Lamjav
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990080
Name: Lamjav
Parent's name: Dondov
Ovog: Hongor
Sex: m
Year of Birth: 1940
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: higher
Notes on education:
Work: mathematician
Belief: none
Born in: Saihan sum, Bulgan aimag
Lives in: Bayangol sum (or part of UB), Ulaanbaatar aimag
Mother's profession: herder
Father's profession: herder
Themes for this interview are:
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foreign relations
NGOs
democracy
funerals
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To read a full interview with Lamjav please click on the Interview ID below.
Summary of Interview 090102B with Lamjav
Lamjav thinks perestroika in the Soviet Union and Gorbachev’s reforms had a great impact in his life. He felt that elimination of private property might have been the big mistake of communism and, having read the article of the Russian thinker N. Berdyaev, he gained conviction about this issue.
He told about first entering University, what kind of sports he used to take part in and the achievements he gained. He took part in the competitions as a student and went abroad. He has even been to Finland and he told what the peculiarities of the capitalist nation were and what he was surprised at and interested in.
Lamjav was one of those who approved the first democratic Constitution in the 1990s and he was the member of the State Baga Hural. Therefore his interview fully covers all the political, party and coalition events, the defeat at the elections after the 1990 in Mongolia, the events of his time as a member of the State Baga Hural and the period after it.
He recounted the history of how the demonstrations and the meetings of 1990 to make the Politburo resign were organized, why they had to announce the hunger strike, who was the initiator of it, how the elections of the State Ih Hural, the State Baga Hural, and the People’s Ih Hural in 1990, 192, 1996, 2000 were carried out. He also talked about what roles and duties he had in the demonstrations. He gave an extensive history of when and what kind of people formed the Social Democratic Party and how they conducted the political activities.
The parties worked in accordance with the elections system. He told about the idea of incorporating the power and becoming one party. The parties incorporated and the incorporated group formed the political ‘third power’ (so they called themselves).
Beginning from 1993 Lamjav started to address the Constitutional Court. It was the first case of a citizen to bring an issue to the Constitutional Court. He let the people know that it is possible for a citizen to bring a question to the Constitutional Court, sense the civil rights and duties of a citizen, that it is possible to bring an issue to the Constitutional Court and win the lawsuit. It was a big move for a citizen implementing the civil rights and he acquired fame as Citizen Lamjav. Initially he sued the darga of the Elections Committee and the events unreeled further, like on which side the court will resolve the issue and etc. But eventually Lamjav won the lawsuit and he talked about it in detail.
Having decided to work on auditing the Constitutional Court operations and the law, he established a non-governmental organization and the first legislative project he worked on was ‘the Law on the Non-Governmental Organization’. It was approved much later in 1997 when the Democratic Union Coalition took the power.
He qualifies the life he has been through from two sides, for he has lived in the splendid society in the period when things had been equalised, and he has also lived in the society where it was necessary to go through difficulties. It was more interesting and there was much to learn in the tough period of life. Perhaps, it is not so interesting comparatively to live in the conditions with less hardships and where things are equal, if there is such a condition, he concluded. At the end of his interview he talked about Mongolian funeral rituals and how he buried his father.
