The Bloody White Baron (5 page)

He had a fundamental sense of arrogant privilege. The Ungern-Sternberg family had ‘never taken orders from the working classes', and it was not the place of ‘dirty workers who've never had any servants of their own, but still think they can command' to manage society.
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Worst of all were the revolts of the peasantry, whom he considered the bedrock of the entire feudal-monarchical system.

There was a racial element here, too; in Ungern's view the Slavic peasants were naturally inferior, incapable of making their own decisions. Without the guidance of ‘superior' peoples, he later stated, they would only fall for the manipulations of the Jews. This was a belief shared by many of the Russian nobility, who sometimes saw themselves as a race apart from the peasantry - for instance some believed, or claimed to believe, that the peasants literally had ‘black blood'. In some cases such prejudice had been partly softened during childhood by contact with Russian peasant nurses and servants, but the staff at Jerwakant were all German, so Ungern lacked even this basic knowledge of the Russian peasantry.

The gap between the Germans and the locals was provoking trouble in rural Estonia. The main cause of unrest here was not socialism, but national revival. The Estonians had, in theory, already been granted equal legal rights with the Germans. In practice, though, the country was still dominated by a tiny foreign elite. Russian attempts to reduce the power of the Germans had resulted only in Russian administrators replacing German. Since they, too, rarely spoke Estonian, had no family ties with the region and were mainly interested in reaping as much profit from their post as possible before a comfortable retirement in St Petersburg, they managed to make themselves even less popular than the Germans.

During the 1905 revolutions the Estonian peasantry ran riot. Seven hundred years of political and economic oppression exploded in a
joyous outpouring of violence. The burnt-out manor houses in the countryside were complemented by smashed windows and broken furniture in the cities. In just over a week in December 1905, one-fifth of all German-owned property was destroyed.
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The Ungern-Sternberg clan owned several properties and suffered great losses from the Estonians' vengeful rage. These included the manor house at Jerwakant where Ungern has been raised, of which the local peasantry left nothing but a blackened shell.

With the arrival of twenty thousand Russian soldiers, the power of the Germans was restored and the rebels were put down without quarter. Three hundred were shot, another three hundred sentenced to death, and thousands sent to Siberia. It cemented, in Ungern's mind, all the prejudices of his family and class. The peasants were feral animals, fit only to be tamed and corralled, ‘rough, untutored, wild and constantly angry, hating everybody and everything without understanding why'.
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Imperial rule was the natural order of things, and to threaten it threatened the world itself; revolution was the harbinger of ‘famine, destruction, the death of culture, of glory, of honour and of spirit, the death of states and the death of peoples'.
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The monarchical system was very dear to Ungern; it was the centrepiece of the hierarchies that governed his world. The Russian monarchy, however, was the most sacred of all, blessed, like Russia, by God himself. The revolution, seemingly spontaneous, was really controlled by Jews and intellectuals; it was ‘the horrible harvest of the seed sowed by revolutionaries'. He dismissed any suggestion that the revolts might have arisen out of genuine social grievance, believing that ‘in their hearts, the people remained loyal to Tsar, Faith, and Fatherland',
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but had been led astray by the intelligentsia. The threat to the monarchy threatened the very order of things and foreshadowed the end of all.

Others shared his views; the end of the revolution saw over seven hundred pogroms, spurred on by rightist anti-Semitic organisations such as the Union of the Russian People and the Legion of the Archangel Michael. The paramilitary groups associated with them, which carried out over three thousand murders, were known as the ‘Black Hundreds'. The tottering tsarist regime, sensing its own unpopularity, attempted to rouse popular anti-Semitism to bolster support for the monarchy and against Jews and revolutionaries, increasingly
connected in rightist propaganda. The ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion', a tract which claimed that Jews were organised in a sinister, world-dominating conspiracy, circulated widely among reactionaries. Right-wing propaganda took on an increasingly eliminationist tone, looking not merely to ‘contain', but to permanently eradicate the ‘Jewish menace'.

