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Abstract
This paper explores the forms of memory of political violence in post‐socialist Mongolia. In particular, I examine why Mongolia has not established a truth and reconciliation commission, pursued a policy of lustration or followed any of the other paths often taken after an episode of political violence or repression. I argue that Mongolia has not done so largely as a result of a particular emphasis on personal memory in the form of ‘singularities’. This emphasis has helped preclude the enveloping of personal accounts into larger social or political narratives, which are often seen as necessary for ‘coming to terms with the past’. I close by examining some of the broader implications of the Mongolian case for our understanding of the legacy of political violence.
Notes
1. This paper is the outgrowth of reflections on fieldwork carried out since 1997. It is thus impossible to mention by name the various funders and numerous people who have provided information or informed my thinking on the general topic, but I am indebted to them all. Previous versions were given at the symposium, “Reckoning with the Past: Perpetrators, Accomplices and Victims in Post‐Totalitarian Narratives and Politics”, University of Wisconsin–Madison in April 2006 (which I was unable to personally attend) and New Directions in Post/Socialist Research Workshop, University College London in June, 2006. The participants in the latter provided useful comments. Rebecca Empson and Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn both offered helpful and insightful suggestions.
2. These figures usually were still alive, having been arrested in later waves of repression during the 1960s. For a discussion, see Christopher Kaplonski, Truth, History and Politics in Mongolia: the Memory of Heroes (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), chap. 4.
3. For the debate, see Christopher Kaplonski, “Blame, Guilt and Avoidance: the Struggle to Control the Past in Post‐socialist Mongolia” History and Memory 11/2 (1999), pp.94–114.
4. As I will return to below, the museum was largely the result of the work of one individual, Tserendulam, the daughter of a repressed Prime Minister. After her death, the museum was closed ‘for renovations’ for a few years. I was later told that there had been water damage due to a leak in the roof, and many of the museum’s exhibits had been damaged or destroyed. When I visited the museum in the summer of 2006, the exhibition space was less than one‐half what it had been in the late 1990s. By the summer of 2007, it had been re‐expanded somewhat, and I was told that the damage had been intentional, not due to water damage.
5. Noel Calhoun, “The Ideological Dilemma of Lustration in Poland”, East European Politics and Societies 16/2 (2002), pp.494–520 at p.494. At the present time, it is not possible to confirm this discussion. When I tried to get copies of the Parliamentary subcommittee minutes dealing with the issue, I was informed that they had been classified as secret and were unavailable.
6. I do not have the space here to examine all these issues, but I will raise two briefly. At first glance, the length of time since the greatest wave of repressions – 70 years – seems to argue that Mongolians have simply chosen to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’. This, however, is not really the case. While this argument has indeed been raised by some, it is more significant that arguments against opening the archives and revealing publicly who had been informers for the secret police in fact run counter to this. Such secrets must remain secret precisely because they are too recent. Even if the perpetrators are dead, their children and grandchildren are still alive, and would suffer for the sins of their parents, the argument I heard time and again ran. It would also be possible to argue that the continuing influence of MAHN – the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, which has been the single most dominant political party since 1990 – has precluded serious discussion of the issue. Certain elements seem to support this – the Party as a Party did not apologise until 2000, preferring instead to portray themselves as the greatest victim of the repression. Yet many people told me individually that at least N. Enhbayar – the current President of Mongolia and former Prime Minister – was sympathetic and helpful in a number of ways. As a key figure in MAHN throughout much of the post‐socialist period, it seems he would have a vested interest in damping discussion and providing support. It is important to note, though, that it appears his support was at a personal and individual level.
7. See Christopher Kaplonski, “Exemplars and Heroes: the Individual and the Moral in the Mongolian Political Imagination”, in David Sneath (ed.), States of Mind: Power, Place and the Subject in Inner Asia (Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University, 2006) pp.63–90.
8. I have chosen the term ‘singularity’ both with the intention to evoke somewhat the individual nature of these memories, but also another usage of ‘singular’, meaning ‘remarkable’ or ‘unusual’. Additionally, the concepts of a singularity in physics and mathematics both imply a discontinuity or other ‘special’ aspect, which, while not strictly parallel, again hints at the nature of these memories when contrasted with more public narratives and memories.
