While in part 1 we
have among others investigated the occult version Ossendowski
added to the story, as we shall see later, for Unger, to struggle for the truth
and the Gospels' was the same as fighting for the truth of Buddhism; he could
combine the roles of Christian crusader and Buddhist wrathful protector without
difficulty. Although it seldom arose, he was similarly tolerant of Islam, since
many of the Mongolian-descended ethnic groups were Muslim. In fact Unger’s
knowledge of both Christianity and Buddhism was rudimentary. He had never
formally abandoned his family's Lutheran faith, but his thinking was clearly
far more Orthodox, drawing upon traditions of hierarchy, stability and monarchy
that were deeply rooted in Russian religion.
Continued from P.1: While leaving Russia Unger made his way across
Siberia to join Captain Crigori Michaelovich
Semenov at his old station posting, Dauria, and found himself swept up in his
friend's plans to turn Siberia into a centre of
anti-Bolshevik resistance.
Ungern and Semenov
were in some ways typical of this officer caste, but most of the White leaders
were former generals and admirals. Their plan to raise a regiment was a hugely
ambitious scheme for two junior officers, but the scale of it deterred neither
man.
After months of
effort, Semenov had at last achieved some success with his Mongol-Buriat recruitment, when they started to muster several
hundred men and soon became one of the few organized armies in the Transbaikal
region.
In fact they even
attracted the attention of the foreign office in London when the war cabinet
decided that, Siberia as one of the keys to controlling Russia. In fact the
British began surreptitiously supporting counter-revolutionary movements in
Siberia.
Previously, Lord
Robert Cecil and the former Military Attache in Russia, Colonel Knox, had been
advocating Japanese intervention since December 1917. It was in January 1918
that the British War Cabinet started giving the prospect serious consideration.
After debating the issue for nearly two weeks, a majority of the War Cabinet
finally agreed to favour it on the 24th.
A telegram from the
British Ambassador in Peking (Sir J. Jordan), contained in the files of the
Political and Secret Department of the India Office, shows that in February
they paid Semenoff's forces 420,000 roubles, and in March 115,000.1
The telegram goes
further on to state that also the French Legation through its Military Attache
had placed 4 million roubles at Semenoff's
disposal. The Ambassador was naturally concerned that the French would have
entire control and influence under these arrangements, and funds provided by
the British might thus be used for furthering enterprises opposed to British
policy. On 4 July the Foreign Office replied, informing Jordan that he could
authorize Sly to pay Semenoff a further 500,000 roubles to cover the arrears for March.
The significance of
the date lies in the fact that in April the British had instructed Semenoff that he was to cease his activities in eastern
Siberia. Whenever Semenoff is discussed in standard
histories of the intervention, this decision has been regarded as final and
writers on the subject attribute his continuing activity to his seeking and
receiving Japanese support. Jordan's telegram indicates that the situation was
far more complex. No historian appears to have given the French a second
thought, nor to have considered that British funding might have been continued.
British policy with
regard to Semenoff was effectively hamstrung by what
appears to be the common ailment of trying to have it both ways. Lord Robert
Cecil spoke to the Japanese Ambassador, Baron Goto, and reported to the War
Cabinet:
Then there was the
question of Semenoff. The Japanese were supporting
this General, but we had told the Bolshevik Government that we were not doing
so, and that he was advancing at his own risk. The Japanese wished to know what
our attitude was in regard to the Semenoff movement.
Lord Robert Cecil continued that he thought we should deal perfectly frankly
with the Soviets. He himself was prepared to back Semenoff,
provided that his activities were part and parcel of an Allied movement,
otherwise we should have nothing to do with him.
The opinion was expressed that we might leave Semenoff
entirely to the Japanese, and say nothing to Trotzki
[sicTrotskyJ, unless the matter were raised by him.
It was suggested, however, that this would not be dealing frankly with Soviets,
as, should intervention in Siberia ever materialise
and Semenoffbecome part of the Allied movement, we
should naturally support him. To recognise Semenoff now, on the other hand, was to recognise
an avowed enemy of the Bolsheviks.2
The Germans meanwhile were alarmed by the
clandestine activities of the Allies. The record through April and the first
half of May shows ample cause for concern. In eastern Siberia the Consuls of
the Western Allies including, surprisingly, the United States, were acting with
the Japanese.