For the moment, Ungern had to learn to defend that order, now barely stabilised by the introduction of the ‘October Manifesto', which reformed the Russian constitution and provided a limited degree of both democracy and civil rights. For Ungern even this was an abomination, the beginning of the end, and he agreed with Tsar Nikolas II, who had been badgered and threatened into signing, that it was a betrayal of the rightful principles of autocratic monarchy. As a young soldier, however, there was nothing he could do about it, especially with his career to consider. Returning to Russia in 1906, yet more strings were pulled and, after briefly considering the Engineering Corps, he was able to enrol in the extremely prestigious Paul I (Pavlovskoe) Military Academy instead, switching from navy to army. The academy churned out military cadets, particularly for the cavalry, the most glamorous of the services. Here he seems to have settled down, though he was never anything other than a mediocre student; perhaps his temperament was simply more suited to the contemplation of hand-to-hand slaughter than the distant calculations of naval battle, or perhaps the experience of war had sharpened his commitment to the army.

While studying logistics, military engineering, and small unit tactics, Ungern was also beginning to develop his interest in more esoteric matters. He seems to have read widely on Buddhism, occultism, and religion in general, as well as Western philosophy and literature - he particularly liked Dostoevskii and Dante. Nietzsche, popular among the Pavlovskoe cadets, was another influence. He began to develop some of the classic traits of an intelligent but narrow-minded autodidact: contempt for the intelligentsia, a fervent belief in his own findings and reasoning, and a dangerous credulity for unusual fringe beliefs.

An interest in both Eastern religion and the occult tends today to be associated with a broad range of ‘alternative' thought, and in general with radical, or at least mildly left-wing, politics.
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This was certainly not the case in Ungern's time. Although plenty of radicals and socialists
could be found in occult circles, at least as many occultists were reactionaries or fervent nationalists. One reason was the innate elitism of occultism. George Orwell, considering advertisements for astrologers in a French fascist magazine, brilliantly noted how ‘the very concept of occultism carries with it the idea that knowledge must be a secret thing, limited to a small circle of initiates. [. . .] Those who dread the prospect of universal suffrage, popular education, freedom of thought, emancipation of women, will start off with a predilection towards secret cults.'
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The high intensity of Russian patriotism and Orthodox mysticism, especially the near-deification of the tsar, easily bled over into the stranger fringes of belief.

We don't know precisely how Ungern first discovered Buddhism and mysticism, but he would hardly have been short of opportunities. St Petersburg was rife with occultism. One Orthodox priest, Father Dmitrevskii, was shocked at how, ‘In bookstore display windows, at the train stations, all these books about spiritualism, chiromancy, occultism, and mysticism in general leap out at you. Even the most innocent books are sold in covers decorated with some kind of mystical emblems and symbols which assault the eye.'
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Orthodox priests of the time seem to have spent their lives in a perpetual state of outrage at just about everything, but his account of the overwhelming interest in the occult is confirmed by numerous contemporaries. In St Petersburg alone, during Ungern's time there, there were thirty-five officially registered occult groups. Then, as now, alternative medicine was a mainstay of such movements, including a school of ‘Tibetan medicine', frequented by the rich and gullible. In 1913 a Tibetan Buddhist temple was even established, affiliated with the Theosophist movement and established by the extraordinary Buriat monk and secret agent Agvan Dorjiev. Some took the rise in esoteric religions as synonymous with the supposed decadence of the time, railing against black magic, satanism and witchcraft; others perceived it as a vital outpouring of that national obsession, the Russian soul.

Orientalist trappings were very common among esoteric groups. Magazine and book covers of the time frequently appropriated Asian symbols; the
wuxing
(yin/yang symbol), the swastika, the Buddha, the
vajra
thunderbolt, the lotus and so forth.
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Perhaps some of them seemed familiar to the Baron from his genuine experiences of the East; the boom in interest in Asian religion had, after all, been sparked
largely by the imperial interests of Britain and Russia. His relative-by-marriage Hermann Keyserling, later to become an important figure in European occultism, observed that even as a young man he was interested in ‘Tibetan and Hindu philosophy' and spoke of ‘geometrical symbols'.
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Keyserling thought him ‘one of the most metaphysically and occultly gifted men I have met', and believed he possessed clairvoyant abilities. That Ungern could read minds was a common belief among those who knew him. Perhaps this impression was due to his distinctive gimlet eyes: small, deep-set, and unevenly spaced. There was something inconsistent about their colour, and nobody could seem to agree whether they were blue or grey. They fixed upon his interlocutors with a disconcerting intensity, ‘like those of an animal from a cave', according to Keyserling.

