Shagdasüren
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990010
Name: Shagdasüren
Parent's name: Baldan
Ovog: Mangud
Sex: m
Year of Birth: 1928
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: higher
Notes on education:
Work: retired
Belief: Buddhist
Born in: Ulaanbadrah sum, Dornogovi aimag
Lives in: Sühbaatar sum (or part of UB), Selenge aimag
Mother's profession: herder
Father's profession: herder
Themes for this interview are:
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work
democracy
education / cultural production
politics / politicians
relations between men and women
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Summary of Interview 080501A with Shagdasüren
Shagdarsüren said he lived at the end of feudalism, the beginning of socialism and democracy and he thinks that it was the right policy to confiscate the assets of privileged monks and distribute them to the poor people. But it was called repression due to the arrests of ordinary monks.
According to him, state policy during the socialism was well organized and implemented, but during democracy, the state policy is lost and the government stopped paying attention to ordinary people. Even though democracy gave freedom to the people, society has become aggressive.
There was a home-based teaching during feudalism. Later in 1921, People’s Revolution was victorious and primary schools were established in the countryside in 1924 and the education of children began. At that time there were no school drop-outs and no unemployed people. People did not like someone who was not working.
The socialist regime and religion opposed each other, thus the state prohibited religion.
At first, there was only the Teachers Institute in the country, which trained teachers of all kinds of subjects. There was lack of teachers in the rural areas and students were sent to the countryside upon graduation.
He thinks that any society has front and backdoor cases (ie, string-pulling) and at that time people were tolerant and responsible. Until the democracy there was patriarchy in Mongolia and children listened to their fathers and followed what they said, and families had friendly and warm relationship.
The establishment of collectives made people realise the benefits of working together, and aim of the cultural campaign was to enlighten the people within short period of time, thus it was called a “campaign”.
Shagdarsüren said that I can say many bad things about democracy; they call it freedom as they are able to became very rich and dispute anything according to their wishes.
The human quality to help each other has disappeared, and people are increasingly individualistic. Mongolians stopped doing the things we used to do in the past, and instead bring them from abroad.
