Science, Progress, and Tradition

By the end of the twentieth century, Mongolia's achievements in economic development and popular education will have produced deep, and probably irreversible, changes in the structure of society. After several decades of devotion to increasing the indices of economic growth and brooking no disagreement with its policies or methods, the ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, responding in part to trends toward political reform in the Soviet Union, was encouraging greater public discussion and criticism of past practices. Mongolian leaders seemed ready to step back and to consider the price of progress and to discuss the future course of the country's development. As indicated by the 1989 moves to reevaluate the prerevolutionary past and its heroes, the reconciliation of progress with tradition and national identity is likely to be a major theme of discussion in the 1990s.