Aubrey Menard

Thirty years ago, a youth-led revolution upended Mongolia’s Soviet government and triggered a momentous transition toward multiparty democracy. Now, as the young Mongols of the past form the old guard of the present, the first Mongolians to live their entire lives under a democratic system are on the rise. In her upcoming book, Young Mongols, Aubrey Menard tells the stories of Mongolia’s dynamic youth. The book builds upon a video series Menard produced while living in Mongolia, a piece of which ran here at The Diplomat in 2016 – highlighting the development of media in the country.

In this interview with The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz, Menard explains the role of the youth in the 1990 revolution, the lasting impact of the revolution on the country’s domestic and foreign affairs, and the challenges the country’s current young adults are tackling head-on.

What role did Mongolia’s youth play in transitioning the country toward multiparty democracy?

On March 4, 1990, 27-year-old Zorig Sanjaasuren stepped into Ulaanbaatar’s Sukhbaatar Square with 100,000 Mongolians marching behind him. As general coordinator of the newly-formed Mongolian Democratic Union, he was there to demand that the Soviet-appointed Politburo resign. Beginning in 1988, Zorig and other young democracy advocates had been meeting secretly to discuss political reforms and even clandestinely pasting political placards around Mongolia’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar, calling for the end of autocratic rule.

Zorig had completed his college education in Moscow, studying philosophy and gaining exposure to the new ways of thinking that were spreading through the USSR in the 1980s. Like Zorig, many of the Mongolian Democratic Union leaders were the children of Mongolia’s elite and had been educated abroad just as Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost reforms were opening the Soviet Union to an unprecedented period of transparency and open discussion.

In the months leading up to the March protest, the Democratic Union had dispatched their leaders throughout Mongolia to tell others about their cause. They visited universities, factories, and government offices to tell people about the democratic revolution they were planning. They focused on unions, sending group members to speak with the miners, engineers, and support workers at the nation’s mines, addressing complaints that workers had raised about Russians receiving twice the salary of Mongolians for the same work.

By the time the 100,000 Mongolians had gathered to demand the resignation of the Politburo, Zorig and his coalition had already held several protests. They demanded that the communist state introduce a multiparty system and a parliament, and that they hold free and fair elections within a year. They also called for freedom of the press, recognition of past political persecution, and that Mongolia adopt the principles of the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

When the Politburo did not meet the Democratic Union’s demands, Zorig and his supporters did not relent. On March 7, ten members of the Democratic Union went on a hunger strike. Thanks to the clever coordinating work the organizers had done in previous months, the hunger strike was met with solidarity across the country. In the city of Erdenet, hundreds of workers stopped working in a sympathy strike, stalling the operation of the mine for one hour. In the far-off towns of Darkhan and Moron, mines also stalled production. Students abandoned their classes and monks came to the square in a gesture of support. The Politburo holed up in the Government Palace, sending spies to the square to monitor the growing threat.

The following day — International Working Women’s Day, a major holiday in Mongolia and former Soviet states — women flooded the square in solidarity. As the hunger strike continued, the number of participants increased, eventually numbering 33 protestors who refused to eat until the group’s demands were met. The Politburo agreed to a televised meeting with the Democratic Union, and on March 9 agreed to resign. The following day, both parties signed an agreement to refrain from using force against each other while negotiating the path forward.

Following the Politburo’s resignation, there were several more rounds of protest and negotiation as the Democratic Union pushed for quick democratic reform. From July 22 to 29, 1990, Mongolia held its first contested elections. For the first time, voters had multiple parties to choose from.

What were the lasting domestic consequences of the 1990 transition?

While Mongolia’s democracy appeared to be off to a strong start following the 1990 revolution, its economy was in shambles. So-called “shock therapy” reforms that had been introduced by Western financial institutions quickly led to widespread suffering and wealth inequality. Mongolian scholar Undariya Tumursukh writes that “any action to question the direction or the pace of the reforms in an attempt to protect the society from the rapid enforcement of market rules was condemned as anti-democratic, ‘revisionist, or worse, communist.’”

