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MongoliaOther Mass Organizations
Like most other professional groups in Mongolian society,
journalists were organized into a mass organization. By 1989 the
Union of Mongolian Journalists had 800 members, more than half of
them formally trained as journalists. Ninety-seven percent of the
membership had received higher education. In 1989 the press in
Mongolia was undergoing major changes, and the effect of these
changes on this body still was unclear
(see The Media
, this ch.).
There also were "creative unions" to organize writers,
artists, and composers. Their main purpose was to ensure that
artistic content supported the party's social and political
policies. The top leaders of these mass organizations usually
served on the party Central Committee. In 1984 the Writers' Union
included a sixty-one member committee with seven presiding
author-secretaries.
A newer mass organization, established in 1988, was the
Culture Fund of the Mongolian People's Republic. Its purpose was
to protect monuments and key examples of Mongol history,
literature, and architecture as well as to recover cultural
treasures that have been taken out of the country. It was funded
by voluntary contributions.
The attempt to organize segments of the country's population
extended to elderly citizens. The Union of Mongolian Senior
Citizens was established on March 25, 1988, with 120,000 members.
Its purposes were to make the elderly more productive and
involved in the country's development as well as to study and to
improve the health of the aging. The organization had a chairman,
a deputy chairman, a 150-member executive Committee, a 15-member
presidium, and a 7-member central auditing committee. An
important subcommittee of this mass organization, reflecting the
World War II legacy of military service, was the Committee of War
Veterans.
Data as of June 1989
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