9. For titles of books, see, for example, Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen Gonzalez‐Enriquez and Paloma Aguilar (eds), The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). These comments focus on the literature dealing with truth commissions and transitions from authoritarian regimes. Stern’s work on Chile came to my attention only as I was finishing this article, and I have only been able to glance at it. I am unable to incorporate it here, but it appears to be an exception to my observation. See Steve Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: on the eve of London 1998 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
10. See for example, Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: the Making of Memory in South Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998).
11. Alan Feldman, Formations of Violence; the Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p.14.
12. Edward Casey, Remembering: a Phenomenological Study, 2nd edn (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), p.43.
13. Casey (note 12), p.44.
14. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004) and Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,1987).
15. Casey (note 12), p.45.
16. Quoted in Vera Schwarz, “The Pane of Sorrow: Public Uses of Personal Grief in Modern China” Daedalus 125/1, pp.119–48 at p.120.
17. This list is drawn from a copy of a letter and list provided to me by the staff of the Museum for the Victims of Political Repression.
18. I use ‘social narrative’ in preference to ‘national narrative’ because, although the social narrative is often promoted by the nation and/or state in the interests of reconciliation or moving forward, it does not logically need to be allied to the state. Groups such as local communities are also capable of constructing social narratives.
19. I am indebted to Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn (personal communication) for suggesting the ‘taken‐for‐granted’ phrasing.
20. Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean‐Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek and Jean‐Louis Margolin, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
21. I have transliterated this title from the modern, Cyrillic spelling of Mongolian, which more closely mirrors pronunciation. The title is often found as ‘Jebtsundamba Khutuktu’ in other sources.
22. D. Ölziibaatar, Yagaad 1937 on? (Ulaanbaatar: National Archive Office, 2004), p.294. Mongolians traditionally use only one name. An initial preceding it indicates the father’s or mother’s name, effectively a patronymic. Here I only use the initial the first time a name is mentioned.
23. D. Dashdavaa, Manai Ulstöriin Helmegdegsdiin Ür Sadynhny Hohirol (Ulaanbaatar: Urlah erdem, 2004).
24. Reliable demographic data simply does not exist for this time, but the population was between 750,000 and 800,000 in the 1930s.
25. Christopher Kaplonski, “Prelude to violence: show trials and state power in 1930s Mongolia”, American Ethnologist, 35/2 (2008).
26. I am grateful to Ai Matsushima for reminding me of this latter point.
27. Scattered reports in the national historical archives make it clear that people were arrested for various political ‘crimes’ throughout most of the socialist period.
28. At a simple pragmatic level, there is the additional factor that the victims of the 1960s were, for the most part, still alive. This, however, was a double‐edged sword, as accusations can be levelled as easily as gratitude expressed at the rehabilitation.
29. There are people who are ineligible for rehabilitation for unspecified reasons. One woman I know said her grandfather, who had been repressed but not killed, had been advised by both the military (he had been a commissar in the army) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to seek his rehabilitation, but it was never granted. There are others for whom no documentation exists, leaving them in limbo. (The grandfather of my friend may well have been in this category, as the family was told that his files had disappeared.)
30. Decision Number 7 of the Supreme Court of the Mongolian People’s Republic, 25 July, 1990.
31. The term I have translated here as ‘rehabilitated’ can also be translated simply as ‘acquitted’, highlighting the quasi‐legalistic nature of the process.
32. The law passed in 1998 specified 1,000,000 tögrög – about $1000 at the time – for those who had been killed, and half of that amount for those who had been arrested. People who were rehabilitated before the law was passed sometimes received even smaller sums of money.
33. One could argue that this is merely a stylistic device – when one says ‘Stalin’ the entire Soviet system should be understood. This is a possible reading, but even the choice of such a device is, to me, telling.
34. See Christopher Kaplonski, “Morality and Violence: the Limited Good Revisited”, paper given at the American Anthropological Association annual meetings, November 2003.
35. Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn, Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Socialism, and the Neo‐liberal State in Mongolia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, in press).
36. “Buriad irgediig helmegdüülsen n’: hödölmörchdiin zahidlaas” Ünen 108/17325, 6 May 1989, p.4.
37. See “Helmegdegsdiin dursgald” Ardchilal 2/112, January 1993, p.2 and “Helmegdegsdiin dursgald” Ardchilal 7/117, March 1993, p.2.
38. In Önöödör, 212/1950, 9 September, 2003, p.2
39. Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn reports that this was made by the Center for the Rehabilitation of the Politically Repressed (personal communication). Even if this is the case, it remains significant that the research centre is not acknowledged, while the political coalition is. Indeed, this calls attention to the political intent all the more strongly.
40. I do not think that this was necessarily consciously designed to evoke such responses. Rather, I think the effect is symptomatic of the more general emphasis on singularities at the expense of broader social narratives.
41. This, in fact, underlines a repeated refrain from MAHN. They could not be guilty of the repressions since so many of the people killed were Party members. Surely they wouldn’t repress themselves? In other words, we too suffered and were victims, just like you.
42. Buyandelgeriyn (note 35).
43. Indeed, from what I have been able to determine, the actual case files are apparently still classified as state secrets, and are to be treated as so for a period of 150 years.
44. White (note 14), p.41.
45. White (note 14), p.42.
46. It is widely believed that Tömör‐Ochir, a Central Party member repressed in 1962, was killed by the security forces in 1985. Yet even if true, my point remains that – as far as I have been able to document – no one arrested and sentenced for political reasons was sentenced to death after the 1940s.
47. Ölziibaatar (note 22).
48. See for example S. Ichinorrov, Dansranbilegiin Dogsomyn uls töriin namtar (Ulaanbaatar: Mongolyn Shinehen tüüh, hünii erh sudlalyn töv, 1997).
49. See for example, B. Myagmarjav, Ts. Navagchamba and A. Dashnamjil, Helmegdsen Zaya 17 (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolian Association of the Politically Repressed, 2000).
50. M. Rinchin, Uls töriin helmegdegsdiin namtryn tovchoon (Ulaanbaatar: Tsagaatgah Ajlyg Udirdan Zohion Baiguulah Ulsyn Komissyn Dergedeh Uls Töriin Talaar Helmegdegsdiin Sudalgaany Töv, 2004), three volumes.
51. David Crocker, “Truth Commissions, Transitional Justice, and Civil Society”, in Truth vs. Justice: the Morality of Truth Commissions, Robert Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (eds) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp.99–121, at p.101. Richard Wilson argues that most truth commission reports ‘did not write a serious structural or historical account’ that incorporated a ‘wider analysis of the causes of motivations of political violence’. Richard Wilson, “Anthropological studies of national reconciliation processes”, Anthropological Theory, 3/3 (2003) pp.367–387, at p.369. I would argue, however, that Wilson’s recognition that ‘new democratizing political elites went a step further than establishing salient truths about state terror’ is akin to my distinction between the singularity and the larger social narrative (ibid.).
52. Although I have never seen hard statistical evidence, it appears that women were only a tiny fraction of those killed. My fieldnotes from 1999 note that, according to one display in the Museum for the Victims of Political Repression in Ulaanbaatar, ‘12 women (possibly 72?)’ were killed. The same display listed about 21,000 people shot. While low, this figure probably represents the documented executions at the time of the display.
53. ‘Devil’s light’ – a term some people used to refer to the flashlights wielded by the arresting officers, since flashlights were still uncommon in Mongolia in the late 1930s.
54. Wilson (note 51), p.369.
55. Wilson (note 51), p.370.
56. Kaplonski (note 7).
57. Kaplonski (note 2), pp.190–94.
58. Theodor Adorno “What does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?”, in Geoffrey Hartman (ed.), Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp.114–129, at p.115.
59. Adorno (note 58).
60. Adorno (note 58), p.117.
61. Adorno (note 58).