If Baron Ungern carried out his plans, in Russia now, perhaps, there would be not regions, but aimags
December 29 - 124 years since the birth of Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg (1885-1921) - a Russian officer, a famous member of the White movement. Historians assess his activities in different ways, often negatively. But no one doubts - the life of the baron is a wonderful example of the "all-conciliation" of the Russian character, which Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) spoke of. But the writer had in mind the possibility of a synthesis of Russian patriarchal values with the spiritual achievements of Western culture, and Ungern proposed an Eastern alternative.
Savior of the eighth Bogdo-gegen
On one of the last days of January 1921, an unusual horseman entered Urga, the capital of Mongolia (present-day Ulan Bator). A thoroughbred white mare was carrying a European in a bright cherry Mongolian robe and a white hat with a badge of the tsarist army. The guest was in no hurry, he slowly moved along the deserted, as if extinct streets, strewn with gray rubble. Two months ago, General Xu Shuzheng's Chinese expeditionary corps entered the city - a curfew was imposed, arrests and executions began. Among the prisoners was the Mongolian high priest - Jebtszun-Damba-hutukhta, the eighth Bogdo-gegen, who was considered the reincarnation of the Buddha himself. This was Beijing's revenge on the Mongols who dared to proclaim autonomy from the Celestial Empire.
As often happened in the Chinese army, the soldiers stationed in the city were not paid for a long time, and Xu Shuzheng's fighters regularly organized robberies and confiscations. The frightened Mongols could only hide in the depths of their homes, away from doors and windows, so as not to attract the attention of Chinese patrols. But the rider on the white mare didn't seem to be bothered at all. He drove to the house of the city governor Cheng Yi, dismounted, carefully examined the courtyard and, as if nothing had happened, drove back. As he drove past the prison, he came across a sleeping sentry. “Oh, you dog! How dare you sleep at the post! The poor fellow could not get away from the shock for a long time, and when he raised the alarm, the rider disappeared long ago.
Baron Ungern was the uninvited guest. The Asian Cavalry Division, led by him, surrounded the Mongol capital, wishing to drive out the Chinese who had overthrown their emperor. It was also necessary to free the Russian émigrés arrested by Xu Shuzheng's soldiers. On January 31, 1921, the surrounding hills heard a loud "Hurray!" The battle went on for several days. Having spread to the streets of the city, it turned into a real mill of death: grenades, bayonets and sabers were used. The spaces between the houses were filled with pools of blood, in which there were chopped or torn bodies. But luck, no doubt, was on the side of Ungern: the number of his division barely exceeded one and a half thousand people, and yet its soldiers managed to break the resistance of eight thousand Chinese.
On February 3, the city was taken, and Jebzun-Damba-Khutukhta was liberated. Ungern summoned Mongol princes and high lamas to Urga to hold an official ceremony for the restoration of Mongol autonomy. On February 22, 1921, the eighth Bogdo-gegen was crowned with great pomp as Bogdo-khan (khan of all Mongols), and his savior delivered an inspired speech in the language of Genghis Khan (c.1155-1227) and his descendants, in which he remembered the best times of Great Mongolia and assured the audience that after the establishment of a theocracy in the country, glory would certainly return to these lands again. Ungern himself was awarded the highest princely title of tsin-wang, prince of the first degree, with the title "Great hero-commander who gives development to the state." Since then, the baron did not take off his yellow princely robe with the shoulder straps of the Russian general sewn onto it. Of course, this whole ceremony could be viewed as a medieval performance or a farce of the Brezhnev era (1906-1982), but in fact, for both Ungern and the Mongols, everything that happened was very serious …
From corporal to general
Baron Roman Fedorovich Ungern was born into the family of an Estonian landowner. According to family legends, his family came from Hungary and was very ancient: the first Ungerns took part in the crusades. The Sternberg prefix appeared later, when the Ungerns moved to the north of Europe. Naturally, all men from such a glorious family chose a military career for themselves. It was the same with Roman. At the age of 17 he was assigned to the St. Petersburg Naval Cadet Corps. But then the Russian-Japanese war began, and the young man volunteered for the front. Soon, for his bravery in battle, he was promoted to corporal. Returning home, the young baron entered the Pavlovsk military school, after which (1908) he asked to serve in the Trans-Baikal Cossack army. The choice was not accidental. According to Roman, he has always had an interest in Buddhism and Buddhist culture. Allegedly, he took over this hobby from his father, and he, in turn, from his grandfather. The Baron claimed that the latter had been pirating in the Indian Ocean for many years and adopted the religion founded by Prince Shakyamuni (623–544 BC).