On 15 March the
Chinese Government, that had committed itself to the Allies largely in order to
counterbalance Japanese expansionism at China's expense, had promised the
Bolsheviks that Semenoff would not be allowed to
cross its border with Russia or to interfere in Russian affairs. At Allied
instigation they informed the Soviet Government on 6 April that they would no
longer abide by their promise. Semenoff promptly
renewed his activities. On 16 April a new anti-Bolshevik Government was formed
in Peking.
This was known as the
Far Eastern Government and was led by Prince Lvov, the first Prime Minister of
the Provisional Government after the February Revolution, with General Horvath
as Premier and Admiral Kolchak as Minister of War. On the following day the
Bolsheviks arrested Japanese spies at Irkutsk, and documents found on them
showed that the Japanese Consul was involved in espionage. These spies were not
operating in a vacuum, but were engaged in preparing the ground for armed
intervention - an invasion in all but name - by the Japanese Army.
Attempts were made to
coordinate operations in the north with those in Siberia and the Volunteer Army
in the south--and at least one British officer Captain Charles Kenelm Digby
Jones, was sent from Archangel to liaise with the Czechoslovaks in Siberia. A
civilian, Mr Reed, whose business remains unknown,
accompanied him, as did a White officer, Lieutenant Meinov.
In the wake of the
Czechoslovak successes in Siberia, White 'governments' sprang up like
mushrooms. And the Allies and their adherents were faced with a tremendous
problem in either forcing or persuading them to work together. The
Czechoslovaks allowed these governments to form, but took little interest in
them thereafter. Their focus was on more immediate problems. Those at Vladivostock turned westwards to link with their comrades
in western Siberia.
To coordinate the
actions of the Czechoslovaks at Vladivostock with
those of their comrades in western Siberia, a British liaison officer, Captain
Leo Steveni, was appointed to the staff of General
Mikhail Dietrichs, who was commanding the
Czechoslovaks in eastern Siberia. He was told to make every effort to ensure
cooperation between the Czechoslovaks and White Russian military elements, and
to smooth over any friction between the Czechoslovaks and General Horvath's Far
Eastern Government. He was also responsible for liaising with Semenoff at Harbin and trying to keep General Dietrichs, Semenoff and General
Horvath harnessed to the Allied wagon without squabbling.
Semenoff and Ungern’s big opportunity came in August 1918,
when with Japanese and Czech they crossed the border into Transbaikal Russia.
By September Semenov
was installed in Chita as de facto dictator of the entire Transbaikal. With him
came the Japanese army, raising the flag of the Rising Sun across the railways
and placing tens of thousands of troops in the region. Along with the Japanese
were other foreign soldiers, the Siberian Expeditionary Force, comprising
mostly American troops, which had been sent by the Allies to help retrieve the
Czech Legion and with the secondary aim of frustrating Bolshevik ambitions
without being drawn into open warfare. It was a farce; the troops froze and
grumbled and fought with their supposed Russian comrades, and the foreign
intervention or 'imperialist invasion' gave Soviet apologists an excuse for the
atrocious Bolshevik policies of the civil war era for decades afterwards.
For now, Semenov's
court became stuffed with Japanese 'advisers' and Allied observers. He assumed
the Cossack rank of ataman, 'chief', but true power lay with the Japanese. His
foreign policy, his attitudes towards other White leaders, even the movements
of his armies, were all directed from Tokyo. Ungern, in turn, became commander
of Dauria. Along with the post went a new rank, granted by Semenov; he was now
a major-general, a title of which he was inordinately proud. Semenov's new
slogan was For Law and Order! The residents of the Transbaikal, and especially
of Ungern's new fiefdom, would soon find only grim irony in this motto.
