Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 21—Yesterday, the
Grand Khural of Mongolia gave preliminary approval to a measure that would
restore “Mongol Biching,” the old vertical Mongolian alphabet, by 2025, as the
main script in that country in place of the Cyrillic-based script that has been
in use since the 1920s (asiarussia.ru/news/5861/).
The issue has been under discussion
for some time. On the one hand, if it did not make this change, Mongolia would
be the only Asian country still using the Russian alphabet, something that many
Mongols see as a denigration of their national dignity (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/12/window-on-eurasia-will-mongolia-have.html).
But on the other, if it does, it
will have to find the money to retrain its adult population or risk their
becoming functional illiterates in their own country and may put at risk its
expanding contacts with the Buryats of the Russian Federation who at least for
the time being are going to continue to be using the Cyrillic alphabet.
Moscow’s reaction to this Mongolian
decision almost certainly is ambivalent. Many Russians will see this as the
latest retreat of what they call “the Russian world,” but some may be pleased
that this will reduce the speed at which ties between the Buryat Mongols within
the Russian Federation’s borders and Khalka Mongols in Mongolia have been
expanding.
If in the past, the Russian authorities
viewed the extension of the Cyrillic alphabet as a way of projecting Moscow’s
influence in Mongolia, they may now conclude that the elimination of that
alphabet and its replacement by one few Buryats know as the best means of
blocking Ulan Bator from extending its influence northward into a weakening
Russia.
That is especially likely given that
Buryats now say that the current economic crisis means that they need to be
looking to Mongolia rather than to Moscow, a shift in perspective that few in
the Russian capital are likely to welcome (asiarussia.ru/blogs/5853/).
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