One of my best friend visited the capital of Mongolia, he returned and told me that Russia exerted heavy influence on Mongolian culture.

Can someone here give me the detail? Thx!

That's such a shame I always thought that the mongolian alphabet was very beautiful.

Thank you all... a bit abstract...

(1)money,        Tob odai, you mean ruble are welcome in Mongolia?
(2)posters,       ?
(3)ugly apartment complexes  ?
and
(4)political structures       I get it
(5)Cyrillic characters        My god!!

Mongols in China still use this alphbet system.

No I didnt mean they use the ruble, I mean their money has that post communist visual flair.

Well as someone who grew up in one of those ugly apartment complexes I could shed some light. Russians did influence our country heavily. We had a KGB installed brain-washed politburo chief for 40 years, who with his russian wife unseccesfully led us to the bright communist future alongside the big brother (that's literally how we dub russians even now). After killing all the educated people in the 30s the soviets sent armies of young mongolians to Russia to get "proper" education. So we get exactly two soviet educated generations. A quarter of all soviet citizens who worked outside of USSR did so in Mongolia, as "instructors" or as a support for the 5th Soviet army stationed here. Mongolia was called the 16th soviet republic, russians had a saying "chicken are not bird, mongolia is not abroad". But fortunately now they're gone. Left behind the soviet style architecture, the cyrillic alphabet, memories of stalinist purges along with some sort of nostalgia among 40-50 year old people. And now,

1. Money... is in big demand!

2. Posters - neon lights haven't quite reached us yet.

3. Ugly buildings - we still love'em, so they'll probly be tore down by our children, not us. Currently there's a construction boom in Mongolia, most buildings seem to be chinese-inspired, construction companies mostly employ chinese.

4. Political structure - now radically differs from the russian. We've got a real democracy going on, since we've got no other choice . But the taste is good so we'll probly stick with it.

5. Cyrillic alphabet - is still being used. It would cost us too much to change the script like in the 40s, especially with the current horizontal latin-driven communication technologies. But if the cost problem is solved, we'd change back in an instant. The classical script is being taught from the third grade in secondary schools to the fourth semester in sanctioned colleges, so most younger people easily wield it, older ones rarely.

I guess right now the russian influence is dying out. Moscow is viewed negatively. The russian language is uncool.  You can find more germans in the capital than russians. But in polls about the most trustworthy, favorite country Russia still leads, with Japan, US and Korea close behind. And there's of course the mongol minorities in Russia.

I am a 14 year old australian boy and i was lucky enough to go to mongolia only 3 months ago and i believe that the russians certainly did alot of damage to the mongolian culture and relics and it was sad to see that the mongolian writing that was in use less than 100 years ago is now totally out of the system.

one thing that i found with the mongolians is that they are almost 50% asian and 50% russian influenced. the way they pray and the dedication is very asian but the surroundings and the products are all russian.

what i guess i am saying is that while the russians created another russia in its looks and everything like that but the mongol way of life is still there.

off that i loved mongolia and would like to keep in contact with somebody who lives in ulanbatoor.

Okay, here is what happened...

in the 1970's or something, the communist mongol regime wanted to "modernize" and starting immitaing everything USSR did....

but

unfortunately in these days, they now want to learn more about their past..but because they lost so much from trying to become USSR, they said that it would take at least 100 years to recover what they lost

influence goes both ways,, the mongols had their shot at russia back in the 1200's...hehehe 

theres an old saying... "prick a russian and he bleeds mongol blood"

(from when the mongols where "busy" with russian women during the conquest)

im of the franco-gallic tribe of mongols

P.S. And I think all of the cities have some soviet-style monument on the main square. I was especially fond of the tank in UB. Wondered what his connection to Mongolia was (was he part of the 'Revolutionary Mongolia' unit?)

In fact, Mongolian script looks like Sogdian because the Uighur Turkish alphabet was derived from Soghdian, and Mongols use this as the official alphabet.