However, for a number of reasons, the Baron did not meet the First World War with the Transbaikalians, but in the 34th Don Cossack Regiment. Displaying exceptional courage, during three years of fighting, Ungern was awarded five orders, including the officer George, whom he was most proud of. This was his first award for the battle at the Podborek farm (Poland) on August 22, 1914, at a time when the Russian troops defeated in East Prussia were hastily retreating. On that day, under cross artillery and machine-gun fire from both sides, Ungern managed to crawl four hundred steps to the German positions and, within several hours, correct the fire of Russian batteries, transmitting data on the redeployment of the enemy.
At the end of the first war year, Ungern was promoted to the 1st Nerchinsk Cossack Regiment, subordinate to the famous Peter Wrangel (1878-1928) (by the way, the song "White Guard Black Baron" is not about Wrangel, but about Ungern).
The October Revolution of 1917 found Ungern already in Transbaikalia, where he was sent along with his close friend Esaul Grigory Semyonov (1890-1946) to create volunteer units from the Buryats. Ungern immediately became actively involved in hostilities against the Reds. Soon, Semyonov, who became the ataman of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks, promoted him to general and made him commander of the Foreign Cavalry Division, stationed at the Dauria station, not far from the border with Mongolia. The baron's task was to control the railway from Russia to China. According to Mikhail Tornovsky, one of Ungern's officers, the general in the Daursky region was almost a full-fledged master, doing a lot of dark deeds […] Hardly any of the Bolsheviks safely passed the Dauria station, but, unfortunately, many peaceful Russian people died as well. From the point of view of universal human morality, the Dauria station is a black spot on the White movement, but in the worldview of General Ungern this was justified by those lofty ideas with which the baron's head was full.
This went on for two years - 1918 and 1919. But 1920 turned out to be unlucky for the whites: the army of Alexander Kolchak (1874-1920) was defeated, and its remnants retreated to the east. In the autumn of the same year, Semyonov left for Manchuria, and Ungern, renaming his army into the Asian Cavalry Division, into Eastern Mongolia, into the Tsetsenkhanov aimak (region). To the general's delight, many Mongol princes were delighted with his arrival. In the Russians, they saw the only salvation from the arbitrariness of the Chinese soldiers. Ungern's Asian division immediately received reinforcements and provisions. In total, representatives of sixteen nationalities fought in it: Russian Cossacks, Buryats, Mongols, Tatars, Bashkirs, Chinese and even Japanese. All volunteers. In October 1920, the baron moved to Urga.
We already know how the operation ended, as well as the fact that the capture of the Mongol capital was perceived by General Ungern as something more than an ordinary tactical victory. In fact, it was about the very goals that Tornovsky mentioned in passing, forcing the baron to cruelly deal with everyone in Dauria in whom he guessed sympathy for the red.
When the Mongols will save the world
In terms of their scale, Ungern's plans are quite comparable to those of Genghis Khan. For several years he has been hatching the idea of creating a Middle, or Central Asian, state, which would include Outer Mongolia, or Khalkha (modern Mongolia), Western and Inner Mongolia, Uryankhai Territory (Tuva), Xinjiang, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Manchuria and Southern Siberia is a huge territory from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea. According to the baron, it was ruled by the Manchu Qing dynasty, which lost the Chinese throne ten years ago. To realize this goal, Ungern tried to establish contact with Chinese aristocrats loyal to the ex-emperor of the Celestial Empire Pu Yi (1906-1967), who lived in those years in his Beijing palace as a foreign monarch. Probably for this very purpose, in the summer of 1919, the baron, who did not tolerate female society, played a Christian wedding in Harbin with the Manchu princess Ji Changkui, who became Elena Pavlovna Ungern-Sternberg. But the couple hardly lived together. They divorced two years later.
