From the Demolition of Monasteries to the Installation of Neon Lights: The Politics of Urban Construction in the Mongolian People’s Republic

Abstract

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, architecture, just as other fields of culture and art, was expected to adopt the doctrine of socialist realism, according to which the various nations of the USSR were to create a new architecture that would be ‘national in form and socialist in content’. In practice, this meant that Soviet Stalinist architecture drew inspiration, among others, from the monumentality of nineteenth-century historicist architecture, and even from Russia’s medieval cultural heritage. Due to Soviet influence, socialist realism became an official doctrine in post-1945 Mongolian architecture, too, but in that country, the implementation of the ‘national in form and socialist in content’ principle proved a particularly uphill task. At the time of the establishment of the Mongolian communist regime, the majority of the population, nomadic herders as they were, lived in felt-covered, portable yurts. The permanent buildings that existed in the capital and elsewhere were, almost invariably, Buddhist monasteries, most of which would be ruthlessly demolished by the communist authorities in 1937–1938. For this reason, Mongolian communist architecture could hardly, if at all, rely on national cultural traditions and was prone to imitate its Soviet and European models to the utmost extent. To mention but one example, the equestrian statue of Sukhe Bator at the capital’s main square depicts the Mongolian communist leader riding a big European horse, rather than a small Mongolian horse. While many Mongolian intellectuals felt that rapid modernisation destroyed national traditions, the leadership actually considered much of Mongolia’s cultural heritage an essentially retarding influence. And yet the communist leaders’ determination to build a European-style city did not lack nationalist motivations. In their eyes, European-style public buildings and apartment blocks constituted symbols of modernity that would enable Mongolia to reach a status equal to the other socialist countries. Aware that their economically underdeveloped country was looked down upon by the ‘fraternal’ communist regimes, the Mongolian leaders opted for rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, even in defiance of Soviet preferences and guidelines. Their megalomaniac plans were often at variance with local economic and climatic conditions, but if the Soviet bloc aid donors pointed out these natural obstacles, the Mongolian leaders did not hesitate to accuse them of being unwilling to assist Mongolia. While they did not play upon either cultural nationalism or Pan-Mongolism, their views seem to have been similar to civic, state-centred nationalism, in which economic nationalism was the main element.