Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2026 number 3

Introduction. Since the 1990s, Mongolia has seen a shift in language policy from Russian to English. The aim of this study is to explain the reasons for Russian’s loss of dominance by interpreting language policy as a function of a country’s position in the global system. Methodology. The paradigmatic ideas of I. Wallerstein, G. Arrighi’s concept of development strategies for semi-peripheral societies, A. de Swaan’s theory of the global language system, and R. Collins’s geopolitical theory and concept of civilizational centers served as the main methodological basis for the study. In addition, several provisions of the language planning paradigm (J. Fishman, C. M. Eastman) regarding the preservation of the status of the language of a previously dominant state were used. The study is based on a comparison of the factors driving the dynamics of language policy in relations between Moscow and Ulaanbaatar in the Soviet and modern periods. Discussion. During the Soviet period, the dominance of the Russian language was a consequence of: Mongolia’s economic ties to the USSR within a shared system of division of labor that functioned relatively autonomously from the capitalist world-economy; the hegemony of Russian-speaking Moscow, which transmitted models of socialist construction and provided access to knowledge and new technologies; and the transformation of Russian into a competitor for the status of hypercentral language following victory in World War II and the collapse of the colonial system. After the collapse of the socialist system, Moscow lost its status as a creative center and integrated Russian society into the international division of labor as a semi-peripheral economy, becoming a competitor to its former peripheries. The collapse of the system was accompanied by the demise of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the obsolescence of curricula, social science subjects, and textbooks. Under these conditions, maintaining Russian as the primary foreign language in Mongolia proved economically unjustifiable. The linguistic reorientation became Mongolia’s adaptation to new global conditions. As a result, English established itself as a hypercentral language; Chinese, as a supercentral language, successfully expanded its influence in Mongolia’s education system; and Korean gained recognition among young people under the influence of South Korean pop culture. Conclusions. Success for the Russian language in Mongolia’s competition with Chinese is impossible without changing Russia’s role in the world-system and restoring its status as a technological center of an advanced economy, interested in and capable of investing in the development of its internal and external peripheries.