Shortly before Unger
had read the Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion, a forgery that was not created in Paris but by White
Russians in the Ukraine.3
Ungern refers to the
‘Protocols’one of his letters includes a brief precis
of how 'the principles of Talmud, preaching the tolerance of all and any means
for the attainment of the goal afford the Jews a plan and method of activities
in the destruction of nations and states'.4 Their popularity received a
considerable boost when the news came that Tsarina Alexandra had been reading a
book by the anti-Semitic apocalyptic writer Sergius Nilus, which included the
'Protocols', while in captivity. She had also etched a swastika, already
recognized as an anti-Semitic symbol, on her window. This came as a 'testament
from on high' to many Whites. The tsarina's use of this Buddhist, esoteric and
anti-Semitic symbol, which was also very common in Mongolia, would have thrilled
Ungern. And meshed well with Ungern's interest in esoteric Eastern religion.
Like many others, he
was convinced that the driving force behind the Bolsheviks was essentially
Jewish. They were constantly striving to corrupt society. Their evil could not
be contained, but had to be eradicated, down to the roots. The revolution had been
caused not only by their actions, but by their mere corrupting presence; they
were the 'sinners of the revolution'. I3 He discussed this 'important question'
with another anti-Semitic White leader, Lieutenant-General Molchanov, in a
heartfelt conversation during a downpour in Dauria. They, or at least Ungern,
came to the conclusion that it was necessary to 'exterminate Jews, so that
neither men nor women, nor even the seed of this people remain'.5 The seeping
poison of the 'snake' of Jewish influence had been the downfall of the old
regime. With the Jews eliminated, the Russian Empire could be redeemed, and a
new imperial utopia emerge.
As a result, Jews
passing through Dauria were in great danger. One man recalled decades later how
his father, who ran a medical train along the route for over two years, had
given the Jewish doctors on his staff 'small crosses to wear on little chains
around their necks, so that they could pass superficial checks by the Baron's
men'.
Unger also started to
disapprove of Semenov's growing corruption, of the extravagance of his
lifestyle and of his tolerant attitude towards Jews. Semenov had expressly
forbidden pogroms (the slaughter of Jews ‘en masse’)
under his command.
He also disagreed
with Semenov on the nature of the government they were fighting for. Semenov
advocated the restoration of the Romanovs, but he envisioned a constitutional
monarchy with limited powers, a semi-democratic system with a parliament and a
cabinet, such as had existed, at least in theory, before the revolution.
Ungern, however, was a committed monarchist. Since the murder of the imperial
family, he had pinned his hopes on the tsar's younger brother, the amiable but
dim Prince Michael. Unknown to Ungern, the man he was championing had been
murdered in secret by the Bolsheviks in I9I8, but rumours
of his supposed whereabouts circulated throughout Russia and Ungern was
determined to put him back on the throne.
Of all the great
vanished ideologies, monarchism, especially religious monarchism, often seems
to be the most ridiculous. It is hard to imagine that anybody could regard the
deeply stupid Nikolas II or the drooling, retarded Taisho emperor, for example,
as the representative of God's will on earth. For Ungern, though, this was the
natural order of things; the monarch, however flawed, was 'the first person in
the state'.24 He could stand apart from all the classes, and as such treat them
all equally. Nevertheless, he would be supported by the advice of aristocrats
such as Ungern. Aristocrats had to be loyal, since 'history showed that they
were the class that had the power to destroy the monarchs'.6
Beneath them would be
a solid base of faithful peasantry who would labour
to support the monarchy and defend it with their lives. This ideal system of
rule had been in decline for a long time before the revolution, in Ungern's
view. Liberalism and capitalism, which was 'only good for exploiting the blood
of the people', had weakened the natural order, allowing the final triumph of
revolution. The workers had been spoilt, become lazy, and had spent 'the last
fifteen years just sitting around'. Behind it all, of course, was the
diabolical hand of the Jews, who had worked throughout the nineteenth century
to cause 'revolutions, rebellions, and the overthrowing of monarchy and
authority'.7
Ungern's faith in
Prince Michael's eventual return echoed old peasant stories of the
'tsar-deliverer', an idealised version of the tsar
who would, it was often believed, miraculously appear to smite corrupt local
officials, give the peasants back their land and generally put the world to
rights. Among the peasants it was an extreme form of the common belief in the
'good tsar', kept from knowing the people's true state by his corrupt
officials. The tsar-deliverer was often believed to be hiding in some secret
place until the time was right. Then he would return to destroy his enemies and
a golden age of peace and harmony would follow.
