The Bloody White Baron (6 page)

Although mainstream Theosophy was not obsessed by conspiratorial anti-Semitism, Blavatsky was never averse to taking occasional sideswipes at Judaism. She wrote of it as ‘theologically a religion of hate and malice towards everyone and everything about it'. In contrast to Aryan religion, ‘the Semite interpretations emanated from, and were pre-eminently those of a small tribe, thus marking [. . .] the idiosyncratic defects that characterise many of the Jews to this day - gross realism, selfishness, and sensuality'. Not to mention that ‘while the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews was purely materialistic'.

Theosophical ideas of the rise and fall of races and peoples meshed well with another popular Russian mystic and philosopher, Konstantin Leontiev, known as the ‘Russian Nietzsche'. Although he died when Ungern was five, his books, particularly
Russia and Europe
, were still popular. They were exaltations of Russian character and will, in contrast to the weakness and softness of the West. Cultures began in simplicity and purity, became more intricate and entangled, and finally, burdened by their own complexities, decayed and died. Western society, with its unnatural commitment to egalitarianism rather than natural, healthy difference, was doomed. Leontiev praised the East, particularly its nomadic peoples, and felt that Russia's destiny lay with expansion into Asia. For now, Russia could be preserved by keeping everything exactly as it was - ‘frozen so it doesn't stink' - and by the vigorous power of the tsar's will. Monarchy-dictatorship was the way forward. Ungern absorbed his ideas, and would regurgitate some of them later, along with those of other mystical and reactionary thinkers.

Ungern read in German as well as Russian, and among some German thinkers, a mixture of fear and respect for Asia was playing an increasingly strong role. The 1890s had spawned in the West the spectre of the ‘Yellow Peril', the rise to dominance of the Asian peoples. The evidence cited was Asian population growth, immigration to the West (America and Australia in particular), and increased Chinese
settlement along the Russian border. These demographic and political fears were accompanied by a vague and ominous dread of the mysterious powers supposedly possessed by the initiates of Eastern religions. There is a striking German picture of the 1890s, depicting the dream that inspired Kaiser Wilhelm II to coin the term ‘Yellow Peril', that shows the union of these ideas. It depicts the nations of Europe, personified as heroic but vulnerable female figures guarded by the Archangel Michael, gazing apprehensively towards a dark cloud of smoke in the East, in which rests an eerily calm Buddha, wreathed in flame.

Indeed, Germans in particular seemed obsessed with the idea - partially because it reflected their fear of their enormous, half-civilised, neighbour Russia. Some, such as Wilhelm himself, could take a more positive view of Russia's role. In a letter to Tsar Nikolas, his cousin, in April 1895 he wrote: ‘It is clearly the great task of the future for Russia to cultivate the Asian continent and defend Europe from the inroads of the Great Yellow Race.'
¹²
It was a sentiment shared by many in Russia, but it was far more common for Germans to identify Russia
with
the Asiatics.

Combined with this was a sense of the slow sinking of the
Abendland
, the ‘Evening Land' of the West. This would be put most powerfully by thinkers such as Oswald Spengler in
The Decline of the West
(1917) and the Prussian philosopher Moeller van den Bruck, a Russian-speaker obsessed with the coming rise of the East. Both called for Germany to join the ‘young nations' of Asia - through the adoption of such supposedly Asiatic practices as collectivism, ‘inner barbarism' and despotic leadership. The identification of Russia with Asia would eventually overwhelm any such sympathies, instead leading to a more-or-less straightforward association of Germany with the values of ‘the West', against the ‘Asiatic barbarism' of Russia. This was most obvious during the Nazi era, when virtually every piece of anti-Russian propaganda talked of the ‘Asiatic millions' or ‘Mongolian hordes' which threatened to overrun Europe, but identification of the Russians as Asian - and especially as
Mongolian
- continued well into the Cold War era.

It was not an identity that most Russians shared. The East was the other, the opposite of civilised, Westernised Russia, and the Mongols the epitome of the Asian bogeyman. Nikolas II was just as concerned about the threat of the ‘yellow' peoples as his cousin, and it had shaped
Russia's actions during the war with the Japanese. Nevertheless, some Russians, particularly artists, were becoming increasingly interested in the Mongolian heritage of the country. Russian intellectual identity was continually torn between Asia and Europe, both wanting to be part of European, ‘civilised' culture and feeling the call of ‘wild Asian blood'. Most of the time the first view prevailed, and the whole history of Russian-Mongol relations was rewritten into a myth of heroic resistance, the extensive collaboration between Russian kingdoms and the Mongols forgotten. The Mongols became the enemy - but at the same time they represented something heroic and wild, a romantic part of the Russians' self-image and yearning.

As a result, in the nineteenth century there was an increasing trend in Russia towards ‘pan-Mongolism', a search for the origins of Russian customs and folk beliefs in Asiatic legend. This rested mainly upon a nebulous and romanticised image of Mongolia in which Mongols, Tatars and Scythians were bundled together into a vision of untamed and savage natural life. Serious interest in the cultures and religions of the Far East was limited to a tiny minority of ethnologists, linguists and hobbyists. There were also those who needed practical knowledge, the soldiers and bureaucrats who protected and governed Russia's far-flung eastern provinces, although they often arrived with a pre-forged image of the peoples and territories they were about to encounter. Ungern was soon to be numbered among them.

