(from Mongolian), livestock-breeding workers in the Mongolian People’s Republic and areas with settlements of Mongols in the Chinese People’s Republic; in a broader sense, the workers in general, the people. In feudal Mongolia the arats were a class of livestock-breeding peasant serfs, attached to the land (pastures), which was owned by feudal lords or sovereign princes who exploited their labor. On the eve of the 1921 revolution the arats, who constituted 92.2 percent of the population, owned only 50.5 percent of the total livestock in the country. The class struggle of the arats against the oppressors assumed all kinds of forms, beginning with an unwarranted nomadism and ending with massive uprisings. The arats were the prime driving force in the Mongolian people’s revolution of 1921. In the Mongolian People’s Republic the arat mode of life underwent a radical change. The arats are a free class, building socialism with the newly formed working class and the working intelligentsia of the Mongolian People’s Republic. The modern arats are no longer small producers but have been incorporated into agricultural cooperatives. The arats’ transition to a settled way of life has been accomplished. According to information available at the end of 1966, arat membership in the agricultural unions constituted 47 percent of the total population of the Mongolian People’s Republic.

In the Chinese People’s Republic the arats form an integral part of the toiling masses in the autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang, and parts of Tsinghai Province.

The peasants in the Tuva ASSR are also called arats.