The Bloody White Baron (32 page)

Ungern tried to make diplomatic contact with Zhang through a White Russian agent, Andrei Pogodaiev, who was living in Manchuli, Zhang's headquarters. Before a proper relationship could be established there was the small obstacle of the Chinese forces that Ungern had just routed and massacred. Pogodaiev somewhat stretched the truth when he wrote to Zhang, claiming that the Chinese garrison in Urga had been penetrated by ‘about 200 Russian communists, after which it was not difficult and did not take them long to corrupt the Chinese Garrison with the assiduous help of their Chinese adherents'.
²¹
This demonic communist influence caused ‘robbery and murder' until Ungern's intervention meant that the ‘rioters were driven out of the precincts of Urga' with the aid of loyal Chinese troops. Although actual fighting against the communists was years away in China, most of the new warlords were paranoid about the possibility of Bolshevik infiltration, and this picture of insidious corruption may have struck a chord with the Marshal. Pogodaiev threw in a little appeal to his regional pride, claiming that the uncorrupted Chinese troops had been ‘[mostly] of North China origin'. Ungern also opened another correspondence with a Chinese general attached to Zhang's forces, Lu Zhang-Ku. They had known each other since 1918 and, according to Ungern, his memories of these years were ‘always associated with your encouragement and sympathy', and he seems to have helped Ungern get in touch with Zhang, or at least those closer to him.

Zhang responded to Ungern's communications with cautious enthusiasm. He had no particular wish to expand his territory into Mongolia, and while he sent no aid himself, he permitted supplies and a small number of men to reach Urga. Replying to him in late March, Ungern felt he could ‘rejoice in the knowledge of your continued favour and good will to in regard to myself' and that ‘it is still more gratifying to me because of the heartfelt affection, which animates me towards you, and because I appreciate your partiality and the ample trust which Your Excellency is placing with me'.
²²
The Peking government had finally got round to calling a conference on what to do about Mongolia in April, and had ordered Zhang to move against Ungern, but he was in no evident hurry to do so. It was widely rumoured that he had met with representatives
of both the Japanese and Semenov at Mukden in March, where there had been mutual agreement to recognise Zhang's control over Manchuria and the Whites' over Mongolia. For now, a stand-off suited both sides perfectly well.

It was at this point that one of the most entertaining, but also one of the most frustrating, witnesses of Ungern's regime arrived in Mongolia. Ferdinand Antoni Ossendowski was a Polish geologist, writer and nationalist. He was forty-five, but he looked older, grey-haired and slightly stooped, with a soft voice and gentle manners. Educated in St Petersburg, he had travelled throughout Asia as a young man, and published numerous travel and scientific writings. He was interested in Eastern religion and Theosophy, moved in spiritualist and occult circles and was a friend of the Christian mystic, anti-Semite and Romanov adviser Father John of Kronstadt. His later books would show an obsession with religion, superstition, and the occult, but particularly with ‘the gloomy shadows of the East'.

He had also been involved in revolutionary activities. He was part of a left-leaning group that tried to seize power in Manchuria during the revolutions of 1905 - something he wisely failed to mention to the Baron - and had been imprisoned and sentenced to death for protesting against the brutal Russian repression in Poland after the 1905 revolution. His sentence commuted, he managed to leave prison in 1907 on a wolf's ticket, a kind of parole for dissidents which consigned them to a shadowy existence, forbidden to reside in many areas or to obtain regular employment. Out of work and poverty stricken, he wrote
In Human Dust
, a widely praised account of his time in jail, and joined the Russian literati. It was a career that would support him all his life; by his death he had published over seventy books and his overseas sales were the second highest of any Polish author.

When the First World War broke out he was a surprisingly strong supporter of the Russian cause, writing anti-German propaganda novels and brochures. His time with Ungern was to produce his greatest success, a book called
Beasts, Men, and Gods
. Published in 1922, only a year after he left Mongolia, it went through ten editions in its first year. It is a minor classic of a popular twenties form, the Russian
émigré escape story. Like most of the genre, it begins
in media res
. After briefly telling us that he was ‘suddenly caught up in the whirling storm of mad revolution raging all over Russia' the third paragraph begins: ‘One morning, when I had gone out to see a friend, I suddenly received the news that twenty Red soldiers had surrounded my house to arrest me and that I must escape.'
²³
He fails to mention why they had come; since 1917 he had been a prominent figure in Kolchak's government, acting, at various times, as emissary to the American intervention force, an intelligence officer, and as an assistant to the Polish corps.

After fleeing from Russia he eventually arrived in Mongolia, whereupon he was ordered to the Baron's ger. He entered fearfully, forewarned by both the prophecy of a shaman that ‘death from the White Man will stand behind you' and the more down-to-earth fears of fellow White officers.

