolia’s root, its source of certainty at a time when many things are uncertain.” (“Mongolia sees Genghis,” May 10, 2005) Living between two giant neighbors which had little affection or nostalgia for the Mongolian Empire, the Mongols had become accustomed to foreign neighbors negatively evaluating their past. However, with the end of Mongolia’s isolation from the global marketplace in the 1990s, some western nations, particularly the United States, Canada, Australia, and Britain, which were not overrun by the Mongols and did not have any memory of destruction or murder to color their views, indicated they were favorably impressed by what they knew of Chinggis Khan and his empire. Mongolia soon clearly understood that the one thing almost everyone in the world did know about their country was Chinggis Khan, and for many of these foreigners, he was awe-inspiring rather than awful. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote: “He may have killed people by the millions, but he was also a great nationalist and one of the most brilliant commanders in history.” (Kristof, 1990) But how did westerners approach Chinggis and the imperial past in the “democratic” Mongolia? The founding father who had been a non-person for much of the 20th Century was the object of intense foreign curiosity. It appears that this curiosity dovetailed nicely with the Mongols’ new interest in using Chinggis for nationalistic purposes. Thus began the “selling” of Chinggis Khan. The first manifestation was the “Gurvan Gol” [‘Three Rivers’] Expedition of the Japanese and Mongolian Academy of Sciences from 1990-1993, sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Their fieldwork employed ultrasound technology and identified as many as 1380 underground cavities that could be tombs. However, the expedition was very controversial from the outset. The Japanese were accused of bribing Mongolian officials and secretly prospecting for minerals. The Mongol public protested any attempt to excavate for the grave because of the taboo about desecrating the burial spot Chinggis had made such a great attempt to hide from the world. However, the foreigners’ dream to find the tomb of Chinggis Khan just does not go away. For several years there has been an American expedition pressuring officials for permission to survey likely sites, and in 2005 this search has even been turned into a kind of archaeological tourism. It seems step by step the worldwide media, manipulated by foreigners seeking tomb booty and/or international fame, are complicit in pressing the Mongolian authorities to agree to search for the founding father’s burial site. (National Geographic, the History and Discovery channels, the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, etc.) To date, whether finding the tomb would actually help Mongolia define its own national identity has not been discussed. Another radical approach to Chinggis Khan, which has led to a new school of reinterpretation, is the American theory advanced by Dr. Paula Sabloff, that he actually was a democratic leader. (Sabloff, 2001). Even a practical Mongolian historian such as Batbayar cannot but be enthralled by the peculiar concept that his nation’s once despised founder is not associated just with murder, but with promoting democratic principles! (Batbayar, 2002, pg. 26) Many in the Mongolian intellectual establishment has enthusiastically embraced Chinggis Khan as the symbol of the new democratic Mongolia. They are proud that their founding father is recognized around the world as a great leader and that in 1995 The Washington Post named him “Man of the Millennium.” (“The era,” 1995) Even if he is not considered a democratic
national leader, it is clear that most of Mongolia’s contemporary
historians as well as the populace would agree with Baabar, who
wrote of Chinggis and his meaning for today’s Mongolians:
“For Mongols who traditionally revered their ancestors, Chinggis
Khaan was a god….Chinggis Khaan is something more than [a
national hero] for Mongols: their lodestar, spiritual force, and
the object of not only of national but of personal pride.”
