Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia

“二十世纪蒙古口述历史”是一个项目，探讨人们对蒙古动荡的二十世纪事件的记忆和反应。这包括社会主义的强加，以佛教为基础的生活方式的破坏，城市化的增加，然后社会主义的崩溃。该项目研究人们的处境-他们的社会、政治和文化背景-如何影响他们对这些事件的记忆、理解和反应。我们要解决的问题包括：人们在20世纪50年代对牲畜集体化的行为和反应如何？社会主义的头十年与民主的头十年相比，人们的期望如何？通过收集来自不同年龄和背景的数百名蒙古人的口头描述，该项目揭示了人们如何记住，理解，反应甚至试图控制这些变化。这个项目在方法论和采访的范围和人数上都是独一无二的。这使我们能够通过提供更大的数据集来更全面、更详细地了解情境性如何影响人们的记忆和态度。我们的方法不是专注于单个群体或事件，而是使项目能够从多个角度记录许多事件，以前所未有的规模提供对记忆和状态过程的丰富，民族志上的了解。该项目将大大扩展我们对蒙古历史和政治进程的了解，其中大部分仍然缺乏记录，如果有的话。它还有助于我们更好地理解影响人们对事件的记忆的因素，以及人们如何以及为什么选择接受、拒绝或抵制国家进程。 计划出版三本以研究为基础的书，预计将出版多个项目成员发表的与他们对记忆和国家的兴趣有关的期刊文章，以及关于研究方法和数据库本身的文章。一本书将由主要研究者和项目经理共同撰写，并将是该项目及其结果的综合。这本书暂定名为：“记住蒙古：整个二十世纪的记忆、变化和政治”。项目经理预计将完成一卷基于他的研究兴趣，与工作标题'记住暴力：政治暴力，记忆和道德在蒙古。第三本书《XX Zuuny Mongolyn Aman Tüüh》将与蒙古项目成员合著，并在蒙古出版。它将介绍该项目和公共数据库，详情如下。除了介绍数据库外，它还将建议对历史和文化遗产感兴趣的个人和团体如何最充分地利用这些资源。至关重要的是，该项目将导致建立一个可供公众使用的在线数据库。该数据库将至少包含500次访谈，全部以蒙古文和英文联机提供，并附有证明文件，如照片、旧信件和日记。该数据库将研究项目的相关性和有用性远远超出了人类学和区域研究的范围。该数据库将成为所有蒙古人的文化遗产资源，也是广大公众、外交官、记者和任何对蒙古及其文化和历史感兴趣的人感兴趣的资源。我们还将鼓励项目蒙方利用项目的培训、设备和程序，在项目资助期结束后收集口述历史，继续保护蒙古的文化遗产。

'The Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia' is a project that examines the ways in which people remember and responded to the events of Mongolia's turbulent twentieth century. This included the imposition of socialism, the destruction of a way of life based around Buddhism, increased urbanization, and then the collapse of socialism. The project studies how people's situatedness - their social, political and cultural contexts - affects how they remember, understood and reacted to such events. Questions we address include: how did people act and react towards the collectivization of livestock in the 1950s? How did the expectations of the first decades of socialism compare to the first decade of democracy? By collecting oral accounts from hundreds of Mongolians of all ages and backgrounds, the project sheds light on how people remember, made sense of, reacted to and even tried to control these changes. This project is unique in its methodology and in the range and number of people it will interview. This allows us to understand more fully and in richer detail precisely how situatedness affects people's memories and attitudes by providing a much larger data set to work with. Rather than focusing on a single group or event, our approach enables the project to document many events from multiple perspectives, offering a rich, ethnographically informed understanding of memory and state processes, on an unprecedented scale. The project will greatly expand our understanding of Mongolian history and political processes, most of which remain poorly documented, if at all. It also helps us better understand more generally the factors that affect people's memories of events and how and why people chose to accept, reject or resist state processes. Three books based on the research are planned, and it is expected that a number of journal articles by various project members related to their interests in memory and the state will be published, as well as articles on the research methodology and database itself. A book will be co-authored by the Principal Investigator and the Project Manager, and will be a synthesis of the project and its results. This is tentatively called: 'Remembering Mongolia: memory, change and politics throughout the twentieth century.' The Project Manager expects to complete a volume based on his research interests, with the working title 'Remembering violence: political violence, memory and morality in Mongolia.' A third book, 'XX Zuuny Mongolyn Aman Tüüh,' will be co-authored with Mongolian project members and published in Mongolia. It will be an introduction to the project and the public database, described below. In addition to describing the database, it will suggest ways in which the resources can be most fully utilized by individuals and groups interested in history and cultural heritage. Vitally, the project will lead to the creation of a publicly available on-line database. This database will contain at least 500 interviews all available on-line, in both Mongolian and English, with supporting documentation, such as photographs, old letters and diaries, where available. This database extends the relevance and usefulness of the research project far beyond the limits of anthropology and area studies. The database will serve as a cultural heritage resource for all Mongolians, as well as being of interest to the general public, diplomats, journalists and anyone else with an interest in Mongolia, its culture and history. We will also encourage the continued preservation of Mongolia's cultural heritage through the collection of oral histories by the Mongolian side of the project beyond the funded life of the program, drawing upon the training, equipment and procedures of the project.