The history of modern Mongolia has been intertwined with those of several other countries. Qing China ruled the Mongols until 1911; the Soviet Union had considerable leverage over the country from 1921 to 1990; and China, Russia, and the West, with subsidiary roles for Japan and South Korea, have competed for influence over the past two decades. Landlocked, surrounded by Russia and China, and with a population of less than 3 million, Mongolia has faced tremendous external pressures in the twentieth century but has remained a sovereign state. The Mongols' strong national identity and great power politics have prevented the erosion of its independence, although it has been compelled to rely first on the Soviet Union and, at the moment, on China, Russia, and the international financial agencies for economic assistance, which has translated into foreign influence on politics and society.

In Socialist Revolutions in Asia, Irina Y. Morozova provides a useful summary of a part of twentieth-century Mongolian history in a mere hundred pages. Naturally, the work cannot be a comprehensive study, but she has consulted recently opened Soviet archives to supplement current knowledge of Mongolia's early socialist era. The book's title is misleading: it deals with Mongolia until World War II and offers a conclusion of about seven pages that tries to include, in a cursory way, events since then. Morozova's survey of the dramatic political changes in the period from 1921 to 1945 is quite interesting. This reviewer wishes that she also would have tackled the social history of that time, focusing on the impact of the political transformations on the family, the status of women, social mobility, the environment, and artistic and cultural developments. Perhaps she will do so in later work.

Morozova makes some controversial but thought-provoking observations. For example, she writes that “historiographers have not been adequately critical of the common view that the USSR is to blame for importing all the terror of communist repression into twentieth century Mongolian history. … I speculate whether eliminating competitors (and allies) on the way to power is deeply rooted in the structure of nomadic society, and whether the politics of the USSR and the Comintern only sharpened and reinforced these tendencies” (p. 36). Not all historians would concur with this judgment, but it will certainly stimulate discussion and possible rebuttals, which is, after all, how scholarship advances.