Reform and the birth of democracy

Mongolia’s third constitution, adopted in 1960, which renamed the national assembly the People’s Great Khural (PGK), marked the beginning of the country’s transition—with Soviet assistance—to a modern industrial-agricultural society. Darkhan, now one of Mongolia’s largest towns, was founded in 1961. Television broadcasting began in September 1967, and satellite communications were inaugurated in January 1971. In November 1973 Mongolia and the Soviet Union agreed to build a copper-mining and ore-concentrating joint venture, which proved to be the key to developing Mongolia’s prosperity on the basis of its mineral wealth. As the new town of Erdenet grew up around it, the plant’s first stage went into operation in 1978. Another milestone for Mongolia was the spaceflight of its first cosmonaut, Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa, who in March 1981 spent several days in orbit aboard a Soviet spacecraft.

Jamsrangiin Sambuu, who had been Mongolia’s head of state since 1954, died in 1972, and the post remained vacant until mid-1974, when Tsedenbal filled it. Tsedenbal was replaced as chairman of the Council of Ministers by Jambyn Batmönkh. At the MPRP congress in May 1981, Tsedenbal adopted the title of general secretary, and in December he began a series of purges of prominent party members, which he described as “rooting out the weeds.” The party ordered the registration of ownership of all typewriters, duplicators, and photocopiers in an effort to control the dissemination of information. However, in August 1984 Tsedenbal himself was removed from his party posts while on holiday in Moscow. Batmönkh replaced him as general secretary and, in December, as head of state.

Batmönkh called for reform of the system and criticized Tsedenbal, while the MPRP, which for years had condemned national pride as nationalism, began reevaluating the historical role of Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire. However, the attempts at introducing versions of the Soviet policies of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (economic and political restructuring) in Mongolia were halfhearted and ineffective, and the result was economic stagnation and demands for further social reform.

In 1988 members of a group called “New Generation” (or “New Times”) began posting protest handbills at night in Ulaanbaatar. By late 1989 young Mongolians were organizing themselves into “informal” movements like the Mongolian Democratic Association (MDA), whose coordinator was democracy leader Sanjaasürengiin Zorig. In December 1989 the MDA held two big rallies in Ulaanbaatar, and after more demonstrations in February 1990 the MPRP had Stalin’s statue removed from in front of the State Library. Further demonstrations in Ulaanbaatar calling for the MPRP leadership to step down and the start of a hunger strike in the city’s main Sükhbaatar Square finally induced the Politboro to resign on March 9. Batmönkh was replaced as party leader by Gombojavyn Ochirbat and as head of state by Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat.

Constitutional change

In April 1990 the PGK convened ahead of schedule and adopted a series of constitutional amendments. One of the first was to delete mention in the document of the MPRP’s “guiding role” in Mongolia. Other amendments included legalizing new political parties, providing for multiparty elections, setting up a second legislative body (a 50-member State Little Khural), and establishing a presidency, with the president being elected by the PGK. By June the MPRP and several new parties—including the Mongolian Democratic Party (from 1992 the Mongolian National Democratic Party; MNDP), the Mongolian Social Democratic Party (MSDP), and the Mongolian Green Party—had registered for elections to a new 430-seat PGK.

The MPRP won some 85 percent of the seats in the July elections, and in September the PGK appointed Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat president of Mongolia. Social Democrat Radnaasümbereliin Gonchigdorj was elected vice president and chairman of the Little Khural, where the MPRP again had a commanding majority. In December the Little Khural resolved to begin Mongolia’s transition to a market economy.

Tsedenbal died in Moscow in April 1991 and was given a state funeral in Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator). Following a failed coup attempt in the Soviet Union in August 1991 against its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the subsequent banning of the Communist Party there, demonstrators in Ulaanbaatar demanded the banning of the MPRP in Mongolia. As a compromise, top leaders in the administration, the military, and the judiciary were barred from membership in political parties. Late in the year, as the Soviet Union broke apart, Mongolia recognized the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania after they declared their independence.

