Soviet Geopolitical Project in the Mongolian People’s Republic and Demographic Problems: Mid-1920s to Early 1940s

Abstract

Introduction. The Soviet-Mongolian public health cooperation was a major component of the Soviet project (with geopolitical motives) aimed at modernizing the nomadic society. The Soviet shaping of Mongolia’s public health institutions not only yielded an efficient tool of soft power and neutralized competition from other medical systems, but also set the stage for the country’s demographic well-being in subsequent periods. Goals. The article aims at highlighting some pivotal points of medical efforts undertaken to improve the MPR’s demographic situation in the 1920s to 1940s. Materials and methods. The study analyzes documents housed at the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive of Sociopolitical History, examines some unpublished dissertations authored by Mongolian and Russian physicians. The employed research methods include the retrospective, comparative, and geopolitical ones. Results. In the 1920s to 1940s, the key problems of Mongolia’s demography were social diseases, primarily syphilis and gonorrhea, that reduced reproductive capacities and caused increased infant mortality, these having been aggravated by traditional obstetric practices and unsanitary conditions of nomadic life. The former were adversely affecting the entire course of socialist modernization and hindering socioeconomic development of the nation. The anti-venereal disease campaign, establishment of maternity and child health services, development of pre-schools, and health education for women laid the early groundwork for a dramatic health transition. Conclusions. The efforts of Soviet physicians at earliest stages of the MPR’s healthcare system development ensured the growth of demographic indicators in the 1940s–1960s, namely: a two-fold decrease in infant mortality paralleled by increased birth rates, and a population growth of 60 %. So, all that served a basis for the comprehensive implementation of Mongolia’s socialist modernization project, which had geopolitical significance both for the Soviets and the MPR, the latter to have become a full member of the UN and the CMEA after 1961.

Keywords

• geopolitical project
• demographic problems
• venereal diseases
• obstetrics
• maternity and child welfare
• ‘soft power’
• mongolia
• ussr