The significance of the Kazakh people in Ulgii in the modern history of Mongolia
By Norihiko Ikeda, Visiting Professor of Institute of International Economics and Business (IIEB)
THE MONGOL MESSENGER, Friday, December 21 , 2012
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Why Mongolia and Kazakhstan do not border each other?
Have you ever wondered why two brother countries that used to rule all of Asia, are separated by a small section of `foreign land`? Mongolia and Kazakhstan used to rule Asia, but if you look at a map, you will see that the Mongolian border does not connect with Kazakhstan. They are separated by a small strip of land, little less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) apart, controlled by Russia and China. Why does Russia and China control this small, 100 kilometer strip of land between Mongolia and Kazakhstan? How did such an unusual border get determined? Originally, there was no border between them; no border was needed. The nomads would pursue sheep and cattle, moving freely between the two ethnic areas, but now, in order to cross from Mongolia to Kazakhstan, you must now pass through a small section of Russia or China.
Why should Russia and China made such an impractical situation? Just how did they get that small, 100 kilometer space? It isn’t very hard to understand, if you know the history of the area before modern times. Mongolia and Kazakhstan once had a fraternal relationship Mongolia as the elder brother. The Mongolian empire once ruled Russia and China, as well as other parts of most of continental Asia. However, the setting of the border is based on current law, not of the pre-modern age, which was after the collapse of the great Mongolian empire. The beginning of modern times means the beginning of the 20th century, when Mongolia tried to become a nation state, but Russia and China prohibited this from happening. Although the ancient Mongolian empire was once fierce, they were stopped. Why did they never make themselves into a nation state before? The answer: They didn’t need to become a nation state back in the premodern times, they were in command.
During the modern age, both Russia and China became super powers, which had a lot of influence on the smaller countries in inland Asia, including Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Russia and China took over more and more land from the previous Empires. Mongolia and Kazakhstan must have their knowledge of their glorious history which have been messed up by these two new giant super powers, and as a result, they forgot their history of ruling Russia and China. Forced into submission, they were somehow cut out of the decision making on their own border!
After the Russian revolution in 1917 many Kazakhstan people escaped to Xinjiang and Mongolia. They did not want to live under the communist regime, because they prefer to keep Islam religion rather than to become communist. Mongolia accepted Kazak Muslim even though Mongolia was under Communist regime.
The Kazakhstan people who moved to Mongolia Ulgii from Kazakhstan were unrelated with the large purging started by Stalin in 1930. However, it was not only the Kazakhstan people but also the Mongolian who were involved in the purge. Some ten per cent of the population was sacrificed, but the truth has not been made clear.
In case of Mongolia and Kazakhstan could share borders.
But in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and its satellite countries were freed from that yoke. Kazakhstan was able to become an independent country. Kazak’s President desired that Ulgii people “return to their home land.” Many people started to return to Kazakhstan when it became an independent country. But out of 120,000 people, only half returned home to Kazakhstan and the other half of the residents chose to remain in Mongolia. The residents who decided to remain in Mongolia did so in order to escape Communist rule back in Kazakhstan. How can we recognize and understand the meaning of this choice? Because of such actions, Mongolia was able to accept the Kazakh people because of their deep political culture.
Because Mongolia and Kazakhstan could not share borders, the two large powers, China and Russia in modern times, had a great deal of influence on the fate of the ethnic minority in inland Asia. Therefore, the fate of the ethnic minority was at the mercy of these two dominating powers. As an example, I cited the historical fact that Mongolia and Kazakhstan could not become a party and had no opinion in deciding the border. But, if Mongolia and Kazakhstan were able to share the border, the Kazakh people living in Ulgii might have been able to have a more dynamic way of life.
Sharing family memories of Kazakh people in Ulgii will lead expanding their intellectual integrity.
Common Family Memories Develop a Sense of Identity with Kazakh People in Ulgii by sharing their family memories on an intellectual level, the Kazakh family can better develop their family’s role in the history of their country
In a system where ideology is treated with importance, the memories of Families throughout their generations are given little value. One party, in the period before they gained democracy as a country, seemed to have the most power and influence at the time. They justified this ideology because of their personal power and authority over the country. And they thought their sense of value was the most valuable. If a family were to carelessly share sad or hard memories, the party themselves would take this as a personal attack and view it as the start or first step of a counter revolution. All history was created and controlled to benefit the party’s personal agenda and image. The party gave themselves the authority to describe and even write history. This act forced families to keep their personal family experiences and even the country’s history itself to themselves and carefully pass them down, from generation to generation, without writing a single word.