‘Tibetan and Hindu philosophy' was undoubtedly a reference to one of Keyserling's own interests, the peculiar new cult of Theosophy. Hugely popular in Russia, it often portrayed itself as a form of ‘esoteric Buddhism'. The Theosophical Society had been founded in 1875 by, among others, a Russian mystic, traveller and con-artist named Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891), a woman of considerable creative intelligence, great charm and no little greed. Having read widely, if shallowly, in the literature of the Eastern religions, she cobbled together Hinduism, Buddhism, bits of existing Western occultism, elements of the novels of the popular fantasist Edward Bulwer-Lytton and her curious interpretations of contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific theories to create her own religion. Her motives were muddled; she genuinely wished to bring Asian insight to Europe, but also took much delight in the gullibility of her disciples, whom she once offhandedly referred too as ‘flap-doodles', and the financial benefits they provided.

Theosophy was a kind of stripped-down and generalised version of Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism. Its most critical beliefs were in reincarnation, the fundamental unity of world religions, the existence of karma and the cyclical nature of the universe. Today Theosophy survives largely through the diligent work and wills of sweet little old ladies, but its wider influence is obvious to anybody familiar with alternative Western religious beliefs, particularly during the so-called ‘New Age' of the 1980s. Crankish though its beliefs were, Blavatsky's society drew to it many talented and likeable individuals, and was a major influence on many artists and poets. It was especially popular in
Russia, where it had tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of followers, mostly from the upper classes. Among the Russian and German aristocracy, belief in clairvoyance, poltergeists, telepathy, spiritualism, astrology and the like were as common as belief in homeopathy among the English middle classes today. Come the revolution, interest had reached such a level among the White diaspora that priests in the Russian-Chinese city of Harbin complained of being overwhelmed by Theosophists.

Blavatsky's books occasionally leap into vivid, poetic passages, but exhibit for the most part a tedious, prolix quality, replete with a high degree of pseudo-scholarship; a typical page of Blavatsky's prose contains references to a half-dozen ‘eminent Hindu scholars', a couple of German professors, some kind of elaborate table of elements and a few dubious etymologies of Sanskrit or Chinese words. Whole passages are copied outright from other works. A touch of irony may be found where she writes of one of her invented verses of the ‘Secret Doctrine' that ‘this is, perhaps, the most difficult of the stanzas to explain. Its language is comprehensible only to him who is well versed in Eastern allegory and purportedly obscure phraseology'.
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That her books ever became best sellers beggars belief.

Theosophy was normally presented in Russia as a form of Buddhism - Theosophical circles frequently opened ‘Buddhist temples' - and Ungern certainly perceived it as such. His term for his own faith, ‘esoteric Buddhism', echoed a phrase which recurs throughout Blavatsky's writings, and was a standard description for Theosophy in Russia. The influence of Theosophical language and ideas is evident whenever Ungern discusses religion. Of particular importance to Theosophists was a belief in the ‘Hidden Masters of the World' - great spiritual figures who influenced the world through their mystical powers, and whose benevolent teachings and guidance could aid the West. They communicated through Madame Blavatsky, apparently by dropping envelopes in the corners of rooms while nobody was looking through a sort of mystical postal service.

Tied into the notion of the positive conspiracy of the Hidden Masters was its inverse; the negative, manipulating, corrupting influence of evil forces. The notion of a conspiratorial elite could be traced back, in part, to a confused misinterpretation of the Jewish belief in thirty-six ‘righteous men', living and suffering saints for whom
God continued to spare the universe from destruction. Unsurprisingly, this rapidly became tied in with the conspiratorial anti-Semitism of Jewish well-poisoners, bankers and revolutionary masterminds. Western occultism had often exhibited a traditionally philosemitic streak, but now it was almost as though the Wisdom of the East had come to replace the Wisdom of the Jews, the Kabbalah swapped for Tibetan magic.