The statue’s face is full of grim, almost caricature, resolve — and it was built by the newly elected president of Mongolia, Khaltmaa Battulga, a martial arts champion turned tycoon turned politician, a man who named his first company “Genco” after Marlon Brando’s firm in “The Godfather,” and whom I met on a trip to Mongolia several years ago when he was already a minister with grand plans for the country. [...]
Battulga’s journey from yurt to the presidency is a modern Mongolian adventure. He spent his childhood staring enviously through the window of Ulaanbaatar’s elite “dollar store,” where Communist functionaries could buy Western goods unavailable to ordinary Mongolians. On making it into Art High School to study graphic design, Battulga was bullied by street kids who picked on the soft Art School boys. He turned to sambo for self-defense. [...]
After Communism ended, Battulga had more international connections than most Mongolians. He traveled to Moscow to buy Ladas and set up one of Mongolia’s first taxi services. “Moscow was run by Chechen gangsters at the time,” said Battulga. “But they were all former wrestlers and knew me. I didn’t get any hassle from them.” Over the next decade, Battulga imported and exported feverishly, trading everything from Singaporean TVs to Hungarian ties, and selling them at UB’s huge open-air market, where locals say you can find “anything but human eyes.” [...]
What is perhaps most curious about Mongolia is that it is a democracy at all — corrupt and rambunctious for sure, but just about functioning. In virtually all the countries around Mongolia, from Russia through Central Asia and China, a truly free and fair vote is unthinkable. Mongolia is a democracy in a desert of dictatorships. Whether it can remain so, while overcoming its corruption, inequality and geopolitical suffocation adds an extra dimension to the Mongolian story. Resource rich former communist states have tended to go the other way.
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