Following the July 1990 election, Mongolia’s fourth constitution was drafted and then debated in the Little Khural, revised and debated in the PGK in December 1991, adopted in January 1992, and implemented in February. Fundamentally different from Mongolia’s communist constitutions, it gave top priority to national sovereignty and to human rights. The legislature was to consist of a new single-chamber 76-seat Mongolian Great Khural (MGK), whose chairman (speaker) would rank second to the president but ahead of the prime minister, who would be head of government. The president, who was to be head of state, would be directly elected to a four-year term. The constitution also stipulated that members of the MGK could not concurrently “engage in other work or occupy another post not related to their duties.” (An amendment to the constitution, sealed by the president in May 2001, exempted the prime minister and members of the government from this ruling.) In addition, Mongolia ceased to be a “people’s republic,” and the red star was removed from the national flag.

More vestiges of the old system dropped away. In June 1991 the last trainload of Russian military equipment left Mongolia, and the last Russian troops departed in September 1992. The practice of holding a military parade on Sükhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar every July 11 lapsed in 1993.

New administrative changes were also implemented with the 1992 constitution. Darkhan and Erdenet, which (along with Ulaanbaatar) previously had been autonomous municipalities under the jurisdiction of the national government, were in July 1994 made the centres of two new small provinces, Darkhan-Uul and Orkhon, respectively. In addition, a third new small province, Govĭ-Sümber, was formed southeast of Ulaanbaatar around the former Soviet garrison town of Choir (Choyr), on the Trans-Mongolian Railway.

In June 1990 the Council of Ministers resolved to restore the official use of the old Mongolian script, which had ceased in the 1940s when the Mongolian Cyrillic script was adopted. However, this effort was abandoned within a few years, as the old script proved unpopular and its reintroduction was considered too costly. The script has continued to be taught in schools. In addition, an attempt was made in the early 21st century to introduce a Latin script for romanizing Mongolian Cyrillic, but that program also proved unworkable and was abandoned.

Since the 1960s, the investigation of the purges of the 1930s and ’40s in Mongolia had proceeded slowly, but with the rise of democracy in the 1990s came a great desire to exonerate those who had been executed or imprisoned on false charges and to compensate the families of the victims. Much evidence from the time was unsatisfactory or had been lost, but the scale of the killings was not in doubt: although estimates vary, it is thought that some 35,000 perished during the purges, more than half of them lamas; the vast majority of victims were buried in unmarked graves. Thousands more had received harsh terms of imprisonment. A large number of victims were exonerated in 1990–93, after which the pace of investigation slowed considerably. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the number cleared was approximately 30,000, and the families of more than half of these victims had received some compensation from the government. Several thousand cases remained to be examined. A memorial museum dedicated to the purge victims was established in the 1990s in what once had been the home of Peljidiin Genden, a former prime minister and victim of the purges.

Tibetan Buddhism experienced a resurgence after 1990. A new Javzandamba, the ninth incarnation (khutagt), born in Tibet, had been recognized by the 14th Dalai Lama in 1992 while both were living in India. For several years Mongolian Buddhists requested permission for the “ninth Bogd” to visit Mongolia, and he did so—unexpectedly—in July 1999. Welcomed by great crowds, he was enthroned at Erdenezuu, Mongolia’s oldest monastery, in August, but he returned to India soon after. During a second visit—in October 2009 at the invitation of Gandan monastery, the centre of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia—the ninth Javzandamba enthroned the young incarnations of two other religious leaders, the Donkhor and Jalkhanz khutagts. The Dalai Lama himself has also paid several visits to Mongolia since his first in 1970, most recently in 2006 at the invitation of Gandan. The Chinese authorities usually have indicated their dissatisfaction with these visits, on one occasion closing down China-Mongolia cross-border rail traffic for 36 hours. In addition, Moscow has denied Russian transit visas for the Dalai Lama.