Shagdarjavin Natsagdorj

Shagdarjavin Natsagdorj
Шагдаржавын Нацагдорж
Born	1918
Died	2001
Siglum	Sh. Natsagdorj
Alma mater	National University of Mongolia
Awards	Marshal Choibalsan State Award
Scientific career
Fields	History of Mongolia
Institutions	Institute of History, Mongolian Academy of Sciences

Shagdarjavin Natsagdorj (Mongolian: Шагдаржавын Нацагдорж; 1918–2001) was a Mongolian academic and historian, most notable for being director of the Institute of History at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences under the Mongolian People's Republic. In this position he was pivotal in improving the field of history in Mongolia, by compiling archives, initiating scientific journals, and supervising the protection and research of important cultural sites. His 1943 biography of Damdin Sükhbaatar established his reputation at home and abroad, but thereafter he primarily wrote on pre-modern topics, especially Qing-era Mongolia and the struggle for Mongolian independence. Natsagdorj was also influential in the cultural sphere, writing plays, stories, and screenplays for a general audience. After the Mongolian Revolution of 1990, he published biographies of Genghis Khan (1991) and Kublai Khan (1998).

Biography

Shagdarjavin Natsagdorj was born in 1918 in Amgalanbaatar, near the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar. The revolutionary socialist policies of the Mongolian People's Republic (MPR), founded in 1924, compelled him to leave primary school in 1930; he returned to education in 1932, after an armed uprising compelled the government to adopt a less hardline stance. In 1935, he was accepted as an apprentice in the Institute of History at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS); two years later in 1937, he was appointed the Institute's director. His early work concentrated on the life of the revolutionary hero Damdin Sükhbaatar and culminated in a 1943 biography which received the first Marshal Choibalsan State Award. A decade later in 1955, Owen Lattimore and Urgunge Onon published an English translation of this work—the first translation of a biography of a revolutionary figure, it would establish Natsagdorj's reputation in the English-speaking world.

As an academic, Natsagdorj received his doctorate in 1954 from the National University of Mongolia; his dissertation discussed "the Arat liberation movement in the Khobdos region of Outer Mongolia under the leadership of Ayushi". In 1961, he was officially awarded the title of Academician, and he received his habilitation in 1973. Although he initially wrote on both modern and pre-modern history, he increasingly came to focus on the latter. He was especially influential in reviving the study of the growth of the Mongolian independence movement, publishing works such as The national freedom movement and anti-feudal movement in Khalkh Mongolia (1941). Lattimore praised Natsagdorj's History of Khalka (1963) as "stand[ing] alone in the world of scholarship" on account of its exhaustive cross-comparison of decrees, orders, reports, and other documents in order to resolve historical disrepancies.

In his official capacities, Natsagdorj worked to improve the resources and opportunities available to Mongolian historians. He established archives of original historical documents and made a number available for public consumption at the National Library of Mongolia, while also helping to initiate journals on history, ethnography, and archaeology, and while supervising the research, protection, and restoration of cultural sites such as the Erdene Zuu monastery near Karakorum. His pioneer work on archiving the bureaucratic minutiae of Qing-era Mongolia met with an eager welcome from European scholars. Natsagdorj was also an important figure in Mongolian literature, becoming the chairman of the Mongolian Writers' Committee, in which capacity he strengthened the writers' union and encouraged the exploration of new genres. He himself wrote short stories from 1944 onwards, releasing a collection in 1966, in addition to novels such as Crystal Mirror and Mandukhai Seten Khatan; the latter, about the life of the fifteenth-century queen Mandukhai, was the basis of a popular 1988 film. He even authored theatrical plays and screenplays, like Polo's Adventure, Khongorzul and Govi's Epic.

Natsagdorj's international colleague Igor de Rachewiltz noted that he risked the ire of the communist government, who appointed him a State Great Khural deputy in the 1951 election, by not sticking to official positions on historical events. For instance, he was censured for failing to appropriately criticise Genghis Khan in the foreword he wrote for Tsendiin Damdinsüren's 1947 translation of the Secret History of the Mongols. In 1957, he was appointed to write the chapters on the Mongol Empire for the second edition of the National History of Mongolia; the first edition, published two years previously, had been written by Soviet scholars and was extremely prejudiced against Genghis Khan and his empire. Natsagdorj substantially neutralised the overt bias and subtly contradicted the arguments of prominent Soviet scholar I. Petruchevsky, who had written the same chapters of the first edition. He also played a significant role in the 1962 Genghis Khan controversy, which arise when an Ulaanbaatar academic conference offered a primarily positive view of Genghis Khan. Natsagdorj was the second speaker, and concluded his remarks with the words "Genghis has been remembered as a figure of merit as the founder of the independent Mongolian nation." The MPR's leader Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal took the chance to purge those behind what the Soviet Union immediately condemned as "Mongolian nationalism", including his main rival Daramyn Tömör-Ochir. The academics, including Natsagdorj, were fiercely criticized in the Mongolian state press. The controversy spiralled and, after Chinese historians intervened, exacerbated the Sino-Soviet split.

A year after the Mongolian Revolution of 1990, Natsagdorj published a book titled Ruling Principles of Genghis Khan, edited by his colleague and fellow Academician Shagdaryn Bira, which offered original arguments contrary to the prevailing theories. In 1998, he published a book on Genghis's grandson Kublai Khan which concluded that no ruler in world history surpassed Kublai in terms of power and influence. Natsagdorj, who had one daughter, N. Ariungua, died in 2001. In a 2008 speech at a conference celebrating the 90th anniversary of Natsagdorj's birth, Ts. Ishdorj, a Mongolian historian and director of the Mongolian Studies Union, praised him as "the backbone of modern Mongolian historical science".

References

Sources

• Atwood, Christopher P. (2004). Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-4671-3.
• Boldbaatar, J. (2015). "The state and trends of Mongolian historical studies". The Newsletter (Spring). International Institute for Asian Studies: 28–29.
• Lattimore, Owen (1967). "Religion and Revolution in Mongolia: A Review Article". Modern Asian Studies. 1 (1): 81–94. JSTOR 311586.
• Lattimore, Owen (1977). "A Treasury of Inner Asian History and Culture: A Review Article". Pacific Affairs. 50 (3): 426–444. JSTOR 2757170.
• Natsagdorj, Sh. (1967). "The Economic Basis of Feudalism in Mongolia". Modern Asian Studies. 1 (3). Translated by Lattimore, Owen.
• Schwarz, Henry G. (1974). "Biographical Sketches". Mongolian Short Stories. Bellingham: Center for East Asian Studies. ISBN 978-0-9145-8408-7.
• Service, Robert G. (1 November 1979). "Mongolian Heroes of the Twentieth Century (Book Review)". Journal of Asian Studies. 39 (1): 122–123.
• Shimamura, Ippei (2022). "The Legacy of the Mongol Empire in Mongolia". In May, Timothy; Hope, Michael (eds.). The Mongol World. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 973–988. ISBN 978-1-3151-6517-2.