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- <text id=92TT1595>
- <title>
- July 13, 1992: Herd About Mongolia?
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- July 13, 1992 Inside the World's Last Eden
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 17
- WORLD
- Herd About Mongolia?
- </hdr><body>
- <p>The communists win in a landslide as nomadic democrats are cowed
- </p>
- <p> Marxism is dead. Communists are history. Right? Not in
- Mongolia, as it turns out. The Mongolian People's Revolutionary
- Party, which ruled the country for decades in lockstep with
- Moscow, won 70 of the 76 seats in the parliament, the Great
- People's Hural. Though 43% of the votes went to noncommunist
- candidates, a coalition of the three main opposition parties
- managed to take only four seats, since each contest was decided
- by simple majority.
- </p>
- <p> Democratic reforms in Mongolia were actually begun two
- years ago. As aid and supervision from Moscow faded away, so did
- central economic planning, which gave way to private markets.
- Mongolian citizens, mainly nomadic herdsmen, tended to blame the
- democrats for the economic disruptions that followed: rising
- prices and unemployment, shortages, even of basics, and food
- rationing.
- </p>
- <p> The communists are taking their triumph soberly, for now
- they must deal with the economic mess. "There is no reason to
- be happy," said a senior party official in Ulan Bator. "This
- result gives us a lot of responsibility." Though the communists
- have also pledged to continue with reforms, they may read the
- election results as an instruction from the voters to make
- changes slowly.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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