Talk:Stalinist repressions in Mongolia

Purges of the 1930s?

Should this article be only about the purge of 1930's or should it cover all the history of the Communist purges between 1921 and 1990? After Khruschev they perhaps stopped shooting, but they still imprisoned or exiled people for their alternative thoughts.

The attacks against Buddhism and against the Mongolian intellectual culture and civilisation completely alienated the Mongolians from their own culture and language. Deprived of their own culture, now they are easily manipulated by various kinds of missionaries. The Mongolians now have difficulties to correctly use their own language. They had to invent and are still inventing new (often quite awkward) terminology for psychology, philosophy, etc. But all those words had existed in the Mongolian language for centuries in the translations of the Buddhist scriptures. Every single scripture of Buddhism had been translated before the revolution. Now they are lazy to return to the Classical script and justify keeping the Cyrillic alphabet by having "a lot of heritage" printed in Cyrillic. But the heritage in Cyrillic is actually quite poor--the reports of MPRP congresses, Socialist realism literature, volumes of Lenin. They don't realise that the heritage written (for centuries) in the Classical Mongolian script is much richer and much more valuable. Gantuya eng 20:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess most non-philological work (natural sciences, engineering etc) is in cyrillic, tho. And I don't really see how using cyrillic script makes it impossible to use terms from Buddhist literature. Anyway, cyrillic makes it much easier to learn at least some Mongolian.

Re. the scope of the article, I'm for narrowing it down a bit, since if we would cover all purges and persecutions, we could as well use the M.P.R. article instead of having a separate one. And the 1937-39 events seem to be coherent and complex enough to merit an own article. The introduction of the cyrillic alphabet might well be dealt with in this article, even if it happened only in 1941. Yaan 16:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Introduction of Cyrillic isn't directly related with the abandonment of the former Buddhist terms. It's more directly related with the purge of the Buddhist culture and forbidding reading the Buddhist scriptures. The people were separated from that heritage and had to build a new heritage from scratch. Concerning natural sciences, as I understand Tengyur has volumes of medical, engineering and other scriptures. If a modern Mongolian scientist decides to study them in the traditinal Mongolian translation, she will have to learn the Mongolian language again, especially the professional terms. Gantuya eng 03:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

You'd be surprised how many schoolchildren in Germany can't read books from the 19th century, because they tend to be printed in some kind of Blackletter typeface (let alone the 16th century, where they were still all in latin). I have massive troubles myself to decipher my late grandfather's handwriting, because he used the Sütterlin script. Languages and writing systems change over time, with or without stalinist purges, and in most cases the benefits outweigh the potential losses. Because of that, if we write about loss of heritage in this article, I suggest we stay with things where the causal relation to the purges is verifiably documented, and try to avoid overly nostalgic speculation. --Latebird 15:34, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Naming

What about a different name like "Great Purge (Mongolia)" of something like that. I guess that not a lot of people interested in the subject would type "Stalinist purges in Mongolia" into the search box. --Chinneeb_{My talk} 08:52, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we should just translate the Mongolian name (if there is an established one).Yaan (talk) 13:21, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

And maybe someone could add the patronymics for Losol an demid. Yaan (talk) 13:37, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

The Mongolian name is simply "Монголд өрнөсөн Улс төрийн хэлмэгдүүлэлт" or "The Political Repression in Mongolia". And I have added the patronymics. --Chinneeb_{My talk} 06:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I think Political persecutions is a somewhat common word. But as I understand it, it usually covers anything from the executions of Bodoo and Chagdarjav to 1989, so it would make the article a bit less focused. Although it's definitely a topic worth writing an article about.

IMO the current title makes quite clear that the events described are quite parallel to the Soviet Great Purge, that's why I chose it. I think it also sounds better than Great Purge (Mongolia), but that's just me. Yaan (talk) 11:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to come so late to the discussion, but stumbled across this just now. So, two comments on the name. "Purges" - it might be useful as a name for a wide audience, but in more technical literature, "repression" is more common, I think. That's why I haven't come across this entry before now. And "purges," if you follow J. Arch Getty (one of the leading scholars of the Stalinist Terror in the Soviet Union) refers more specifically to the purging of the Communist Party - ie, a period before the mass killings when people considered unfit to hold Party membership were kicked out, but not killed. There was a similar purge in Mongolia -- mostly of illiterates -- from the Party ranks, but again they weren't killed. So I think something "Political repression" or, if you want to draw a wider audience "Great Terror". (Mongolian sources sometimes use something like "Great Repression" -- Ih helmegduulelt -- for the 1937-1939 period. Danzan Bagsh (talk) 07:00, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I now think we should use a term that is common in english-language literature, and at the same time descriptive. I think repression may indeed be better, I will try to look up one or two books about which designation they use. For alternative names, one can always create redirect pages. Yaan (talk) 15:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

number of people killed/persecuted

I removed the reference to M. Rinchin speaking of 100,000 people killed, as it seemed to have only historical value, i.e. is superceded by newer research. as it turns out, there is an interview with him online, in which he seems to speak of 29000 people persecuted between 1922 and 1983 (anyone with a better knowledge of Mongolian please confirm/correct): [1] Yaan (talk) 16:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

An Ödriin Sonin article from June of 2007, reporting on a repression symposium held then gives the figure as 36,000. That is in the range most people use today - 35,000 - 36,000. The lower number - 29,000 - is actually based on the work of the rehabilitation commission. There's a difference, in that the rehabilitation commission's figure is based on those who have been rehabilitated, which in turn requires a fairly complex process. Some back of the envelope sort of calculations I've done give a possible upper limit of around 43,000, but I wouldn't want to bet on that. (Maybe one day I'll get around to moving some of this info to the main page.) Danzan Bagsh (talk) 07:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

If you can give a citation (i.e. a link to the Ödriin Sonin article), that would suffice to give the info on the symposium on the article page. You can phrase it like "29.000 people have been rehabilitated by the notional rehabilitation comission(+source), a 2007 symposium gave 36.000 as the number of people killed." or something similar. It would be good if we could confirm which time frame the symposium spoke about (1937-1939 or 1922-1989?), though.

Assuming I can find the article (I have it clipped somewhere) and get around to working out footnotes, etc. on the mainpage, I'll try to get to this sometime this week. And once I double-check the various official names of the commissions, etc. FYI - The symposium itself was on the "Ih Helmegduulelt", so it is 1937-1939. Danzan Bagsh (talk) 07:21, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

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