Western consultants with little understanding of Mongolia devised a system to privatize 330 of the country’s state-owned enterprises, issuing citizens ownership vouchers for their shares in the newly created stock exchange. While perhaps a sound idea in theory, these consultants failed to consider their program’s real-world application. They quickly saw that when you give an average Mongolian battling poverty who has lived their entire life under a closed authoritarian communist system a voucher for a Western-inspired stock exchange, they will quickly sell it for basic provisions to the first person who offers an exchange. And so, by 2003, 0.5 percent of the population owned 70 percent of the shares of these previously collective resources. The market system, which Mongolians were sold as coming part and parcel with successful democracy, had quickly created vast inequality, which conversely impeded the country’s democratic development for years to come.

Around the same time, Canadian-based Ivanhoe Mines discovered the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold deposit. With the discovery of Oyu Tolgoi, impoverished Mongolians learned that they were sitting on a deposit valued at $60 billion — nearly 60 times the country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) at the time. Mongolians were led to believe that the discovery would transform their country and their lives. In 2011, as mining-related investment flooded in, Mongolia had the world’s fastest-growing economy. However, just a few short years later, the Mongolian economy was in such dire straits that in 2017 the country received the fourth-largest bailout in IMF history (proportionate to GDP). The mining project has been plagued by the legacies of corruption and unequal wealth distribution born from Mongolia’s tumultuous political and market transition. Positive benefits from the project have been slow to reach the average Mongolian, which has contributed to heightened societal tension and an erosion of faith in the democratic process.

Did the 1990 transition have an impact on Mongolia’s foreign policy?

In terms of foreign policy, in its recent history, landlocked Mongolia’s foreign engagement centered on balancing the interests of its superpower neighbors, Russia and China. Following its democratic transition, Mongolia adopted what it calls a “Third Neighbor Policy.” Under this strategy, Mongolia has forged close relationships with foreign democracies such as Japan, the European Union, South Korea, and the United States in an effort to provide a countervailing influence to that of its immediate neighbors.

The impacts of this policy are highly visible in present-day Mongolia. American culture is prominent in Mongolian television, books, and dining. Construction is well underway on solar and wind farms in Mongolia’s vast territory to provide renewable energy that Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son plans to transmit throughout Asia. South Korean influence is perhaps most prevalent: in 2018, 86,013 South Koreans travelled to Mongolia, nearly double the number who had come only five years before. South Korean visitors are only outnumbered by those from Mongolia’s direct neighbors, China, and Russia. The South Korean influence is highly visible in Ulaanbaatar — Mongolians have been quick to adopt Korean beauty standards and products, to shop at new Korean grocery stores, and to listen to K-Pop, Korea’s signature musical export. South Korean Christian missionaries are also highly active in Mongolia, and by 2018, Christian churches outnumbered Buddhist temples in the country.

Urbanization and modernization are processes that have changed the face of many countries around the world. Are young Mongolians moving to cities and “modernizing,” and what does that mean for Mongolia's traditional culture?

Mongolia presents an interesting paradox: it is the least densely populated country in the world, and yet more than half of its citizens live crammed into 0.2 percent of its land. Ulaanbaatar was designed to accommodate about half a million residents, but now is home to 1.7 million as people rapidly migrate from the countryside to the capital city. Several reasons have led to the influx to Ulaanbaatar: the pursuit of better opportunities, harsh weather conditions in part brought on by climate change, and healthcare.

While there are certainly great joys of nomadic living, surviving as a herder is difficult and is only getting harder. Since 1940, Mongolia’s annual mean temperature has risen 2.14 percent, leading to drier weather and more frequent dust storms. These drier conditions mean fewer grasslands on which to graze animals. The frequency and severity of winter weather has also increased, leading to more dzuds, or severe winters that come after summer droughts and cause extensive animal death. In January 2018 alone, dzud conditions caused the death of more than 700,000 animals, making it difficult for herder families to eat and earn their livelihoods. These challenges have made city life more appealing. In recent years, an average of 68,000 people annually have moved to Ulaanbaatar in search of a better life.