Ass hole !!!!the russian also brings civilization to you !,you idiot!

"Ass hole !!!!the russian also brings civilization to you !,you idiot!"

If you mean the USSR, which you very probably do, then you are one of those deluded romantics who can't let go of the fact that the USSR was nothing more then a shadow of civilization and culture during his reign. What did he bring to anyone he ignorantly invaded - hatred towards himself, cultural dark holes, made the entire Russian nation be laughed at and made them seem as a bunch of alcoholics and murderers to his neighbours. The state forcefully tried to make you loose your identity and nationality. Of what culture are you talking about. Romantics aren't all bad, but you should read something from authors of realism or naturalism.

What are you talking about?  Mongolia had and still does have a great civilization before the USSR.  If they brought civilization to Mongolia then shouldn't they be living almost like Russians?  From what I know they don't live like Russians.  The nomads definetly don't, the urban lifestyle from what I know is not Russian, I'm sure some influence is there.  So how did the USSR bring them civilization?

Russians being a bunch of alcoholics probably only enforced the image of Russia as some kind of elder brother  .

@ perdon,

I thought you were an Uzbek Turk, but I cant understand how you can think Russians brought civilization to Mongols. Instead of bringing them civilization, Russia always tried to destroy the historical and linguistic bonds btw its former socialist republics and non-Russian subjects, such as Tunguz, Mongolic and Turkic people. For example, they adopted different cyril alphabet versions to the Turkic nations to differ all Turkic nations from each other, and to prevent a possible unificated Turkestan. They didnt care about their own cultures or civizlizations, and gave Russian names to all those cities of central asia, and settled Russians there to be the major culture. As an Uzbek, you should know these better than me.

Okey ! Gental men !

I of course remember what russians have doen to us ,here i am not trying to defend russian ,but  just think about modernization of mogolia ,it is the fact ,and they should apperciate that they can build a country with the help of russian !(From china in 1945).one more thing ,in Ozbekistan ,I ever knew some mongolian ,it seems they tent to like russian !

I think there is a probalem ,the defination of civilization ,if you think nomads are civilized and only having strong militar force is a kind of civilization ,well I don't think so ! mogol in the past centrues  had strong military only ,what kind of civilization did they have ?  one fact ,they invaded central asia ,what heppened then ?they became musilim and adoped turkic culture ,if they were  more civilized , they wouldn't use uyghur as their alphabet ,and use tibeten religion as their religion .

  Turk is turk ,Mongol is mogol ,maybe they have something in common ,but to me central asian turk and turkish turks are the most beautiful nation in this world !I am proud of being turk !

@ perdon

Of course you should be proud of being a Turk. But this shouldnt make you unaware of where we all originated from. We had an ancient and developed nomadic civilization, we had our own religion, our own alphabets and our own ancient independent history, but noone can or has any reason to deny our national identity as nomads. Turkic culture is a nomadic civilization, and denying it is needless. This doesnt make you uncivilized or inferior, in fact, this provides you all you need to survive, the enormous ability of adoption to every natural, ethnical, cultural condition easily without being assimilated as a nation. And this makes our civilization richer among others, with the synthesis of other cultural developments into Turkic civilization.

That's true that Mongols adopted Turkic alphabet of Uighur but it is also true that Turks adopted it from Sogdian. But if we get deep inside history, we will see that even Sogdians were Turkic and Indo European mixture. I think the main blank in the Mongolian culture is the lack of their own religion. I always considered Mongols and Turks very different, both in linguistics, in history and culturally, but sure because of the nomadic life, there happened intermixing of cultures, linguistics, and ethnicities btw Eastern Turks and Mongols. But nomadic civilization was the common identity btw us...

Mongol script is so beautiful!

Can Mongol script be processed by computer nowadays?

I've never seen it done, but I'm sure there's programs out there that will do it, from what I know you can use just about any alphabet now.

"Then they began drinking, and as is their custom, they kept on drinking till evening." John of Plano Carpini, History of the Mongols