Mongolians Are Forced to Get Back to the Basics

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia —  University students rely on packages of dried meat from their parents. Some workers keep livestock in the city to provide milk and meat for their families.

This capital city’s 573,000 residents are devising their own strategies for coping with near-empty stores and long food lines. Most involve reverting to traditional ways.

Lhavgadorg and his wife are leaving Ulan Bator for the countryside, where they will live in a tent and keep a few cows.

“Then I won’t need to look for milk in the shops,” said the 70-year-old retired army driver. He said waiting in lines had become virtually a full-time job.

Like most Mongolians, Lhavgadorg uses only one name.

Rural people also suffer shortages of flour, sugar, soap and other staples that have been rationed in the cities since Feb. 1, but they have plenty of meat, the one thing Mongolians consider essential to life.

Fuel shortages and partial sale of state herds have resulted in the anomaly of record numbers of cattle in the countryside and meat shortages in the cities.

Sporadic shortages occurred in the past, but this time the government says the cities could run out of meat this month. It is trying to persuade proud new owners of private herds to sell some animals, but herders view the animals as wealth and don’t want the Mongolian currency, which is falling in value.

Tsandeleg, 50, a security guard who lives with his wife and six children in a shantytown on the city’s edge, bought a cow, calf and horse as a hedge against the collapsing economy.

“I began to think it is better to have something of my own,” he said. The cow will provide milk, and he can rent the horse out for hauling.

Food is not the only problem. The government doubled wages in January, at the same time doubling prices and halving the tugrik’s value to 7 to the dollar.

No one expects wages to keep pace as price controls are lifted during this year’s transition to a market economy. A pair of slacks already costs nearly half the average monthly wage.

Urtnasan, 62, was baffled by the government plan to make industry private by issuing coupons to each citizen. The coupons will enable people to buy stock in the former state companies.

“I don’t know what these coupons will mean or how they will change our lives,” she said.

A government employee said authorities had not explained the program to ordinary citizens and that the media, newly freed from state control, were no help.

“They are carried away by pluralism,” she said. “One economist says (the coupons) are a bad thing and the radio and TV broadcast it. Then one says it’s a good thing and they broadcast that. People are confused.”

If conditions get much worse, Tsandeleg said, “maybe people will rise up and demand things” of the government.

Young people generally express willingness to endure a few years of shortages to achieve democracy and capitalism.

Typical of older people raised under communism was Gongor, a 62-year-old retired clerk, who said: “I think the government will take care of us.”