Like most other professional groups in Mongolian society, journalists were organized into a mass organization. By 1989 the Union of Mongolian Journalists had 800 members, more than half of them formally trained as journalists. Ninety-seven percent of the membership had received higher education. In 1989 the press in Mongolia was undergoing major changes, and the effect of these changes on this body still was unclear (see The Media , this ch.).

There also were "creative unions" to organize writers, artists, and composers. Their main purpose was to ensure that artistic content supported the party's social and political policies. The top leaders of these mass organizations usually served on the party Central Committee. In 1984 the Writers' Union included a sixty-one member committee with seven presiding author-secretaries.

A newer mass organization, established in 1988, was the Culture Fund of the Mongolian People's Republic. Its purpose was to protect monuments and key examples of Mongol history, literature, and architecture as well as to recover cultural treasures that have been taken out of the country. It was funded by voluntary contributions.

The attempt to organize segments of the country's population extended to elderly citizens. The Union of Mongolian Senior Citizens was established on March 25, 1988, with 120,000 members. Its purposes were to make the elderly more productive and involved in the country's development as well as to study and to improve the health of the aging. The organization had a chairman, a deputy chairman, a 150-member executive Committee, a 15-member presidium, and a 7-member central auditing committee. An important subcommittee of this mass organization, reflecting the World War II legacy of military service, was the Committee of War Veterans.

Data as of June 1989