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MongoliaSocialist Construction under Tsedenbal, 1952-84
Choybalsan died on January 26, 1952, and a major era in
modern Mongolian history came to an end. He was succeeded as
government leader by Tsedenbal who continued to be party general
secretary as well.
Economic developments and extensive purges of party and
government personnel marked the transition. In March 1953, a
party Central Committee plenum was convened to review the results
of the First Plan, and in November 1954, the Twelfth Party
Congress belatedly approved guidelines for the Second Five-Year
Plan (1953-57). A continuing major economic target included in
the plan was the development of the livestock sector, and a 72
percent increase in grain production over 1952 levels was
envisioned. Special attention also was paid to expanding
electrification and international economic cooperation. Also at
the Twelfth Congress, Dashiyn Damba was elected general
secretary, replacing Tsedenbal as party leader.
In 1956 the party Central Committee condemned the
"personality cult" of Choybalsan, specifically pointing out the
excesses of the 1937 to 1939 period. Claiming success for the
Second Plan, the Thirteenth Party Congress, March 17 to 22, 1958,
adopted a special Three-Year Plan (1958-60), aimed at raising
Mongolia from a livestock economy to an agricultural-industrial
economy, all with Soviet aid. New emphasis was placed on stepping
up industrial capacities--particularly in the coal mining,
electric power, and construction sectors--and on increasing
output of petroleum industry products, minerals, and nonferrous
ores
(see Industry
, ch. 3). Damba was reelected at the Thirteenth
Congress, only to be dismissed for ideological reasons and
replaced by Tsedenbal several months later. On July 6, 1960, the
government adopted the national Constitution that continued to be
in force in 1989
(see Constitutional Framework
, ch. 4). In
January 1962, Choybalsan's "personality cult" again was attacked
by the party Central Committee.
Foreign inputs and expansion of international contacts were
important to Mongolia's development plans in the 1950s. A result
of the close alliance of China and the Soviet Union during this
period was Sino-Soviet cooperation in developing Mongolia. In
1952 a ten-year Sino-Mongolian Agreement on Economic and Cultural
Cooperation marked an important step in developing relations
between the two long-estranged nations. China helped build
railroad lines, gave ruble aid and loans for construction
projects, and even sent large contingents of laborers in the mid-
1950s. Ulaanbaatar also subscribed to the anticolonial stance of
the 1955 Bandung Conference and adopted the
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence
(see Glossary; see also
Foreign Policy
, ch.
4). Relations were developed with countries beyond the communist
bloc--for example, India, Burma, Cambodia, nations in Africa and
the Middle East, and, later, Cuba.
Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1956, increasing Mongolia's
control over its own internal affairs. There were residual fears
of a renewed Chinese ascendancy, however, despite Mongolia's
signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance with
China on May 31, 1960, and the improved state of bilateral
affairs. Memories of Chinese claims to "lost territories"--a
theme, in Chinese foreign policy toward Mongolia, raised by Sun
Yat-sen in 1912; reiterated by Chiang Kai-shek in the 1920s and
by Mao Zedong in the 1930s; and, although rebuffed, raised at the
1945 Yalta Conference, when Chiang asserted China's claim to
suzerainty based on the 1924 treaty with the Soviet Union--were
strong in Mongolian consciousness.
Soon after the July 1961 Fourteenth Party Congress, Mongolia
had garnered enough support from communist countries and from the
Third World to be admitted to the United Nations in October 1961.
The following June, Mongolia joined the Soviet-sponsored Council
for Mutual Economic Assistance
(Comecon--see Glossary).
Mongolian-Soviet ties continued to be close during the 1960s;
additional aid was granted to Mongolia, and repayment deadlines
were extended. In October 1965, a new three-year Agreement on
Economic and Cultural Cooperation was signed. A twenty-year
Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, which
replaced the 1946 treaty, was the culmination of a state visit to
Ulaanbaatar by the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in January
1966. Soon after the signing of the friendship treaty, which
included a defense clause, there was a buildup in Mongolia of
Soviet troops and military infrastructure (including bases,
roads, airfields, sheltered fighter aircraft sites, radar
detection networks, communication lines, and missile sites).
Mongolia, more than ever, had become a front line of Soviet
defense against China. As part of its alliance with the Soviet
Union, Mongolia signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.
As relations with Moscow grew still closer, there was a
corresponding coolness in those with Beijing. Although a
difficult bilateral question was resolved with China in December
1962, when a border demarcation agreement was reached, by 1966
serious Mongolian-Chinese differences had surfaced. Chinese aid
was stopped; trade decreased to low levels; relations cooled. The
Chinese were angry over Ulaanbaatar's siding with Moscow in the
Sino-Soviet rift; Mongolia, observing the excesses of China's
Cultural Revolution, was concerned anew over China's designs on
its sovereignty.
After the Fifteenth Party Congress had approved new economic
plans in June 1966, Mongolia continued to try to transform its
nomadic economy into ranch-style livestock herding and to expand
its industrial sector. The economy, however, continued to have
severe problems. For example, poor weather plagued the country;
in 1967, blizzards caused a US$37 million loss in livestock
alone. Severe winters were followed by drought and by plummeting
harvests and exports. Planned increases in agricultural and
industrial production did not materialize, and the lack of raw
materials continued to hamper even light industry. Some of the
blame was placed on the pullout of Chinese economic and technical
assistance and the end of trade with China in consumer goods. It
was admitted, however, that the economy envisioned in the Fourth
Five-Year Plan (1966-70) had "not developed as rapidly as those
of fraternal socialist states," and, indeed, achievements fell
notably short of goals.