(Baabar, 1999, pg. 34)
Among other Mongol peoples physically outside the independent nation, the search for national identity in our new interconnected world is similarly tortured and contorted. Bulag, who has established himself as an expert on Chinese Mongolian minority policies, has written of the Chinese ‘Inner’ Mongols: “What Mongols see of themselves in assessing the twentieth century is that they are weak and overwhelmed by the Chinese, and that they are themselves hopelessly divided, unable to either become a united people or defend their interests in the face of the combination of a powerful Chinese state and large-scale Chinese migration to Inner Mongolia. Their decline in this century is a sharp contrast to their history of glory and valor. The constant yearning for Chinggis Khan is, in this sense, a yearning for the recovery of Mongol prowess.” (Bulag, 2002, pp. 234-235) Bulag has noted that the Chinese cleverly appropriated Chinggis Khan in the 20th century and made him a Chinese hero—“The Only Chinese to defeat the Europeans.” Bulag sees this as a revision of Chinese multiculturalism theory, so that Mongol and other non-Han Chinese heroes, who were long denounced as China’s enemies, are now defined as Chinese. (Bulag, 2003, pg. 2) Yet, how Han nationalism, which was originally targeted against China’s historic enemies such as the Mongols and Manchus, could then embrace unwilling non-Han peoples as equals in the post-imperial period, becomes a real question. China’s absorption of Mongolia’s founding hero has been a century-long process. Much of the first half of the 20th century saw Inner Mongols under Chinese colonialism, which in the main erased Inner Mongolia as a viable independent political entity. Inner Mongolian grasslands were opened to Chinese agricultural development and settlement. Then, when the Japanese established control in Manchuria in the 1930s under the Manchuguo Government, they planned to permanently house the Ordos relics and memorial to Chinggis Khan in a massive mausoleum in Inner Mongolia to rally the Mongol tribes to their side in the fight to expand Japan’s Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere. Mongols supported by Pu Yi’s Daur (Darhad) Mongol wife Wan Rong, and the Daur General Guo Wenling, built a Chinggis Khan temple (completed on September 30, 1943), the central symbol of Mongol nationalism in eastern Inner Mongolia. This temple, Wang Yeh Maio, was “where the guardian spirit of the holy founder of the Mongol dynasty will be deeply revered, so that it may become a shining example for the creation of a united Great Asia.” (“Genghis Khan’s,” 1980). In independent, communist Mongolia since
the late 1920s, the Chinggis Khan cult was suppressed and local
shrines destroyed. When the Communist Chinese won the Chinese civil
war, the PRC government, to placate the Inner Mongols, constructed
a large Chinggis Khan mausoleum in 1954, remarkably similar in design
to the destroyed Japanese model. It consisted of three ger-shaped
buildings at Ejin Horoo Banner in the Ordos for the housing of treasures
and ‘relics’. There, the Darkhad guardians of the sanctuary
were confirmed in their positions and the PRC Government subsidized
annual sacrifices. (Bawden, 1968, pg. 417) It was officially dedicated
on April 8, 1956, the year of the Sino-Soviet split, so Chinese
officials also may have been trying to woo the goodwill of the Mongols
across the border. (“Genghis Khan’s,” 1980) Since the 1980s, Chinese have been flocking to the shrine of Chinggis Khan to worship him as a Chinese national hero. To Bulag such a phenomenon serves the interest of contemporary Chinese nationalism: “The Chinese cult of Chinggis Khan may be understood both as a statist attempt to accommodate minorities within China and as the exercise of a racial nationalism on the part of a victimized nation seeking to exact revenge for the humiliations of Euro-American and Japanese colonialisms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” (Bulag, 2002, pp. 2-3)\ How then have the Mongols reacted to all of this? Have the Mongols in China taken pride in the Chinese embrace of their national hero? A measure of the tension between Chinese and Inner Mongolian views of national identity as seen through the prism of Chinggis Khan is played out today over the plan for the government of China to spend about $20 million to renovate the mausoleum shrine built to Chinggis in the Ordos. A local, but well-connected Han Chinese businessman has proposed revamping the shrine into an entertainment complex and theme park, attractive to domestic and foreign tourists. Chinggis would be packaged by the Chinese as the founder of a great Chinese dynasty and a good tourist attraction in his own right. The shrine would be privatized and its maintenance taken away from the Darkhad to become a profitable Chinese Mongolian Disneyland! Inner Mongolian authorities in 2004 quietly had agreed to let construction begin on the new project. However, press accounts were published, revealing the construction plans. News spread quickly among the 3.9 million ethnic Mongolians in Inner Mongolia. In late 2004 campuses of the Inner Mongolian Normal University and other universities had to be sealed off, and a concert by the famous hard rock band from independent Mongolia, Hurd, was cancelled to stave off demonstrations. (Brooks, 2004) Darhad Mongol pickets gathered at the mausoleum site for over a month, forcing the local government in December 2004 to halt construction and sack the mausoleum/museum director. The sensitive issue has mobilized the Inner Mongols to resist further attempts at commercializing the shrine: “This shrine is ours. The state doesn’t own them [relics]--we do.” (Borjigin, 2005) Still, it is a good guess that the whole question of how to treat Chinggis Khan, and his importance in identity issues for both Han Chinese and Inner Mongols will continue to be a significant issue.
