Lost in Transition: Fuzzy Property and Leaky Selves in Ulaanbaatar

Abstract

For many people in postsocialist Mongolia, the crisis brought about by the ‘transition’ from state socialism to democracy and capitalism has become a permanent condition of life. Based on fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar, this article explores various religious and economic innovations through which people respond to the ‘age of the market’. We show how, among low-income families of mixed Mongolian and Russian background, one age group in particular suffers from the symptoms of being ‘lost in transition’: alcoholism, soul loss, and a total inability to plan ahead. Inspired by Alexei Yurchak's work on the ‘last Soviet generation’, we argue that this group of men and women, who grew up expecting to live their lives beneath the empty shell of official state discourse, has become permanently stuck in the youth culture of late socialism.

Keywords:

• Mongolia
• postsocialism
• youth
• property
• self

Acknowledgments

Morten Axel Pedersen carried out fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar during the summer of 2003 and from February to November 2004. He would like to thank the Danish Research Council for the Humanities for funding this research. Lars H⊘jer conducted his most recent fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar between April and September 2006, and would also like to express his gratitude to the Danish Research Council for the Humanities for funding his research. Both authors have known ‘Kolya's’ family for more than ten years. We are deeply grateful to them. We would also like to thank Caroline Humphrey and the two anonymous Ethnos reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. See Sneath 1993, 2007; Szynkiewicz 1993; Humphrey & Sneath 1999; Pedersen 2006, 2007.

2. Although Mongolia's economic growth continued throughout the 1980s (Namjin 2000:75), the country was experiencing growing economic problems. Also, living standards were still relatively low, and from the mid-1980s the country's leadership started to talk publicly about greater openness and liberalization of the economy (Rossabi 2005:7–10, 34–35).

3. From the onset of Sino-Soviet conflict in the 1960s until the late 1980s, the USSR maintained a force of 100,000 soldiers in Mongolia (Rossabi 2005:8, 33).

4. It is important to keep in mind that our analysis has a significant male bias. A focus on women (see H⊘jer 2007) is likely to have produced a picture of a generation significantly less ‘lost’ (as illustrated by the fact that the majority of petty traders and university students are women, cf. Pedersen 2006, 2007).

5. It is impossible to say exactly how many people live in the flat, as people move in and out all the time.

6. We do not wish to imply that this is a general feature of Mongolian city life, but this is the way Kolya explained it, and it is our impression that it is still widely – if implicitly – practised.

7. According to the Mongolian law on Allocation of Land to Mongolian Citizens for Ownership of 2003, it is now possible to own land rather than just possess (lease) it, as was the case before.

8. Actually, the law does not say anything about one having to fence one's land. According to an official from a sub-district (horoo) office in Ulaanbaatar, a person registered on a piece of land will keep his right to this land even if someone else settles on it. A few minutes later, however, the same woman explained that – in practice – registration (i.e. getting your name on a numbered piece of land) is not important, for neighbours etc. will know who lives where, and that – in the end of the day – it is better to fence it (because it ‘proves’ that it is your property), just as it is best to obtain official papers of ownership. There have been cases, she warned, where people have filed ownership for land, which was already registered in other people's names. ‘The law is clear’, she concluded, ‘but people make it unclear’.

9. This feature is highlighted in the Mongolian countryside and, according to Russians and people of mixed background, especially pronounced among Mongolians. Thus, apart from being an effect of transition, it is also related to a more general way of approaching temporality in Mongolia (see H⊘jer 2004).

10. The term töriin süld, for instance, refers to the sacred banner of Genghis Khan's polity, and is still today used in official ceremonies in Mongolia and is on permanent display inside the parliament.

11. Kolya is here referring to the wife of one of his older brothers.