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MongoliaChannels of Social Mobility
There was a single, well-defined track for social mobility,
which led through the school system and the youth organizations
of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party. The keys to upward
mobility were good academic performance, including command of
Russian, and political reliability, as evidenced either by
membership in the Mongolian Revolutionary Youth League or by
recommendations of administrators and party members. The party
controlled job assignments and promotions at all but the most
basic levels, and its favor was necessary for significant upward
mobility. Advanced study in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe
was both a reward for good performance and a qualification for
further career advancement. Military service, which until 1988
was three years for almost all young men, did not in itself
confer any particular advantage on veterans, although it was
possible for soldiers with secondary educations who had performed
exceptionally well to be commissioned as officers
(see Organization since 1968
, ch. 5). It was possible for children of
herders in the most remote regions to progress, through
examinations and recommendations, to the Mongolian State
University and on to further training in the Soviet Union or the
German Democratic Republic (East Germany). A 1981 account of an
eight-year school in a herding cooperative revealed that half of
the sixteen-year-olds completing the course left school to become
herders, while the other half went on to two more years of
secondary school in the aymag seat, from which they could
go to white-collar jobs or to further vocational or general
education.
In the late 1980s, the government was discussing a range of
economic reforms, including increased use of the contract system
as well as relaxed controls on privately owned livestock, on the
development of cooperatives, and on individual labor. To the
extent that such reforms were implemented, they would open an
additional channel for social mobility for those who had not been
favored by the monolithic system that had controlled occupational
movement and advancement.
Data as of June 1989
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