20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Ritual and state in contemporary Mongolia. The case of Chinggis Khan 553his influence in these ideological matters although civil society does playtoday an important role through its demands concerning the restoration ofMongolian history and culture (for instance concerning the swift reopeningof Buddhist monasteries, the partial reintroduction of the Uighur-Mongol“old” script or the revival of sacrificial ceremonies to sacred mountains orto Chinggis Khan). The collapse of the socialist institutions in Mongoliahas resulted in a loss of sense and of values. Furthermore, the forcedSovietization and above all the political great terror culminating in 1937-1938, echoing the Russian one, had stripped Mongolia of a great part of itscultural heritage and of its human intellectual resources. If the existence ofMongolia as an independent nation in the 20 th century has been eventuallyachieved, it is at a high price and only for part of the Mongols. The Mongolminorities in Russia and China are being assimilated. In such a context,Mongol historians have focused on their glorious but neglected past andmade up for the biased restrictions imposed on the history of Mongolconquests by Marxist ideology – and Russian national sensitivity. Severecriticism of Chinggis’ rule at home and abroad started after the turningpoint of the 7 th congress of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party 3 ;after the 2 nd World War, the new Mongolian intelligentsia that replaced thescholars lost in the political repression of the 1930s, had to adopt a Sovietreading of their own history. With the crumbling of the Soviet Union,Mongol specialists got access to a wider range of literature producedabroad on their own history (an opportunity seen as a national need: in1999, President Bagabandi granted funding for translating major foreignstudies on Chinggis Khan), so that they should be in a position to present amore balanced picture of their own history 4 . Yet they are also actors in anongoing historical process and in elaborating new ideological foundationsto replace the Communist ones, they are drawing heavily upon the past andusing it as a tool for this new purpose. Many local historians and specialists,who are the contributors to this memorial process, tend to reinterpret and«re-enchant» this past and to construct a new master narrative in opposition3In contrast during the first years of the revolutionary regime instaured in 1921were produced several publications linked to Chinggis Khan ,thanks to the Institute ofManuscripts founded the same year. Its director, Žamiyan, started in 1928 research inthe Khentii montain to identifiy some of the place names mentionned in the Secret Historyof the Mongols (cf. Tseren 2002).4B. Batbayar (1999, 2006), better known under his pen-name Baabar, was thefirst Mongolian intellectual to write a valuable history of Mongolia using freely westernscientific studies on the topic. The fact that he was not initially a trained historian himselfis worthy of a remark and testifies to the difficulty for the academic institution to end theself-censoring of Soviet times.