Large infusions of Soviet and Comecon aid eventually had
salutary effects in the early 1970s. High-level state visits were
exchanged in the 1969 to 1971 period, with the result that Moscow
agreed to underwrite the Fifth Five-Year Plan (1971-75). Soviet
economic difficulties in the early 1970s, however, had
repercussions for Mongolia. The Soviet Union started insisting
that trade quotas be honored, a move that caused economic
disruption just as Mongolia was recovering from the economic
distress of the late 1960s. Nevertheless, some economic progress
was achieved between 1971 and 1974, a period during which gross
industrial production rose by nearly 45 percent. Severe winters
continued to hurt the anticipated growth of livestock herds. By
the mid-1970s, direct business and other cooperative links had
been established between corresponding Mongolian and Soviet
ministries, departments, research institutes, and industries, and
cooperative ties also had been established between neighboring
Mongolian
aymags (see Glossary)
and Soviet oblasts.
More than 100,000 Soviet troops were garrisoned in Mongolia
in the early 1970s. Ulaanbaatar's anti-Chinese criticism
intensified during this period, ostensibly because of increased
numbers of Chinese military exercises along the frontier and
alleged anti-Mongolian subversive activities. Mongolia received
assurances that Soviet troops would remain; Brezhnev himself,
when in Ulaanbaatar, said that Beijing's demand for withdrawal of
Soviet troops from Mongolia, as a precondition for the
normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, was "absolutely
unacceptable."
After a decade of steady growth in party membership, a
dramatic change occurred in the composition of those attending
the Sixteenth Party Congress in July 1971. Although membership on
the Political Bureau, the Central Committee, and the Secretariat
remained stable, 82 percent of the delegates were new. As the
decade continued, changes at the top began to emerge. In June
1974, Tsedenbal, while retaining his position as general
secretary of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, resigned
as chairman of the Council of Ministers--the premiership--to
become chairman of the People's Great Hural, the de facto
president of Mongolia. The former rector of the Mongolian State
University, Jambyn Batmonh, in a move presaging the succession a
decade later, was appointed premier; he also was elevated to the
party Political Bureau. After these changes, the party leadership
was more stable. The closeness of Mongolian-Soviet relations was
manifested by meetings in October 1976 in Moscow among Tsedenbal,
Batmonh, and three other party Political Bureau members and the
Soviet Communist Party general secretary Leonid Brezhnev; the
president, Nikolai Podgorny; and the premier, Alexei Kosygin.
While the talks were described as "fraternal," they also were
characterized as "frank," probably because of increased Mongolian
demands for economic aid. Soviet aid was forthcoming for the
Sixth Five-Year Plan (1976-80), primarily in support of
agriculture, mining, fuel, power, food, and light industries.
Mongolian relations with Beijing--following Moscow's lead--were
less hostile in the years after the 1976 death of Mao, but fears
of China's "predatory aspirations" still lingered in Ulaanbaatar.
In 1980 Chinese nationals were expelled from Mongolia on charges
ranging from gambling and drug use to public disorder and
espionage.
Severe weather in the winter of 1976 to 1977 caused some of
the worst damage to animal husbandry in a decade. Heavy
snowfalls, severe frosts, disease, starvation, and mismanagement
combined to create a perilous economic situation. Recovery was
slow, and livestock targets were overestimated continually
throughout the rest of the 1970s. Developments in other economic
sectors, such as mining and irrigated farming, saw some
improvement during the period, however.
The 1980s began with some improvements in the economy, but
also with a number of top party and state leadership changes,
culminating in the end of Tsedenbal's rule. While Tsedenbal was
in Moscow in August 1984, special sessions of the party and the
People's Great Hural were held to announce his retirement.
Batmonh replaced the reportedly ailing party head, amid tributes
to Tsedenbal's forty-four-year career as an "outstanding leader"
and "very close friend." In December 1984, Batmonh also was
elevated to the chairmanship of the Presidium of the People's
Great Hural, and Vice Premier Dumaagiyn Sodnom became premier as
Mongolia embarked on historic reforms
(see The Political Process
, ch. 4).
* * *
A number of scholarly sources provide the basic framework for
studying Mongolian history. René Grousset's The Empire of the
Steppes provides a detailed historical analysis of Mongolian
history from the Scythian period to the annexation of Mongolia by
the Manchus. David Morgan's The Mongols provides a
succinct account of the high point of Mongol history in the
thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. A more general treatment
of Mongol history in the context of general Asian history is in
East Asia: Tradition and Transformation by John K.
Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig. Key sources
for those studying Mongolian history are two translated works
under the same title, History of the Mongolian People's
Republic--a condensed Soviet translation of a larger
Russian/Mongolian edition by Soviet and Mongolian academicians,
which covers the history of Mongolia from the stone age to 1971--
and an American translation and annotation of volume three of an
original Mongolian work written by Mongolian scholars, which
covers the years 1921 to 1966. A detailed documentary history of
Mongolia's independence movement is Urgunge Onon and Derrick
Pritchatt's Asia's First Modern Revolution. Several works
by Denis Sinor and Sechin Jagchid also are important
contributions. Mongolia's Culture and Society, by Jagchid
and Paul Hyer, provides excellent background on the historical
development of Mongolia. A seminal work on the modern period,
which includes an extensive chronology and bibliography, is
Robert A. Rupen's Mongols of the Twentieth Century. The
Minorities of Northern China by Henry G. Schwarz and
Russia and the Golden Horde by Charles J. Halperin provide
useful information on Mongol integration into neighboring
cultures. For those interested in original source material,
The Secret History of the Mongols, translated by Francis
Woodman Cleaves, should be consulted. (For further information
and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of June 1989
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