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MongoliaForeign Sources
The major foreign source for media information in the late
1980s, as it had been since the 1920s, was the Soviet Union.
Foreign news consisted mainly of edited material available
through the Soviet news agency, Telegrafnoye Agentstvo Sovetskovo
Soyuza (TASS). Other foreign bureaus located in Ulaanbaatar were
the Soviet Agentstvo Pechanti Novosti (APN) and the East German
Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (ADN). MONTSAME had a
staff based in, or visiting and reporting from, all capitals of
its communist allies. Foreign newspapers, magazines, and books
came from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. No newspapers from
the United States or Britain were being distributed in
Ulaanbaatar in the late 1980s. Also, distribution channels
reportedly have been faulted for causing lengthy delays in
deliveries to subscribers and readers. English-language materials
include Mongolia Today, a magazine geared to foreign
consumption, published monthly by the Mongolian embassy in New
Delhi and distributed in Mongolia.
The existing political system, ruled by the Mongolian
People's Revolutionary Party, was firmly established in Mongolia
in the late twentieth century. Beginning in 1989, however, major
revisions of the country's government and party structure were
being undertaken, patterned after reforms going on in the Soviet
Union. Although it was too early to assess the situation
adequately in mid-1989, these measures were expected to meet with
bureaucratic resistance, as had occurred in other communist
party-ruled states undergoing reform. Still there were certain
factors--political and international--that might be expected to
work in favor of the reform program's success: a stable political
leadership, a tradition of political conservatism and conformity,
and an international climate that continued to lessen external
pressures on Mongolia. The emerging relaxation in internal
politics and the thaw in key external foreign relations might, if
they lasted, afford Mongolian leaders valuable opportunities to
establish a sense of national identity and some measure of
cultural authenticity, both probably essential to Mongolia's
revitalization and revival in the 1990s.
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Mongolia's contemporary politics have not been so widely
studied by Western scholars as have the traditional historical
subjects. A shortage of qualified linguists, the inaccessibility
of the country to foreign scholars, and the fact that Mongolia
has not played a major independent role in international affairs,
were the main reasons for the dearth of scholarship and
reporting. The most recent and inclusive source in the English
language is Mongolia: Politics, Economics, and Society by
Alan J. Sanders. Sanders also reports frequently on all aspects
of Mongolia in the Far Eastern Economic Review. Victor P.
Petrov's, Mongolia: A Profile, although dated, is also
helpful. Useful articles and annual survey articles dealing with
Mongolian politics appear in Asian Survey. Robert A.
Rupen's How Mongolia Is Really Ruled explores the dynamics
of Mongolian politics and demonstrates the importance of external
factors, mainly the Soviet Union. The primary source on Mongolian
legislation and legal documentation was William E. Butler's
The Mongolian Legal System. A detailed study of the
Mongolian Constitution is provided by George Ginsburgs in
"Mongolia's `Socialist' Constitution," in Pacific Affairs.
Mongolian foreign policy matters were dealt with in Thomas E.
Stolper's China, Taiwan, and the Offshore Islands, and in
more detail in the annual Asian Survey articles and in
Robert A. Scalapino's Major Power Relations in Northeast
Asia. The United States government's Joint Publications
Research Service publishes translations of selected Mongollanguage and Russian-language material. Mongol radiobroadcasts
and periodicals are translated and published in the United States
government's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily
Report: East Asia. The annual editions of the American
Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies and the
Bibliography of Asian Studies also should be consulted for
current publications on Mongolian government and politics. (For
further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of June 1989
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