While modernization can certainly threaten traditional culture, in Mongolia, key innovations may also help preserve it. For example, solar panels that allow nomads to electrify their homes and satellite dishes that bring entertainment during the cold winter months may make them more inclined to continue nomadic herding rather than fleeing to the comforts of the city. Online learning technology may allow more rural children to stay in their hometowns rather than moving to Ulaanbaatar to pursue their educations. Other medical, agricultural, and technological advances may similarly slow rural-to-urban migration and thus allow for the preservation of traditional culture.

What are some of the most critical challenges – social, political, economic, environmental – that Mongolia’s youth are confronting at present?

The most visible challenge that Mongolia’s youth are facing is how to tackle Ulaanbaatar’s deadly pollution problem. Because Ulaanbaatar is home to so many more people than it has the infrastructure to accommodate, only about two-fifths of the city’s residents have access to its central heating system. The remainder of the city’s residents are left to burn coal, trash, or whatever they can to keep warm during the country’s brutal winter. The result is a recorded pollution level 133 times higher than World Health Organization recommendations.

While critical itself, Ulaanbaatar’s pollution problem also highlights the other dire issues faced by Mongolian society. Specifically, Mongolia’s pollution problem exacerbates inequality. Though it blankets the city, pollution is worse in poorer areas. As it makes people sick with pneumonia and lung disease, public hospitals become overloaded and wealthier citizens are disproportionately able to access quality care. Moreover, the pollution problem underscores Ulaanbaatar’s critical infrastructure deficit — without significant investment in heating and electricity infrastructure, the city is likely to see catastrophic supply failures in the coming years. Finally, the pollution problem points to issues with transparency, accountability, and perhaps even corruption: the Mongolian government has taken millions of dollars in loans on behalf of its citizens to build the infrastructure necessary to combat pollution, and yet little discernable progress has been made.

The youth that led a democratic revolution in 1990 are no longer the “youth.” Do newer generations of young Mongolians see their work at pushing progress as a continuation of earlier efforts or is there a sense that the youth, now, are addressing issues their forebears did not?

In many ways, some of the youth who once led Mongolia’s democratic revolution are now impeding its progress. Many revolutionary leaders are still prominent forces in Mongolian political life. Instead of pushing for progress, some have used their positions to enrich themselves and their patronage networks through corruption, which plagues Mongolia’s political system and impedes the country’s development. Moreover, once in positions of authority, many of these lawmakers have worked to safeguard their own power — by making the financial resources needed to run for office prohibitively high for all but a select few elites, by trying to raise the eligibility age for running for office, or by repeatedly reducing the quota for the number of women that parties are required to run for election, for example.

However, the first Mongolians to live their entire lives under a democratic system are now only 29 years old. They have grown up in a free and open society, reading and watching global media, voting in elections, participating in protest, and watching their peers push for greater democratic freedoms. The minds of these young Mongolians have been molded in a truly different way from those of their parents’ generation, even those elders who fought for democracy themselves. While they may presently be shut out of parliamentary politics, they are organizing and pushing for change in other ways. They are tackling the urban planning and pollution problems that afflict their capital city; they are fighting to make sure that the LGBTQIA+ population, women, people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities have equitable places in society; they’re finding ways to provide education across Mongolia’s vast landscape to prepare the workforce of tomorrow; and working to make sure that the spoils of their country’s vast mineral resource wealth are shared fairly and in ways that contribute to their country’s development.

Today’s young Mongolians have strength in numbers — the average age in Mongolia is only 27.5 years old, with a full 64 percent of the population aged 34 or younger. (Comparatively, the average age of an American is 38 years old.) With such a significant young population growing up in the age of Mongolian democracy and exhibiting a strong commitment to democratic values through their advocacy and activism, Mongolia is likely to have a very bright future.