{"id":4153,"date":"2016-03-26T16:09:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T23:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/?p=4153"},"modified":"2021-03-25T17:45:33","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T00:45:33","slug":"mining-image-under-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/2016\/mining-image-under-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: The Construction of Mining Image in Socialist Mongolia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/enkhbatu1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Enkhbat Avirmed<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Although Mongolians were relying on the pastoral economy up through the early 20th century, there were about 20 coal and gold mines operating in Mongolia by 1911. However, after the 1921 revolution, Mongolian leaders came under pressure by\u00a0the Soviets to follow the communist ideology exclusively. From a\u00a0communist ideological perspectives, Mongolian herders were potentially considered as a part of the capitalist class because herders own livestock.\u00a0 Therefore, it became imperative for the newly-declared communist state to establish a\u00a0working class. This pointed to\u00a0the mining sector as a possible path for &#8220;creating&#8221; workers.<\/p>\n<p>There were no obstacles to developing the mining under\u00a0the communist regime for following reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mongolia was sparsely populated. The population was 845,500 in 1956 and increased to 1,017,100 by 1963.<\/li>\n<li>Livestock\u00a0and pastureland were under the state authority.<\/li>\n<li>Religion was prohibited; therefore, it was impossible for the public to advocate their tradition of worshiping the nature, especially, mountains and rivers.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0Mining was considered as a priority for developing the industry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because of these positive factors, there was no room for mining-related social conflicts in Mongolia. At the same time, the state was publicizing (advocating) the public benefits of developing the mining sector and reliance on\u00a0natural resources through the arts and cultural policies.<\/p>\n<h2>Mining in the Arts and Media<\/h2>\n<p>Under the state policies, poems, songs, stories, and novels about rich mineral resources, mining and geological works, prosperity and development from mining, and successes of miners were reflected in Mongolian language and Literature curricula for\u00a0secondary and high schools. Also, many documentary films, movies and dramas were created for this purpose. This contributed to create a positive image of mining and geological activities.<\/p>\n<p>Many of these movies are still on &#8220;favourite movie lists&#8221; of Mongolians.\u00a0 For instance, in 1961, the movie, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EnlFw8j8bWs\">\u0410\u043b\u0442\u0430\u043d \u04e9\u0440\u0433\u04e9\u04e9<\/a> [Golden Palace], was co-produced in collaboration with East German producers.\u00a0 This movie contributed to public knowledge about subsoil mineral resources and efficient usage of water.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4157\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/altan_urguu.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4157\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4157\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4157\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/altan_urguu-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Altan Urguu Movie\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/altan_urguu-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/altan_urguu.jpg 448w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4157\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Altan Urguu Movie<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The geological exploration process was depicted in the 1962 movie &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3HfkidW_bg0\">\u0422\u04af\u043c\u043d\u0438\u0439 \u043d\u044d\u0433<\/a> [One of the Thousand]. The movie showed how mineral resources were discovered with the foreign assistance. Lately, one of the scenes, the snow storm, is widely circulated among Mongolian tweeters and facebookers. In this scene, two German geologists were arguing their tents during the snow storm while Mongolian guides wondering about their heated debate since guides didn&#8217;t speak German.<\/p>\n<p>Rudolf: [it is] nice to have abundant natural resources, but they are far away from the prosperity. \u00a0To make this state as a real state and people as real people, it would need 100 years of hard work.<\/p>\n<p>Max: Once they succeeded, this country would go more further.<\/p>\n<p>Rudolf: But, they need nationalism and raise their national spirits.<\/p>\n<p>Listening to this conversation, a Mongolian fellow suspected them belittling about Mongolia.<\/p>\n<p>The other movie came around in 1981. \u00a0J Buntar&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=o3autDhUBrU\">\u0413\u044d\u0440\u043b\u044d\u0436 \u0430\u043c\u0436\u0430\u0430\u0433\u04af\u0439 \u044f\u0432\u043d\u0430<\/a>&#8221; [Not Yet Married] film featured the image of mining engineer Gansukh while presenting the mining construction and managerial challenges of young engineer. This movie clearly aimed to attract youth into the mining sector as newly emerging industry.<\/p>\n<p>The newly-established mining sector, at some point, led Mongolians into modernity [many new aspects were introduced into Mongolians&#8217; livelihood]. \u00a0The new lifestyle of miners, mining towns, and mining labor forces were created. Evidence of these mining-related social influences include many monuments for miners and even naming secondary schools after famous miners. In addition, the state created special medals, awards, and merit-decorations for miners and set up new social protection mechanisms for them.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4158\" style=\"width: 211px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/davaajav.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4158\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4158\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4158\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/davaajav-201x300.jpg\" alt=\"First Labour Hero, Miner Davaajav Monument\" width=\"201\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/davaajav-201x300.jpg 201w, https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/files\/2016\/03\/davaajav.jpg 685w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 201px) 100vw, 201px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4158\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">First Labour Hero, Miner Davaajav Monument<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In sum, Mongolian communist leaders used propaganda to actively create a\u00a0positive image for mining during the communist regime.<\/p>\n<h2>About Enkhbat A<\/h2>\n<p>Dr. Enkhbat is associate professor in the Department of Humanities of the School of Business Administration and Humanities of the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. His special areas of interests are history of Mongolian mining and comparative examination of mining history of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Enkhbat Avirmed Although Mongolians were relying on the pastoral economy up through the early 20th century, there were about 20 coal and gold mines operating in Mongolia by 1911. However, after the 1921 revolution, Mongolian leaders came under pressure &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/2016\/mining-image-under-socialism\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270309,983107,983109,307838,307861,52223,983105,12756,3511],"tags":[983108],"class_list":["post-4153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema","category-cirdi","category-enkhbat-avirmed","category-media-and-press","category-mininig","category-mining","category-mining-governance","category-pop-culture","category-society-and-culture","tag-construction-of-socialist-mining-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4153"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7524,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4153\/revisions\/7524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}