The role of medicine in the Soviet-Mongolian relations in the 1920s

The Mongolian People's Republic was the key component of a system created by the Soviet Union to counterbalance Japan in East Asia. Besides, in the 1920s-1940s Mongolia was the main testing ground of the geopolitical project to export socialism to Asian countries, where in the specific cultural and economic conditions methods and modes of Sovietization were practiced. The specific nomadic lifestyle that preconditioned a special approach in the carrying out of socialist transformations, the pivotal position in a vast area populated by the Mongolian peoples and a possibility to influence them with a positive example of socioeconomic transformations made the People's Republic of Mongolia a region where Sovietization was closely associated with "soft power". Medicine played an important role in this process. The necessity to create modern healthcare in Mongolia became obvious already in the early 1920s. The situation in healthcare was complicated. There was a pronounced lack of reliable information about the epidemiological situation in the country. That is why beginning from 1926, as a part of medical-sanitary assistance to Mongolia, the People's Commissariat for Health of the RSFSR sent there medical expeditions with scientific and practical purposes. The expeditions of the People's Commissariat for Health were at the frontline of Soviet medical assistance to Mongolia. At that moment they were the most efficient method of reconnaissance and assessment of the medical and sanitary condition of the country. Therapeutic methods and practices brought by the expeditions were revolutionary for the static nomadic culture. They undermined traditional beliefs of the Mongols about diseases, health and body, discredited folk and Tibetan medicine and demonstrated supremacy of European medicine over the millennial traditional healing systems. The medical and sanitary expeditions also helped to determine the format of interaction with the Mongolian authorities. Due to a number of reasons the Mongolian government preferred to hire medical workers needed for the construction of national healthcare directly in the USSR. For the Mongolian leadership the Soviet expeditions became a benchmark of professionalism and a first source of manpower. Thanks to them it was possible to place loyal Soviet professionals at the key positions in healthcare. Thus, in the 1920s medicine played a significant role in the Soviet-Mongolian relations. The creation of modern healthcare was one of the priorities of the Bolshevik-induced social transformation of the Mongolian people. Soviet physicians arriving in Mongolia with Soviet expeditions brought with them knowledge, technologies and medicines yet unknown in the Mongolian society. Salvarsan, bioquinol, antiseptics, surgery, obstetrics, and organizational models of Soviet healthcare were instruments that inspired faith in the power of socialist medicine. Soviet medics were carriers of both European ideas of personal and communal hygiene, healthy lifestyle and physical development, and Bolshevik ideas of a "big leap" from feudalism to socialism.

Keywords

Authors

References