MongoliaPolitical Issues
The political leadership style of Batmonh can be described as
cautious and pragmatic, and it explains in part why the senior
leadership levels in the party have escaped major shake-ups.
Under his leadership, the political program has focused on
bringing greater productivity, efficiency, and material
prosperity to society. Implementing this program, however, has
raised certain key political issues of central concern to Batmonh
and other top party leaders. One issue has been the performance
of the party and government bureaucracies. The official
bureaucracy has come under attack for apathy to reform measures
and for displays of resistance to their implementation. Another
major criticism, often related to those just cited, was that some
party and government leaders were considered either unqualified
or too inept to understand and to carry out reform programs.
In attempts to address this issue, party pronouncements have
stressed the participation and the accountability of officials at
all levels of the bureaucracy. This has been accomplished in some
measure at the provincial level by increasing participation of
aymag first secretaries on the party Central Committee.
Having them serve on this national body included them in the
policy debate and made them responsible for, and accountable for,
the effective implementation of policies and programs. In 1986
the Central Committee included fourteen of the eighteen first
secretaries, as either full or candidate members. Two of the
unrepresented aymags actually were represented indirectly
by having representatives on the Central Committee who had been
elected from the autonomous cities, Darhan and Erdenet, located
within those aymags. Two decades earlier, only a few
aymag first secretaries served on the party Central
Committee.
In 1989 the change that linked aymag leaders to the
national- level leadership probably did not indicate a major
decentralization of political power in Mongolia. Official policy
still followed precedents set in the Soviet Union that were
transmitted by the central party structure. Instead, these
"decentralizing" measures appeared to be inspired more by a
recognition of the nature of past economic stagnation and
failure. They were designed to provide aymag party leaders
with a substantial political stake in the regime in order to win
their much needed enthusiasm and commitment to the new reformist
goals.
Creative approaches and bold thinking were qualities that the
regime espoused to energize its often-complacent bureaucracy. At
the Nineteenth Congress in 1986, Batmonh echoed the reformist
thrust of Mikhail Gorbachev's speech to the preceding Twentyseventh Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Batmonh stressed that party members needed to "think and work in
new ways." He identified as the "chief political result of the
supreme forum of Mongolian Communists" (that is, the party
congress) the recognition that more attention had to be paid to
party ideological and organizational work and "to strengthening
inner-party democracy." Batmonh raised similar themes in his key
December 1988 plenary session speech. In discussing ideological
work within the party bureaucracy, he identified the main task as
being "to foster in people a scientific world outlook and further
raise their social consciousness."
Developing a program of "renewal and rejuvenation" has
precipitated as an issue the question of what should constitute
the official view of Mongolian history. Who were the heroes, and
who obstructed progress? By late 1988, Tsedenbal, for the first
time, was identified with the regime's economic failures because
economic stagnation and official dogmatism that stifled growth
and creativity flourished during his tenure. The charges leveled
against Tsedenbal during this revision of modern Mongolian
history also appeared to extend into the emotional area of the
fate and the status of indigenous Mongolian cultural institutions
and heritage. Calling for a "realistic appraisal" of Tsedenbal's
career, Batmonh said "we draw serious conclusions on the acts of
destroying historical and cultural monuments, monasteries and
temples. But that bitter lesson was not duly considered, and even
today a careless attitude to national culture persists." Filling
in what have been called "blank spots" in Mongolian history
appeared in mid-1989 to extend even to the historical treatment
of Chinggis Khan and perhaps can be viewed as one important
barometer of political change in Mongolia. Traditionally, the
Soviet press has described Chinggis as a "feudal and backward
element." By early 1989, the Mongolian press had adopted a more
positive view of this historic national figure, a change
suggesting that, politically, the Mongolian leadership has begun
to move somewhat out from under Soviet political tutelage.
Poster of People's Great Hural chairman
and party secretary general Jambyn Batmonh, 1988
Courtesy Allen H. Kassof
Data as of June 1989
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