It was a powerful
myth; Lenin saw it as the major obstacle to peasant rebellion. Until the events
of Bloody Sunday in I905 destroyed trust in the tsar for good, he believed that
peasants 'have been able naively and blindly to believe in the Tsar-Deliverer...Peasants
could not rise in rebellion, they were only able to petition and to pray.'8 For
reactionaries like Ungern, such legends were evidence of the peasants' ultimate
faith in the tsar and the imperial system. In fact, the legend of the
tsar-deliverer had inspired far more rebellions than it had restrained; it
empowered peasants to act 'in the name of the Tsar' while really asserting
their own rights. As the situation worsened for the White Russians, many of
them developed a naive faith of their own in the peasants, who, so Ungern and
others believed, would ultimately rise up against the Bolshevik usurpers and
restore the monarchy they clearly longed for.
Before monarchy could
be restored, however, the war had to be won. The Siberian front was both highly
mobile and deeply constrained. Thousands of people lived on the railway,
travelling from station to station without a fixed home. Whole communities became
mobile, and great trains of carriages bore generals from place to place.
Amazingly the employees of the old Trans-Siberian, often coerced and bullied by
Semenov's men, still made up the majority of those who kept the network
running. The railway was a mobile city: there were hospital cars, headquarters,
brothels, travelling theatres, dining cars appointed like opulent Moscow
restaurants, libraries, motor workshops, churches, mobile electric generators,
printing shops, offices, and torture chambers. White generals especially liked
to travel in style, recapturing some of the glory of the good old days.
Churchill wrote of armoured trains that 'the very name seems strange; a
locomotive disguised as a knight-errant, the agent of civilisation
in the habiliments of chivalry', but there was nothing either civilised or chivalrous about their use in the Transbaikal.
Semenov's trains had no effective opposition, and to be the commander of one
was like being captain of a pirate vessel; one could simply roll into a small
town and demand that the locals either hand over whatever they had or be blown
to smithereens. The Reds strove to set up their armoured
train crews as a trained, organised force, and tried
to use them as massed artillery. In contrast, Semenov's captains recruited or
pressganged their own men, often acting on their own initiative rather than any
higher orders. Crew sizes ranged from forty to nearly two hundred, sometimes with
an auxiliary infantry force of two or three hundred men. Many were armed with
naval artillery, stripped from the gunboats of the Siberian lakes. They were
given names fit for machines of mass destruction; the Reds had the ideological
Death to Parasites, Ruin of the Counter-revolution, Liberty or Death, while
among the White trains in Siberia were the Valiant, Swift and Just, along with
the more aptly named Master, Avenger, Destroyer, Terrible and Merciless.
Behind them followed
the death trains. Both sides rarely took prisoners, and neither wanted the
burden of looking after them.
Finally, Ungern's
ties to Mongolia inevitably involved him in one of Semenov's grandest schemes,
the plans for 'pan-Mongolia'. This was an idea that had been popular among some
Mongol intellectuals since the beginning of the century, particularly among the
Buriat. It was a scheme for unification of the Mongol
peoples, creating a new state that would unite Outer and Inner Mongolia with
the Buriat and Bargut
territories. Semenov was keen on this plan, seeing in it an opportunity to
become 'King Gregorii I', as the sardonic White diarist Baron Budberg put it.
Some among Semenov's
Japanese backers were also eager to test pan-Mongolia's feasibility; a
Japanese-backed puppet state would immeasurably strengthen Japan's power in the
region, giving her a base for future assaults on Russia and China. They had
already created a pan-Buddhist society in 1918 as a front to promote
pan-Mongolian ambitions, hoping to foment anti-Chinese feeling in Inner
Mongolia in particular. It tied into the popularity in Japan of pan-Asiatic
thinkers, who saw Asian unity as a spiritual and political necessity for Japan.