Despite his extracurricular readings, Ungern managed, finally, to pass through an institution without being expelled from it. He graduated in the middle of his class, and found that the best option open to him was service in a Cossack regiment. Around this time he was photographed in his dress uniform, sword to his side and a pair of gloves in one hand, a rather diffident looking young officer. The sword was the Cossack sabre, or
shashka
, for which he had a particular liking. This three-foot, slightly curved weapon was said to originate from a Mongolian design. Ungern would use it not only in war, but to chastise underlings or threaten recalcitrant bureaucrats. Offered a chance to serve in western Siberia, he instead chose a regiment stationed near
Manchuria. He was drawn back to the region by his twin interests in religion and war. It would offer him a chance to explore Eastern beliefs, but it would also be close to the front lines if war broke out with China or Japan. The East was full of possibilities.

Ungern's new home was the 1st Argun Regiment of the Zabaikal (Transbaikal) Cossack Host. He had chosen the 1st Argun for practical reasons - the Cossacks offered his best chance for a posting, and he hoped for the patronage of a powerful cousin, General Rennenkampf, a famous cavalry leader and an enthusiastic Asian adventurer who was affiliated with the regiment. There was a romantic attraction, too. The Cossacks were a strange collection of peoples, the descendants of outlaws and exiles who, four hundred years beforehand, had fled civilised life in Poland, Lithuania and Russia to carve out their own living on the steppe. They had ‘gone Mongol', turning from towns-people and peasants into bandits and freebooters, forming patriarchal, violent, free-spirited kingdoms of their own. The Russians had gradually absorbed them into the empire, but had always allowed them to keep their own territories and drafted them for military service not by head-count, as with most Russians, but in whole regiments, albeit with Russian commanders.

The Cossacks were famous throughout Europe, and often despised. Known as vicious anti-Semites, they often instigated their own pogroms. The Transbaikal Host was less subject to this particular prejudice than some, since there were so few Jews in the region, but Cossack brutality seemed to many to be a throwback to the Mongols themselves. The military historian John Keegan sums the relationship up well:

The Cossacks were also seen as cowards, preferring the easy work of spearing peasants and massacring Jews to the dangers of battle. They were rarely willing to face any form of resistance head-on, and during the nineteenth-century wars between Russia, Britain and France
would often retreat when confronted by trained European forces, even when they outnumbered the enemy two-to-one. They saw this as simply the intelligent thing to do, preferring to use their mobility to strike at the vulnerable flanks of enemy formations. One of their favourite tactics was the ‘fish hook', the old Mongol tactic of drawing an enemy beyond his lines with a faked retreat, then enveloping him from both sides. At the same time, they could be capable of tremendous bravery, making suicidal cavalry charges against fortified positions. Their forte was guerrilla-style raiding and pillaging, an approach to war that would leave a deep impression on Ungern.

While Europeans reviled Cossack brutality, they also romanticised and celebrated their egalitarian, free-spirited lifestyle. Russians, in particular, saw in them an alternative to the stifling, controlled lives they led in the cities, and many Russian writers, especially Tolstoy and Gogol, wrote novels or stories portraying Cossacks as dashing, heroic bandits. Not themselves ‘Russian', they remained a fundamental part of an idea of ‘Russia', a half-civilised barrier between Westernised Russia and the East. In many ways they were the acceptable version of the Mongols, decently Slavic rather than Asian, and nominally Christian.

This was not entirely true of Ungern's new regiment. The Transbaikal was one of the smallest and newest Cossack hosts (
voisko
) - the very name reminiscent of the Mongol armies. It had been founded in 1858 and with only a quarter of a million members was still less than a quarter of the size of the older Western hosts, such as the Don Cossacks. However, it did include some genuine Mongols. Around 12 per cent of the Transbaikal Cossacks were Buriat Mongols, small, round-faced men, Buddhist in faith and with strong links to their cousins back home. Ordinary Buriats often returned to Mongolia for pilgrimage or trade, married Mongolian women, and had political links with the Mongolian nobility. The tsarist regime recognised and even funded the Buriat Buddhist hierarchy, which had ties to both Tibet and Mongolia; their loyalty to Tsar Nikolas was strong. Ungern found the company of the Cossacks pleasing. He was closer to them than to his fellow Russians, and he took a particular interest in the Buriat. Already an accomplished linguist, he picked up their language and studied their customs. Perhaps, as he did during the war, he lived and slept among them. He found their way of life simple, appealing
and pure, especially in contrast to the complexity of Western culture, and developed a deep liking for the region and its peoples.

The nominal duty of the Argun Regiment was the defence of the borders of the empire. The Transbaikal Host was named after the great Lake Baikal, in the middle of Siberia, and their territory ran along both the Mongolian and Manchurian borders. In the nineteenth century they had spawned two other Siberian hosts, the Amur and the Ussuri, and together their territory included the whole border zone. If Japan or China started trouble across the frontier, the Transbaikal would be the first line of defence. It was a duty to which Ungern was deeply committed. The Russian Empire was sacred to him, but it was an idea of empire formed around the ‘combination of the peoples'.
¹⁴
Buriat, German, Russian, Cossack - all of them could come together in unity and strength, under a monarchy blessed by God.