|
MongoliaUnifying Structures
As the economy has developed, the population has increased,
the society has grown more differentiated, the people have come
to have less in common, and the need to coordinate and to
integrate their activities has become more pressing. The society
formerly was held together and was coordinated by a set of
unifying structures, of which the most significant were the
ruling party, the educational system, and a set of party-directed
organizations intended to enroll nearly every Mongolian in their
activities.
The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, like other ruling
communist parties, directed the activities of all enterprises and
large-scale organizations, from herding collectives to the
national government
(see Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party
, ch. 4). Collective farms and factories usually were run by the
first secretary of the local party branch, and the party made an
effort to recruit outstanding workers and people with leadership
and managerial potential. Party members belonged to two
organizations, their work unit and the party, and were the
intermediaries who linked enterprises and local communities with
the national political system. Party members constituted most of
the extensive ranks of administrators who ran the country on a
day-to-day basis. They were political generalists, generic
managers; those at the higher levels usually had been trained in
special party schools in the Soviet Union or in Ulaanbaatar.
In marked contrast with the past, almost all young Mongolians
were enrolled in schools in the 1980s
(see Education
, this ch.).
Eight years of schooling was claimed to be universal, and most
cities and centers of collectives offered ten-year schools,
usually with boarding facilities for the children of herders.
Literacy among young people was reportedly nearly universal, and
the schools provided explicit training in nationalism and party
ideology. Like schools in most countries, Mongolian schools also
provided the training in punctuality, respect for abstract rules
and standards, and participation in collective tasks needed to
prepare young people for employment in formal, bureaucratic
organizations, including the military services
(see Organization since 1968
, ch. 5).
A set of organizations--trade unions, children's Young
Pioneers, the Mongolian Revolutionary Youth League (modeled on
the Soviet Komsomol, for people between the ages of fifteen and
twenty-eight), the Mongolian Women's Committee, and various
sports and hobby groups--was intended to enroll every member of
the population and to ensure that citizens who were not members
of the elite party nonetheless were exposed to its ideology,
example, and leadership. Mass organizations were controlled by
the party
(see Mass Organizations
, ch. 4). Although the extent to
which mass organization actively enrolled and mobilized the
citizenry was unclear, they claimed huge memberships--94.7
percent of all laborers and office and professional workers in
state-owned enterprises belonged to trade unions in 1984; they
were obviously intended to unify the populace and to promote
identification with national goals
(see Trade Unions
, ch. 3). The
responsibilities of the Mongolian Women's Committee included "the
enlistment of women in the conscious performance of their civic
and labor duty," which was accomplished through such means as
annual rallies for female stockbreeders. By cutting across local
and regional boundaries, the mass organizations promoted
identification with the nation rather than the locality and with
vocational or avocational rather than regional or ethnic
interests.
Data as of June 1989
|