All the peoples of Asia, linked by faith, ethnicity and culture, could come
together - under suitable Japanese guidance.9
Under Semenov's
sponsorship, and with Japanese observers, two congresses were called; one in
Dauria in early February and a later one in Chita on 25 March. Representatives
from Inner Mongolia, Bargut and Buriatia
attended, though the Buriats dominated. A grand state
was sketched, with Hailar, in Bargut territory, as
the capital of the new country, though the provisional capital was to be
Dauria. The delegates proclaimed a respected Inner Mongolian lama, the Niis Gegen, prime minister of the nascent state, and sent a
representative to the Paris Peace Conference, then seeking to reorder the
post-war world Although he arranged the initial conference, Ungern was opposed
to the idea. The thrust behind it was a modernising
one, an attempt to create an organised state from
disparate peoples, with a federal government and an elected parliament. It was
the antithesis of all that Ungern valued in the Mongols: tradition, leadership,
the preservation of values that had been lost in the West. Nor were the
delegates his kind of people. He disliked European intellectuals quite enough;
to have to deal with Mongolian ones, polluting the purity of his beloved
nomads, must have been even more irritating. His relationship with Fushenge, the Inner Mongolian prince and enthusiastic pan-Mongolist to whom he had been providing military advice for
over a year, was also deteriorating. He wrote about the conference with
indifference, even bitterness, and noted to a friend that he had forgotten to
ask him for help to send the delegates to Paris. Later he spoke of the plan as
a 'soap bubble' and its proponents as 'empty-headed'. Its main virtue to him
was as a recruiting tool to amass more Mongol troops.
Fortunately for
Ungern, the idea was stillborn. The meetings were attended by only sixteen
representatives, and none from Outer Mongolia. Three delegates, including Fushenge, were sent to Urga to try to raise support for the
idea among the Bogd's court and the nobles. They were
snubbed; not only was the Bogd, like Ungern, opposed
to the idea of a modern state but he could see the risk of threatening China
with further loss of territory and a new, hostile power, and knew that the
chances of his having any real power in a Semenov-led, Japanese-backed puppet
state were exceedingly small. The pan-Mongolian delegates were forced to return
to Dauria, where they proposed an attack on Urga to drive out the Chinese and
act as a spark for pan-Mongolian feeling. It was a bluff; with the Japanese
backers gone, funding was limited and barely three thousand troops could be
raised for the threatened assault.
In Paris, Kolchak's
representatives and the Chinese both manoeuvred to
prevent the pan-Mongols from being represented at the conference, and nobody
was anyway in much of a mood to listen to idealists from the backwaters of the
world. Optimistic telegrams seeking recognition were dispatched to world
leaders, without result. After the meeting at Dauria was reported in the
Chinese newspapers, the Japanese cabinet grew nervous of the risk of alienating
the other great powers, who had guaranteed the integrity of Chinese territory.
On I6 March Japan forbade its citizens, military and civilian, from
participating in the pan-Mongolian movement in any way. It was to be another
decade before Tokyo took up the idea again.
Like many
pan-national movements before and since, the main cause of its disintegration
was disagreement about who was the most truly 'national'. Outer Mongolians had
no interest in a Buriat-Ied movement, and considered
themselves the largest and most important group; Inner Mongolians believed that
they represented an older and purer form of Mongol culture; and the Buriats argued that, as the most advanced and modern group,
and as the originators of the idea, they should obviously take the lead.
Tensions between the Buriats and Fushenge's Inner
Mongolian fighters grew. In anticipation of the threatened attack on Urga, both
had been stationed at Dauria, where they were being trained by Russian officers
under Ungern's command. On 3 September, 1919, under Fushenge's
leadership, fifteen hundred Inner Mongolians mutinied, killing their Russian
officers, disarming their Buriat comrades and seizing
an armoured train. The exact cause of the revolt is
unclear, but there were stories of plots and counter-plots, and rumours that the Karachen were
planning to defect to the Chinese side. The cause may have been more mundane;
it had been a long time since most of the soldiers had been paid. Whatever the
catalyst, Dauria became a battlefield for two solid days, as more armoured trains were rushed down to pound the rebels into
submission, and the Cossack and Buriat troops fought
against their former comrades. All the revolt's leaders were killed, including Fushenge, and the remnants escaped into Mongolia, where
they were captured and executed by the Chinese army. PanMongolism
had been a political farce that ended with Mongol killing Mongol, but to
Ungern's fertile imagination it suggested unfulfilled possibilities.