Although, I must say that the nationality of the ruler of the Middle State for Ungern was not so important. Pu Yi just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The Baron needed monarchy as a general principle of organizing society, and he could well be called a monarchical internationalist, burning with fierce hatred for everyone who posed a danger to the autocracy, no matter what country it concerned. In his eyes, the revolution was seen as the result of selfish plans of people mired in vice, seeking to destroy culture and morality.
The only one who can preserve the truth, goodness, honor and customs, so cruelly trampled by wicked people - revolutionaries, - said the baron during interrogation with the Reds, - are the tsars. Only they can protect religion and raise faith on earth. [After all] people are selfish, impudent, deceitful, they have lost faith and lost the truth, and there were no kings. And with them there was no happiness […] The highest embodiment of tsarism is the union of deity with human power, as was Bogdykhan in China, Bogdo Khan in Khalkha and in the old days Russian tsars.
The baron was convinced that the monarch should be outside any class or group, performing the role of a resultant force, relying on the aristocracy and the peasantry. But, perhaps, there was no conservative in Russia, starting from the 18th century, who would not burn incense to the idea of saving society through a return to traditional values kept by the Russian peasants - the "God-bearing people." However, Ungern can be called anyone but an epigone. Speaking of the peasantry, the baron did not mean the Russian peasants. According to the general, "for the most part they are rude, ignorant, wild and embittered - they hate everyone and everything, they themselves do not understand why, they are suspicious and materialistic, and even without holy ideals." No, the light must come from the East! During interrogation, the baron's speech was low, but confident, almost harsh:
The East must certainly collide with the West. The culture of the white race, which led the peoples to revolution, accompanied by centuries of general leveling […] is subject to disintegration and replacement by the yellow culture, which was formed 3000 years ago and is still intact.
In the eyes of Ungern, the Mongols were just that people who happily combined both loyalty to the traditions of their ancestors and strength of mind, not corrupted by the temptations of an industrial society.
Karma of the "wrathful executioner"
However, the baron was far from thinking of building the ideology of the new state exclusively on Buddhism - the possibility of religious synthesis did not bother him at all. But in the baron himself, almost nothing remained of the religion of Christ: neither humility, nor love, nor fear of God. And he perceived himself as a Northern Buddhist dokshita (“angry executioner” in Tibetan). There is a class of such creatures in Lamaism - angry defenders of the truth, ruthlessly destroying all its opponents. They are revered as saints, as are bodhisattvas. They, too, before leaving for Nirvana, had only one rebirth, but they do not leave for the kingdom of eternal rest, but remain on earth, amid suffering, and try to help those who are finally entangled in the networks of this illusory world. It is believed that dokshitas appear when the compassion of bodhisattvas is powerless. Ungern was just one of those. And this is not a metaphor, the Mongols really considered the baron the embodiment of a destructive force, designed to protect good. The general liked it. And not only because he was a mystic in character, but also because his animal cruelty was justified in this way. The Baron had no doubts that after his death, the bliss prepared for the Buddhist saints awaits him.
It cost him nothing to give the order to hang, shoot or hack to death. Sometimes it was enough to get under the hot hand. But even if the punishment turned out to be deserved, his cruelty clearly testified to the mental pathology of the baron. So, the quartermaster, who soaked several sacks of flour, was drowned. Warrant Officer Chernov, who shot two drunken Cossacks, was kept on the ice for a day, then they gave 200 tashurs and in the end they burned them alive. There is a story about Ungern's "sweet habit" of the Daurian times. Then all those who were shot were taken to the nearest hills and thrown without burial. According to the memoirs of one of the Ungernov officers, with the onset of darkness all around on the hills, only the eerie howling of wolves and feral dogs was heard. And it was on these hills, where skulls, skeletons and rotting parts of gnawed bodies were scattered everywhere, and Baron Ungern liked to go to rest.