His life was spared, while a colonel summoned to Ungern's presence alongside him was executed after ‘secret Bolshevik codes' were, according to Ungern, found in the lining of his coat. He seems to have been one of the very few people with whom Ungern established some kind of genuine friendship. For all his expressed contempt for the intelligentsia, Ungern occasionally took to older, better educated
men with whom he could discuss serious issues of philosophy, mysticism and history. They talked about grimmer things, too; according to another Polish émigré in Mongolia, Ossendowski, with his training in chemistry, offered to teach Ungern's men how to make poison gas. Ungern jokingly referred to him as ‘the professor', and he in turn painted Ungern as a kind of romantic hero, passionate and intense but also deeply flawed, who cries, ‘I am not simply a man, I am a leader of great forces and have in my head so much care, sorrow, and woe!'
²⁵
He omitted Ungern's anti-Semitism from his account entirely, instead having him say, totally implausibly, that ‘my agents [. . .] are all Jews, very skilled and very bold men, friends of mine all.'
²⁶

Ossendowski was a tremendous storyteller in every sense.
Beasts, Men, and Gods
is thrilling, from his account of hiding from the Bolsheviks in the woods, accompanied by a jovial axe murderer, to gunfights on the Seybi river, avalanches in Tibet and finally his arrival in Mongolia.

Unfortunately, chunks of it seem to be outright fiction. Sven Hedin, the famous explorer of Asia, wrote a short book,
Ossendowski und die Wahrheit
[
Ossendowski and the Truth
], in which he proved that the entire section dealing with Ossendowski's travels in Tibet was a fabrication. Another writer more tactfully commented that he hoped Ossendowski would ‘forgive him if I say that [upon meeting him in Mongolia] I cannot remember a single word about his attempts to get into Tibet, about which he has written so colourfully and in such detail in his book'.
²⁷

He was also prone to mixing up Mongolian legends and Western fantasies. Most prominently, the last few chapters of
Beasts, Men, and Gods
describe a hidden kingdom beneath the earth, ruled by ‘the King of all the World', who secretly ‘was in contact with the thoughts of all the men who influence the lot and life of all humankind; with Kings, Czars, Khans, warlike leaders, High Priests, scientists and other strong men'.
²⁸
Ossendowski portrayed this as genuine Mongolian legend, and it did, indeed, seem to have traces of the myths of Shambhala. Unfortunately, it was also a virtual word-for-word precis of the mystical fantasies of the French occultist Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, in his self-published book of 1886
Mission de l'Inde
. Confronted about this later, Ossendowski denied it indignantly, claiming never to have read
the book, but the similarities are so close - with the exception of a few minor changes in spelling - that his protests seem ridiculous.

According to Ossendowski, Ungern was a devout Buddhist, who had devoted his life to ‘war or the study and learning of Buddhism'.
²⁹
He gives us some of Ungern's best mystical speeches but, sadly, his desire to tell a good story and his own occult leanings cast doubt on much of what he says. It was undoubtedly true that Ungern was deeply curious about Buddhism, in a half-superstitious, half-philosophical way. He asked Pershin one day, ‘I hear you have studied Buddhism and are friends with the lamas; could you tell me something interesting about it? I am very much interested in it, and want to know . . .' He trailed off, but Pershin assumed, probably rightly, that he was talking about the more esoteric practices of Buddhism, and told him that ‘I know very little about the occult part of Buddhism. Really, I am interested only in the ethnography of the religion.'
³⁰
His offer to show Ungern more temples and introduce him to some Buddhist philosophers was never taken up.

Despite this interest, Ungern maintained that he was ‘a believer in God and the Gospels, and practised prayer'.
³¹
There is no record of him attending church, but he certainly prayed, though those around him were often uncertain to which deity or deities. He sometimes led the ecumenical evening prayer sessions of the Asian Cavalry Division. He seemed to feel that modern Christianity was a long way from the divine principles which had originally driven it. When addressing his Russian troops he unhesitatingly employed Christian references, but when talking to lamas and philosophers he was equally willing to engage in discussion of Buddhist principles. He was a believer in protective charms, divinations, the efficiency of alternative medicine and, possibly, reincarnation, but considered it perfectly feasible to hold all those beliefs and still think of oneself as Christian, if some way outside the mainstream.

So, what did Ungern actually believe? Was he a Christian or a Buddhist? He would, I think, have dismissed the question as irrelevant; he saw the two - indeed, he seems to have seen all religions - as essentially compatible. Surprisingly tolerant in some ways, doctrine and
creed didn't matter to him. This was a common enough trend in esoteric Western circles, where all religions were often seen as fragments of a greater truth. Ungern believed in this ultimate truth, and what mattered for him was where a person stood in the great battle of ordered good versus revolutionary evil. To be ‘called 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. His religious points of reference were always ecumenical, and very similar to the language of other Russian occultists: ‘Heaven', ‘the Divine', and particularly ‘truth'.