The entire society is built upon the entity of the family unit. Every family varies in numbers as well as personalities, or rather their individualism that sets them apart from one another. Naturally as families would grow and move around, a brother and sister who were at the same event may remember it both differently and therefore have a different story to tell. So naturally there are at least two general viewpoints to every story: the family’s viewpoints put together from scattered memories and the social viewpoint controlled and created by the single party.
In 1991, the Soviet Union that had been heavily influencing some Asian countries for almost 20 years collapsed. Children and others who were born around these times have now of course grown older. From 1989 to 1991, Eastern Europe’s political situations began to change. The influence from this change reached to Mongolia and then continued on to Ulgii.
When Kazakh became an independent country, half of the Kazakh people in Ulgii returned to their homes in Kazakh. Unfortunately, the people born in the years of 1989 and 1991 have no historical memory of this fact. But those born in the early 1980’s have memories of their childhood and their friends disappearing from their homes. But now these young childhood friends have grown up and are returning to their homes. Now old friends are being brought together to write down and tell the true history of what happened to their country and not what the communist party wanted everyone to hear. They recognize the change of history and the difference of it and that existed only in the workplaces and schools as well.
Memory of individual or the viewpoint of the Party
Boris Pasternak, a famous author who wrote a book based on his own history of the country, was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize for his literary work because the ruling party knew that it would not be in favor of the history that they created, and understood how true the book’s history was. This was also due to the fact that up until 1991 that a theorem was in effect that all the history and literature historical had to serve the party’s purposes. This kind of society and environment is of course bound to dry out all intellectual creativity and mentality of the people. The collapse of the Soviet Union proved this to be a fact. Now we see China is repeating the same experiences and failures. However, at present both in Mongolia and Kazakhstan they have freedom of speech and writing, a fruit of freedom that most nations have are allowed.
It seems though that these long oppressed people are ready to bravely go forward, bold with courage to share their long forgotten family memories as a people to rewrite and clarify history and show what it really was. Ulgii’s history is about to become complete and clear, not just for these people to see, but for the entire world to know what exactly has been going on in these parts of the world. In order to help these people achieve this long awaited day we must travel to these countries and talk to the people and compile their stories for them. Through this work, the intention and hope is to help the Kazakh people living in Ulgii can now find the Kazakh identity in Mongolia.
The only true way to make the history alive is to revive the individual memory of each family. We must free ourselves from this intellectual blockade in order to acquire real freedom. We must accept our memories without any prejudice. Then put that truth in the back of our minds so that we can touch the spring of our own souls and the ancestors’ mind. We will be able to learn something and grow through memories of families which continued beyond generations.
So, this revival of memories of Kazakh people in Ulgii is not only just the first step to cast a new light on their true history but it will give a strong impact on other countries including Japan. By this way we will be able to avoid making the same mistakes again.
The significance of the Kazakh people in Ulgii
What is the significance of the historical experience of the Kazakh people in the Ulgii province? Clarifying the modern history of the Kazakh people in Ulgii has something to do with clarifying the identity of the Kazakh people in Mongolia. At the same time, its work means to reveal the modern history of Mongolia. Mongolian people will be able to get an idea on their own national identity they should have and on national integration matter as a goal.
The Soviet Union (USSR) collapsed in 1991. National integration after communism was the biggest challenging problem in inland Asian countries. Especially for the countries which had been under the strong influence of the former Soviet Union. The same situation will occur in Chinese empire which is a neighboring country of Mongolia.
Speaking of democracy, the problems are how to realize the democratic system, and its contents. Here the priority in realizing that system, will be important matters.
In this connection we may learn from the track of the Political wisdom of Khuvilai setsen khagan
It is not easy to find a right answer. The people of the country must find out the answer through trial and error, because there is no good model and good text for them. Therefore the past experience has meaning. How did their ancestors run their own society? What was their antagonistic power? How did they put in serious efforts to tackle diplomatic problems? We must learn from the past, otherwise we will lose a lot of things.
We may remember and learn from the track of Khuvilai setsen khagan’s way of administration. He succeeded to build up the harmony among many ethnic nationalities in the Mongolian empire which was included not only whole China but also sea area to India from Southeast Asia. Then, we can find a new type of global way of thinking through his track.
Finally, we will be able to reach on the meaning of “equality” in our recent life and also in this flat world which is a borderless.
(December 14th 2012)
Note: The opinions presented in this article are not of the IIEB. However, this view has been contributed in extracurricular education that target been made since 2010 in IIEB, will be the third time in December of this year, the residents of Ulgii and students Kazakh who study in IIEB, in the introduction of a collections of essay contest it is a summary of things. By the way, the subject of the third time, “The ending of the 20th century. The Mongolian Government has been implementing the politics for Kazakh nation”.