For Mongol groups still incorporated in the Russian state after the collapse of socialism in 1990, a re-examination of national identity issues, particularly when exposed to the successful independence movements in the Baltic and Central Asian republics, naturally took place. Buriats were annexed to the Russian state in treaties in 1689 and 1728, when the territories on both sides of Lake Baikal were separated from what is now indepdnent Mongolia. From that time until the early 20th century, the Buriat population increased from 27,700 to 300,000. Buriats to the west of Baikal (Irkutsk Buriats) were Christianized, ‘russified’, and took up sedentary agriculture. The eastern Buriats (Transbaikal Buriats) remained Lamaist Buddhists and some continued to be ger-dwelling. Under the Czarist government, Buddhism thrived and became an important factor in Buriat cultural development, as it was among the Khalkhas to the south. The Buddhist Church ceased to exist officially in the 1930s, during the Stalinist general persecution of religion. In 1958 the word ‘Mongol’ was removed from the name of the republic (Buriat ASSR). However, in the late 1980s there was a revival
of lamaism as part of Buriat Mongol national consolidation and spiritual
rebirth. (www.economicexpert) Contacts between Buriats and independent
Mongolia increased greatly during the democratic era. While certainly
having an opportunity to learn more about the father of the Mongolian
nation, Chinggis Khan, was one of the results of communication with
other Mongol groups and western nations, Buriat national identity
also was influenced by the revival of shamanism. Perhaps renewal
of shamanic practices was accepted as part of the revival of traditional
‘Russian’ forms of religious practices (which also included
Lamaism), and thus was more acceptable to Russian political authorities,
who feared any ‘pan-Mongolism’ movement. Conclusion Mongolia is trying to establish itself as a viable democratic, western-oriented, free market economy with a unique and valuable native culture. It is seeking to redefine its national identity and world image in terms that inspire its own people and at the same time revise any negative image left from its imperial past 800 years ago. “Mongols are seeing off the 20-th century with the crisis of ethical heritage.” (Byambasuren, 2000, pg. 109) The key to this search for a new identity appears to be the redefining and renewal of Chinggis Khan, the founder of both the Mongol state and nationality. As the historian Baabar told a foreign reporter in 2005: “He is the founder of our state, the root of our history. The communists very brutally cut us off from our traditions and history and got us to adopt the ways and views of Western civilization—with a red color of course, but still Western. Now we are becoming Mongols again.” (“Mongolia sees Genghis,” May 10, 2005) Byambasuren proclaims that at this period of new independence after the struggles of the 20th century, it is not wrong to be proud of the great Mongol Empire. He maintains that the only way Mongolia can progress in the world is if they themselves are healthy: “True essence of this phenomenon is that Mongols discovered themselves in a completely new way and started to restore their national values.” (Byambasuren, 2000, pg. 110) Most of the international response to this emerging Mongol identity has been positive. Mongols are no longer feared nor looked down upon as barbarians. In fact, foreigners have reacted very enthusiastically to preserving Mongolian culture and history, which has permitted the Mongols, regardless of where they live, to explore their roots and heritage with pride. The only caveat is that some foreigners may fall prey to using Chinggis Khan and his memory to promote their own value systems and thus, consciously or unconsciously, distort the entire Mongolian process of re-examining their history as they seek a modern, global identity. This challenge to “invent” a modern Mongolian identity in independent Mongolia is equally felt in other Mongol communities in China and Russia. Identity issues are even more significant for the growing Mongol immigrant communities living outside the traditional homelands, because they must struggle with what and how to preserve of Mongol culture while functioning in completely different societies. There is also the question of how should Mongol peoples respond to other cultures which are expropriating Mongolian iconic symbols as their own national heroes, as PRC China is deliberately doing. More of this may be coming since a February 2003 Oxford, England study published in The American Journal of Human Genetics on “The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols has estimated that Chinggis Khan’s blood lineage has more than 17 million direct descendants living today, although only one-fifth of present-day Mongolian men—one in every 200 people in the world! (Wade, 2003 and Poocha, 2005) Globalization acts as a catalyst for the urban Mongols to abandon the economic particularities of nomadic culture, and yet serves as a means to protect those very same features in rural areas. Integration within the Asian region and world economy will provide both opportunities and challenges in the future for Mongolia, as it struggles to define its post-socialist national identity. This is summed up by economist Byambasuren: “The world that Mongols enters into relation with is entering new development stage and undergoing transition. The world of the 21-th century is going to be entirely different from the one of the 20-th century. It is going to be the world that lives according [to] globalization and intellectual competition rules. In order to compete and obtain [its] own sustainable position Mongols should have new understanding of themselves and of [the] entire world.” (Byambasuren, 2000, pg. 118)
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