Jügderjav
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990577
Name: Jügderjav
Parent's name: Gochoo
Ovog: Borjigin
Sex: f
Year of Birth: 1929
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: elementary
Notes on education:
Work: retired / seamstress, boot maker
Belief: Buddhist
Born in: Buyanhutag sum, Hentii aimag
Lives in: Herlen 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)
democracy
privatization
environment
childhood
education / cultural production
Alternative keywords suggested by readers for this interview are: (Please click on a keyword to see more interviews, if any, on that topic)
worker
public service
democracy
privatization
nature and environment
childhood
schoolchildren's life
children's upbringing
Party member
zud
To read a full interview with Jügderjav please click on the Interview ID below.
Summary of Interview 100537A with Jügderjav
When I finished the fourth grade Bayanhutag sum, I became a herder in the countryside. At the age of 19, I got married and became pregnant and moved to the aimag centre. At 22 I became a shoemaker in the public service department, and worked for about ten years before I went to the supervisor's training course. Then I was a foreman for ten years, until I retired. I retired at the age of fifty but had to work for six more years due to the failure of factory to fulfill it's production plan. From 1986 I stopped working and went to the countryside near the aimag centre with some livestock, but during the zud in 2000, I lost all my cattle and moved back to the aimag centre. My pension is low and insufficient.
At the start of democracy I was in the countryside. I first heard the news about democracy on the radio, which said something like, “Democracy has arisen in Ulaanbaatar…” A woman named Oidov Enkhtuya had been nominated democratic [party] and she became a member of parliament.
We had nothing except brown salt in our aimag. (Here she attributes the lack of supplies - we only had poor quality salt - to the democratic changes.) Because I was a Revolutionary Party member I remained in the party. My life hasn't gotten worse because of democracy but there are still a lot of problems. Since democracy the livestock have been privatized, and the pensions have been raised but it still falls short of my expectations.
Initially I heard about democracy on the radio and from people. The working class didn’t get anything from the privatization. My elder sister acquired a lot of livestock through the privatization and she gave me milk cows. I had been raising them, but in the zud I lost all of them. Not taking into account those cows, I didn’t get anything. I want to ask those who know about it whether we should get our shares from the privatization. We never came across anyone who knew about the matter.
We were given pink and blue coupons. Some people purchased the blue coupons of the countryside herders. I didn’t sell them but I gave them to the food factory of our aimag, and when the factory was dismantled they gave me 7000 tögrögs. Though my parents collectivized their livestock, I wasn’t given any. I said I wanted to get some cattle from Bayanhutagt sum but they said they had finished with distributing the livestock and didn’t give me anything.
The public service department was a big organization with plenty of goods. The shrewd people who had worked during the privatization took the tables and chairs of their workshops and the tools that they had been using. The workers were left empty-handed. It was said that the storekeepers of the goods and the accountants used those goods themselves during the privatization. Through the livestock privatization the living standard of those who had been the cooperative members had been enhanced, and they had plenty of milk and dairy products and meat. Only the working class people suffered a loss. Also, the aimag centre people didn't get anything.
Besides the main topics she talked in detail about the public service department workers’ life, nature and environment, and the schoolchildren’s life and the children’s upbringing.
