Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the five Central Asian countries have embarked on the path of de-Russification, and one of them has also begun its own de-Russification campaign. This country is Outer Mongolia, one of China's former territories, and the Russian Cyrillic script that is now ubiquitous in Outer Mongolia will disappear.
Why is it that Outer Mongolia, once closely associated with the Soviet Union, is now culturally disconnected from Russia as it gradually promotes the once-vanished Uighur Mongolian script?
The negative effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union
The change of Outer Mongolia to the Uighur language is not a recent event, but a cultural policy that began to be promoted after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Outer Mongolia gained independent status through relevant agreements such as Yalta. Subsequently, due to geopolitics and political system reasons, Outer Mongolia also joined the communist camp of the Soviet Union.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the leader of the world's communist countries, it was still possible to maintain the economic ties between the Soviet Union and the communist member states through industrial distribution, allowing Warsaw member states to take over part of industrial production.
However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, most of the former Soviet member states in Europe, except for a few countries such as Belarus, joined the European Union and NATO. Although the five Central Asian countries did not join NATO, due to their independence as a country after the disintegration, and Russia, which took over the position of the Soviet Union, their economies have long relied on energy and military industry, and they are unable to allocate more industrial benefits to share with the five Central Asian countries. Therefore, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the five countries began to de-Russify at different points in time in order to maintain the dominance of their own nations over the country.
The motivation for the de-Russification of Outer Mongolia is not much different from that of the five Central Asian countries, and it is also because of the increasingly distant economic and political ties with Russia, which began to abandon the Cyrillic alphabet and gradually restore the Uighur Mongolian alphabet that has been used for hundreds of years in the past.
The economic game behind the restoration of the Uighur Mongolian language in Outer Mongolia
In 2014, the relevant person in charge of the mainland held a meeting with the then president of Outer Mongolia, Elbegdorji, to strive to increase the trade volume between the two countries to 10 billion yuan. In 2020, imports and exports between the two countries reached more than $6 billion in February alone, while China's investment in infrastructure projects in Outer Mongolia exceeded $2.3 billion.
At the same time, 2020 was also the year when Outer Mongolia reasserted its official status as a Uighur language. In the same year, the Outer Mongolian government adopted the Outline of the Mongolian Script, which made the Uighur Mongolian language the official language of Outer Mongolia. In addition to Outer Mongolia, the region where the Uighur Mongolian language was still widely spoken at that time was China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The economic ties between Outer Mongolia and China began to grow closer after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In terms of economic development, Outer Mongolia is increasingly dependent on China. For example, the 110 thousand volt power transmission project at the Outer Mongolia Taksh Port in 2023 will be completed by a Chinese engineering company, and the electricity will be sent from China to Takshih, which is also one of the largest ports open to China in Outer Mongolia.
With the deepening of economic cooperation between Outer Mongolia and China, many Chinese, especially the Mongols in Inner Mongolia, often go to Outer Mongolia to do business, so strengthening the promotion of the Uighur Mongolian language is also to create a harmonious environment for future economic cooperation between the two countries.
How the Uighur Mongolian language was born
The alphabet of the English language is not a minority in the world. European English, French, German, etc., are theoretically born from the Latin alphabet. In addition to the Latin alphabet, there are two kinds of Arabic alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet in the world, which are called the world's three major written alphabets, and Russian is one of the Cyrillic alphabet writing systems.
According to scholars, the Uighur alphabet first appeared in Central Asia and was developed on the basis of the Sogdian alphabet in Iran, and it was the Turks who invented the script.
The Turks were one of the greatest threats to the Tang Empire in the early and mid-Tang period. Under the continuous blows of several generations of emperors such as Tang Taizong and Tang Gaozong, the Turkic power in northern and northwestern China was gradually driven out. Subsequently, these Turkic peoples, like the Xiongnu of the Han Dynasty, partly integrated into China, and partly developed westward.
Central Asia was gradually occupied by the Turks under the migration of Turkic tribes. At that time, the Turks, in view of the fact that their own people did not have their own written language, and it was difficult to rule internally, so they absorbed and transformed the Sogdian alphabet of Central Asia to create their own Uighur alphabet.
Although the Uighur alphabet was born in Central Asia, it had a great influence on ethnic minorities in northern and northwestern China. At that time, these peoples fought against the Central Plains regime on the one hand, and maintained close economic cooperation with the Central Asian countries on the other.
The Uighur alphabet, as a script created by the Turks, was significantly more popular with these nomads. Later generations of nomadic peoples born in the northern steppes, such as the Mongols, Manchus, and Khitans, were influenced by the Uighur alphabet.
Why the Mongolian script is still Cyrillic was born
This is related to the independence of Outer Mongolia, the overthrow of the Golden Horde by Muscovy, the establishment of the Tsarist Russian Empire, and its continuous expansion for hundreds of years. During the period of the Republic of China, the signing of the Treaty of Kyakhta marked the official independence of Outer Mongolia.
After the independence of Outer Mongolia, it was politically dependent on Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union for a long time, although Outer Mongolia was not completely integrated into the Soviet Union, but it also made the Russian Cyrillic alphabet gradually popularized in Outer Mongolia. Many of the alphabets were incorporated into the Uighur Mongolian script, gradually forming the Cyrillic Mongolian alphabet, which was the official script of Outer Mongolia until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Cyrillic Mongolian script helps Outer Mongolia
The birth of the Cyrillic Mongolian script was deeply influenced by Tsarist Russia, but for Outer Mongolia, the Cyrillic Mongolian script was not useless, this alphabet writing was more concise than the original Uighur Mongolian alphabet, a 300-word or 400-character article was written in two letters, and the Cyrillic Mongolian alphabet was relatively more paper-saving.
At the same time, it was beneficial to the industrialization of Outer Mongolia, and after World War II, the Cold War camp was established, and Outer Mongolia, as a bordering country and a vassal state of the Soviet Union, has always been assisted by the Soviet Union in heavy industry. The development of heavy industry in Outer Mongolia has made the Cyrillic Mongolian alphabet more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Coupled with the cultural promotion of Soviet films and TV dramas, the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in Outer Mongolia has always been the mainstream of society during the Soviet period.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in addition to the need to build an independent national culture and dominance, the Uighur Mongolian alphabet created by Genghis Khan could give Outer Mongolia its own national pride, which was in line with the Uighur Mongolian alphabet of Inner Mongolia, and was also the result of the long historical ties between the two places.