The Mutual-Aid Co-operatives and the Animal Products Trade in Mongolia, 1913-1928

Abstract

From the first decade of Mongolian independence after 1911, nationalist publicists and officials denounced the dominance of foreign merchants and capital in the Mongolian economy. Officials and historians declared co-operatives to be the road for simultaneous improving the peoples’ living standards and also strengthening national independence. Yet examination of statistics and the vigorous debates at the early party congresses and Great Khural meetings from 1924 to 1927 shows that the co-operatives were neither effective in their mandate nor popular with the herders they were intended to help. From the beginning, the co-operatives appear to have answered the needs of the new state more than those of the herding populace.