In the
meantime, while the White-held territories to the west had provided the
Transbaikal with a measure of insulation against Red attacks. Now, as the
Bolshevik assaults tore ever bigger holes in the White defences,
it became easier for large groups of Red partisans to enter Semenov's
territory.
However when the armoured train Avenger arrived in
response, captained by Colonel Popov, one of Semenov's cronies, it lived up to
its name. The Reds had all left, so Popov shot the village elders who turned up
to welcome him, then proceeded to shoot a dozen more villagers at random and
rape two local girls.
Such behaviour prompted the formation of a growing number of
partisan groups with no connection to the Bolsheviks; they were simply peasants
who, tired of having their daughters raped, their houses burnt and their stores
confiscated, had taken to the forest to fight the Semenovites.
By the end of 1919 there were around a hundred thousand anti-White partisans
operating in Siberia, and approximately thirty thousand in the Transbaikal
alone. Many of Semenov's soldiers, sick of the random cruelty of their superiors,
deserted to join the partisans.
Despite his growing
distance from Semenov, Ungern's base at Dauria still played a crucial, gruesome
part in the White infrastructure; it was the execution camp. Prisoners were
sent there in trainloads to be disposed of by Ungern's killers. As with the 'death
trains', frontline soldiers were often too squeamish to dispose outright of men
who, only a year or two before, had been their compatriots. At Dauria, Ungern's
men had no such compunction about executing the Red captives who arrived there.
Many of the White leaders in the west believed - or claimed to believe - that a
system of prisoner-of-war camps still existed in Siberia, and that the men they
sent there would be treated humanely. Some prisoners had been 'processed'
through the torture chambers beforehand; others were civilians, suspected
Bolshevik sympathisers put through a quick and
farcical trial before being sent to Dauria for execution. Men were hanged or
shot in batches of seventy or eighty at a time. The bodies were left in the
open to rot, and surrounding hills came to resemble the aftermath of a battle.
Body dumping, unhygienic as it was, was standard practice around Semenov's
execution and torture centres. At Makkaveevo,
so many bodies were dumped into the nearby river that it became polluted, and
after local peasants complained Semenov ordered that the bodies be burnt instead.Ungern, one of his officers claimed, found the
macabre atmosphere relaxing. 'On these hills, where everywhere were rolling
skulls, skeletons, and decaying body parts, Baron Ungern used to like to go to
rest.'10
Ungern's own links to
Semenov were growing weaker. The ataman's control of his lieutenants was always
dubious, and bit by bit Dauria began to act as an entirely separate force from
the rest of the Special Manchurian Division. In February I920 they were formally
organised as an entirely separate unit, the Asian
Cavalry Division. Ungern was still in regular contact with Semenov in Chita,
but there was little doubt in anybody's mind that he was now an autonomous
power in his own right. Semenov publicly recognised
that Ungern's forces equalled his own in importance.
In fact by the summer
of 1920, there was little hope left for Semenov's men. White resistance in
Western Siberia had collapsed the previous winter, and Omsk had been evacuated.
Kolchak fled to Irkutsk, but it had been taken over by a leftist faction, who
handed him over to the Bolsheviks in January. After a brief 'investigation',
but not even a show trial, he was shot on 7 February. Before his death he had
written an order handing over control of his remaining troops to Semenov,
since, however much he disliked the ataman, he was the only effective White
leader remaining in Siberia. The White position in Crimea was also untenable,
and Wrangel evacuated the last of his men in November 1919. The White cause was
obviously doomed. Semenov's control over the Transbaikal could last a little
longer, but only because of the huge distances involved, the chaos throughout
Soviet Russia and the support of the Japanese. There was no future in it, and
Ungern knew it. He needed a way out.
