MORAL OF MONGOLIA
Douglas, William O.
Moral of Mongolia Nomads and Commissars, by Owen Lattimore. Oxford University Press. 238 pp. $5.75. Reviewed by William O. Douglas Owen Lattimore, our foremost authority on Mongolia, spent...
...he speaks Russian, Chinese, and Mongolian fluently...
...There are strands of India and Persia as well as China and Russia in these chapters...
...But the serfs, being nomads, could always ride over the hill as free men...
...Then there is an account of Mongolia's independence obtained from the Manchus in 1911 and her more complete independence won in 1921...
...There is a chapter devoted to nomadism and it is indeed a fascinating account of pastoral economics, the protection of the range against overgrazing, the distribution of livestock from desert to mountains, grazing techniques, the survival of nomads against invaders, the mobility of people on horseback and Genghis Khan's exploitation of it, and the corruption of nomadism caused by trade and commerce...
...but much history is larded into the text so that the reader gains a historical perspective...
...Reviewed by William O. Douglas Owen Lattimore, our foremost authority on Mongolia, spent many of his early years in the area...
...Soviet Russia is a formidable opponent in underdeveloped countries...
...And they will put the book down with a feeling of sadness that the Mongols do not have an ambassador in Washington, D.C., and that we do not have one in Ulan Bator...
...Russian influence righted the boat and Mongolia turned somewhat to the Right, feeling her way gradually toward the cooperative-socialist state...
...This book, which reflects both China, the giant on the east, and Russia, the giant on the west, is about Outer Mongolia, the home of Genghis Khan...
...The story of the years of frustration following both the 1911 and the 1921 revolutions, the emergence of two leaders, their gravitation toward Marxist philosophy, the advice that Lenin gave to avoid orthodox Marxism, constitutes the most accurate account in English of the manner in which Mongolia moved from a pastoral to a cooperative-socialist society without experiencing the western type of capitalism...
...She came as a teacher and once the course was over and the class graduated, she left the country...
...The Chinese merchants had cruelly exploited trade with Mongolia...
...We of the West have pre-fabricated houses that unskilled people can erect...
...In Ulan Bator he addressed the Academy of Science for an hour or more in Mongolian...
...The book is an account of modern Mongolia...
...The Lattimores visited it in 1961, just prior to my own journey there, and traveled the country extensively by car, plane, and train...
...The inner struggle for power in the late Twenties and early Thirties is a revealing account not of Russian intrigue but of the Marxist-oriented rural opposition on one side and the lamas, the nobility, and the merchants on the other...
...Unless we become prepared to do in our way what the Soviets did in their way in Mongolia we will lose the contest by default...
...But in those days his travels were in Inner Mongolia, now a province of China and into which the Peking regime has poured about six millon Chinese...
...Its account of Mongolia's transformation in less than twenty years is ominous for those who think seriously about American overseas aid...
...But those of the West who read closely will be grateful for the warning which this highly factual book sounds...
...A Mongolian scholar who was present told me that Latti-more's command of the language was so good that a Mongolian with closed eyes would think the speaker was a Mongol...
...Nowhere have we helped refashion a feudal society into a free society...
...It is by far the best book ever written in English about that remote country...
...Russia has a pre-fabricated society for export...
...Owen Lattimore is an accomplished linguist...
...The manner in which pastoral Mongolia has entered the modern world under Soviet tutelage and been transformed has a moral for us...
...and in five, ten, or fifteen years can, if invited, teach any people how to install and operate it...
...The first part of the book tells in abbreviated fashion the reasons Mongolia, surrounded by two great powers, was never swallowed by one, was never the cause of war between the tv/o, and emerged in modern times independent in spirit and looking toward Russia for help, inspiration, and guidance...
...We need for our good and for the good of the Mongols to develop an understanding with them...
...The book's account of history and the emergence of Marxist thought is interesting and invaluable...
...Part of the history of recent centuries pertains to the Buddhist church, the Tibetan language which it employed, and the feudalism that it fastened on the country with the help of the Manchu conqueror and the nobility...
...Nomads and Commissars is the product of that 1961 journey...
...That is why Marxism when it appeared in the Thirties wore few of its customary habiliments...
...The nobles and the monasteries had a form of feudal society...
...The Left won and great expropriation of property took place much in the manner of Henry VIII when he turned against Rome...
...Moreover, Russia in Mongolia has been a different Russia from the one known by the Yugoslavs...
...The Left continued to act so rashly and punitively that the country rose against it...
...That is essentially why there never was in Mongolia either a proletariat or a middle class apart from foreign merchants soon to be curtailed or excluded...
...Owen Lattimore makes no such statement in his book...
...Our billions have gone mostly to strengthen the feudal overlords and so, in a sense, to make it easier for the Communists by leaving reforms to them...
...and they often did...
...The Nestorians, Manchus, Turks, and Japanese also appear...
...They are, as tDwen Lattimore says, "wonderful people...
Vol. 26 • November 1962 • No. 11
