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A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

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302 A history of Inner Asia<br />

multiparty parliamentary democracy favoring free enterprise and a<br />

market economy.<br />

In 1946, one year after the abrogation of Chinese suzerainty,<br />

Mongolia tried to become a member of the newly formed United<br />

Nations Organization.The attempt failed, chiefly due to the opposition<br />

of Western democracies led by the United States, on the grounds that<br />

the candidate was not a genuinely independent state.This could not but<br />

reinforce the isolation of Mongolia during the worst years of the Cold<br />

War, perpetuating the symbolism of the officially abandoned label of<br />

“Outer” that had made the country appear so remote to the rest of the<br />

world.The relative liberalization introduced by Khrushchev eased the<br />

tension between the West and the Soviet Union, and the success of a<br />

second attempt made by Mongolia in 1961 was one of the results and a<br />

harbinger of more changes to come.In 1963 Great Britain established<br />

diplomatic relations with Mongolia, the first Western democracy to do<br />

so, and was followed in this by France (1964) and other countries, the<br />

United States finally following suit.Only after 1991, however, did<br />

Mongolia’s contacts with the wider world enter upon a broader avenue<br />

free from political or doctrinal inhibitions.

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