In front of the baron's eyes, his fellows could tear apart infants - he had nothing against it. In general, he liked to be present during torture. In particular, he watched with pleasure how his next victim was roasted over low heat, who did not want to kindly tell where the gold or food was hidden. Therefore, when the Mongolian odyssey of the baron was already coming to an end and death sentences were passed to them right and left, some officers, having received an order to appear at the headquarters of the "grandfather" (as Ungern was called among themselves), hastily saddled a horse and disappeared in an unknown direction. Happy were those who were bypassed by this bowl, who, for a minor offense, “only” had to swim across the river in clothes in late autumn and spend the night on the other bank without lighting a fire, or sit in a snowstorm for a day on a tree.
The sacrifice of the soothsayer lamas
In the spring of 1921, the baron, confident in the support of the peasants of South Siberia, was going to continue the fight against the Reds. May 20 came out: 7 thousand sabers, 20 machine guns and 12 light guns. The division split up two days later. Ungern himself commanded a squadron of 2,100 soldiers with 8 guns and 20 machine guns. His task was to take Troitskosavsk - a town on the territory of the RSFSR (modern Kyakhta, two hundred kilometers south of Ulan-Ude).
The assault began on June 6. The Reds settled on the hills around the city, using machine guns, trying to put up a fire barrier in front of the advancing. But the spirit of the Asian Division, emboldened by the successes in Mongolia, was as high as ever. The Baron personally bypassed the stretched chains of his soldiers under bullets. He was not ashamed of them. Hills took "with a bang". Helpless Troitskosavsk lay in the lowlands. But the baron did not develop the success. It was a big mistake: the city garrison did not exceed even five hundred soldiers. They say that the superstitious general obeyed the soothsayers who were always at headquarters, who advised him to refrain from decisive action for the time being. Be that as it may, the division withdrew to the hollow to rest.
The next evening, the Reds launched a counterattack and shot down the patrols of the Asian division from the hills. The Baron again led his men, and the Red Army men fled. At 4 am it was over. It was possible to continue the offensive, but Ungern took pity on the people: leaving the Chinese on the hills, he ordered everyone else to return to the hollow and sleep. An hour has passed. The hollow fell asleep, the Chinese, put on guard, fell asleep. At this time, the Red Army men again climbed the hills. From the first shots, the yellow-faced guard scattered in all directions.
Machine guns were immediately rolled out onto the mountains, and the beating of the sleeping army began. Those who had walked fearlessly into the bayonet room an hour and a half ago were now rushing about in the darkness, helplessly screaming, crushing each other and falling under the hooves of the horses, frightened by the flashes of grenades thrown from the hills into the hollow. More than four hundred people were killed, all weapons were lost. The baron's detachment hastily retreated. Two weeks later, he joined up with the rest of the division. The month passed in small skirmishes with the Reds, of which the Ungernovites invariably emerged victorious. This continued until August 8, when the Asian division collided with armored cars near Novodmitrievka. Without artillery, they could not do anything. The situation has become critical. Urga, in which there were only two hundred Ungernovites, by this time were occupied by the Red Army, and it was impossible to return there for the winter. The Baron was about to go to Tibet. But this solution was not to everyone's taste. The division began to fall apart in a matter of days, they fled in whole detachments. In the end, a conspiracy was ripe against the Baron. He was captured on the night of August 22, 1921. What they wanted to do with him is unknown. The Mongol detachment, escorting the captured general, ran into the Reds, and the baron "got" to them. On September 15, 1921, he was publicly tried in Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk) and was shot on the same day.
This is how the Russian dokshit ended his days. And Mongolia became the first stronghold of socialism in Asia. Although, if not for the baron, it probably would have remained a Chinese province: the Reds did not then have the strength to resist the eight thousand Chinese.
