Zagdaa
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990476
Name: Zagdaa
Parent's name: Tsendsüren
Ovog: Borjigon
Sex: m
Year of Birth: 1926
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: elementary
Notes on education:
Work: retired
Belief: none
Born in: Tsetserleg sum, Arhangai aimag
Lives in: Tsenher-Mandal sum (or part of UB), Hentii aimag
Mother's profession: herder
Father's profession: herder
Themes for this interview are:
(Please click on a theme to see more interviews on that topic)
collectivization
work
cultural campaigns
environment
urban issues
Alternative keywords suggested by readers for this interview are: (Please click on a keyword to see more interviews, if any, on that topic)
repression
collectivization
mining
cultural campaigns
nature and environment
women's life
childhood
schoolchildren's life
agricultural industry
Russians
work - labor
movies
plays
urbanization
Chinese
boss - worker relations
criminal
To read a full interview with Zagdaa please click on the Interview ID below.
Summary of Interview 091204A with Zagdaa
Zagdaa was born in 1926 in the brigade of Tsenher Mandal sum centre of Hentii aimag. He was born in the year of the Tiger. He was left motherless at the age of seven and he didn’t attend school. But he taught himself to be a tractor driver. He also worked as a digger in the Nalaih mine. That mine was built by the Chinese and the Russian elder brothers used to teach there. He worked for many years as an agricultural tractor driver.
The people with a lot of livestock didn’t like the collectives. But those with few livestock, like Zagdaa’s family joined them to live and work together. If the collective had a good income from when they went hay-making, he got a high salary as a tractor driver.
The cultural campaigns required many things. They required bed sheets, to change the bed cover, to send the schoolchildren to school clean, to wash dirty things, etc. They used to teach many things and they also had inspections. For example, what the canteens were like before? They were full of flies, the meat left out in the open, the milk buckets were 2-3 fingers thick with milk cream. We had no facecloths and we wiped things with the end of the sash [around the deel] and the inner edge of the deel. All this changed.
In 1938, 1939 the Russians made the industrial complex with a pipe [ie, a whistle] that sounded at certain times. At that time the city had Chinese streets from the east side of Geser temple to the green lake, and there used to be lots of Chinese traders. There was nothing they didn’t trade. The Chinese provided the city with water on a horse cart. In the centre of the city there were no ails but there used to be a slaughterhouse. Beside it there used to be a small place called the soap place. There were buildings. The First secondary school was built by the convicted counter-revolutionaries. This side of Amgalan there used to be white houses and in summer time the milkmaids settled there.
This place near this mountain used to be full of marmots and today there’s nothing. A horseman couldn’t cross the Tsenher River and today it has become a ditch. Today there aren’t any more rivers like Buyan Modni that had an eternal current. The wolfram and tin deposits are owned by the Chinese today.