Ungern met Semenov
for one last time, in the tiny station of Olovyan.
Later, Semenov would take credit for planning the whole Mongolian expedition,
claiming that the Asian Cavalry Division was intended to be the core of a new
Mongolian army which would liberate the country from Chinese imperialism, a
cause that had been close to his heart since his time there in 1911. It was
probably true that his pan-Mongolian schemes were part of Ungern's inspiration,
but the true plan was different. Ungern was directed by Semenov to take the
town of Aksha, on the Mongolian border, as part of a scheme for the Asian
Cavalry Division to operate as a guerrilla force against the Bolsheviks. The
ultimate aim of the original plan was probably to work their way up through
Siberia, living off the land and mobilising the
peasantry against the Bolsheviks, and meet up with one of Ungern's old
comrades, Colonel Rezuhin. Rezuhin
was a small, dapper man, known for his loyalty to Ungern and his brutality; his
name meant 'cutter' in Russian, and he lived up to it. On 15 August, with very
little warning, Ungern gathered his men and rode for Aksha, where they
skirmished with Bolshevik fighters. Some of his Chinese troops deserted,
perhaps sickened by his rule. From Aksha, Ungern's army crossed the border into
Mongolia.
A new empire would
have to be created, and he had the model for it in the empire of Genghis Khan,
which had once stretched 'from the Amur Mountains to the Caspian Sea'. Ungern
referred to him as 'the Great Leader' and claimed, that his army was 'the equal
of Genghis Khan's'.11
On the banners under
which the army rode two symbols were particularly prominent. One was a curly
capital M, with II below it and a crown above. This stood for Michael II, the
missing but, Ungern hoped, future monarch of Russia. He was, we now know, nearly
three years dead, and even the most optimistic monarchists were having doubts
by this point, but a vanished prince, who might then return like a fairy-tale
king, was a fitting symbol for Ungern's dreams of Russian revival. The other
popular symbol was the swastika. And while it was a Buddhist motif, Ungern
would also have been aware of its anti-Semitic interpretation, as would most of
the Whites.
Ungern's army was
soon joined by a Mongolian delegation freshly returned from the Soviet Union,
suggesting that the Mongolian commitment to his force was far more pragmatic
than ideological. If the two great powers, China and Russia, could be
encouraged to fight each other, Mongolian independence might be possible after
all. In fact Mongolia longed for a foreign saviour--and
from there the restoration of the world could begin.
1. National Archives,
Kew, F0371 /3283, no. 118, p. 257, titled: Very secret Very Urgent.
2. Ibid., no. 25763,
p. 419, Lindley to Foreign Office, 'Most Secret'.
3. For this latter
unraveling see C.G. De Michelis, The Non-Existent Manuscript, 2004.
4. Special Delegation
of the Far Eastern Republic, Letters Captured from Baron Ungern in Mongolia
(Washington, DC, I92I), p. 4.
5. Sovetskaya Sibir, no. 200 (560), 17 September, 1921, p. 4.
6. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv
Voenno-Morskogo Flota [State Archive of the Russian
Navy] (RGAVMF), f. 9427, op. I, d. 392, p. 60.
7. Sovetskaya Sibir, no. 202 (562), 20 September, 1921, p. 2.
8. Quoted in Daniel
Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston, I976), p.2.
9. Pan-Asiatic ideas
of the period in Japan however lacked much of the aggressive and extreme
right-wing tone of the movement in the 1930s and 40s. Instead, they often
envisaged bringing liberal, anti-imperialist thought to the rest of Asia,
envisaging a federation rather than an empire, albeit one in which the Japanese
would be the clear leaders, treating other Asians in a paternalistic fashion.
10. Quoted in Evgenii
Belov, Baron Ungern fon Shternberg:
biografiia, ideologiia, voennye pokhody 1920-1921 [Baron
Ungern von Sternberg:
Biography, Ideology, Military Campaigns 1920-I921], Moscow, 2003, p.28.
11. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv
Voenno-Morskogo Flota [State Archive of the Russian
Navy] (RGAVMF), 9427, op. I, d. 392, p. 56.
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