ROMAN UNGERN VON STERNBERG “... the flickering light coming from the lamps slowly outlined the large statue of Buddha sitting in the lotus flower. The face of the God was indifferent and calm, barely illuminated by the weak rays of light. There were thousands of small Buddha on each side of the statue, brought by the faithful as offering so that their prayers might be granted. The Baron stroke the gong to get Buddha’s attention on his prayer, and also tossed a handful of coins in a large bronze cup. And then, that descendant of crusaders, who had read all the Western thinkers, closed his eyes, brought is hands up to his face, and started praying….” … these last two lines, written in 1919 by the Polish writer Ferdinand Ossendowski, the author of probably the best book which talks about Mongolia, are enough for us to understand that Baron Roman Von Sternberg was a man of “extremes”. His own destiny was “extreme” both in his greatness and in his weakness. Such a destiny could only have been fulfilled and written in no other place than in Mongolia. This article seeks to re-read the Baron, which so often and so simplistically is depicted by various tour guides as bloodthirsty and mad. Which of course he was, but his personality is decidedly more multifaceted and can be easily fit in the ever-lasting dualistic conflict between good and bad, folly and clairvoyant sanity, between yin and yan in the country of Beasts, Men and Gods.
He was born in Austria in 1885 into a noble family. At a very early age he enlisted in the naval military academy of St Petersburg. Once he graduated as an officer he was stationed in Transbaikalia, with a Cossack cavalry division. His arrival in Asia is uncertain; perhaps, tired of the European lifestyle, he preferred the unlimited landscape of Siberia. He came back to Europe to fight in the Great War, receiving praise for his courage and thus earning the Cross of Saint George, a military sign of distinction from which he never became separated during his life… legend has it that in 1921, a few moments before being shot by a firing squad, he ate the medal so that the Bolsheviks would not lay their hands on it. In the October of 1917, we find him with the white Mensheviks, which, in an attempt to flee from the Bolshevik purges, found refuge in the territories bordering with China and Tibet. Thanks to Japan’s military and economic support, Ungern takes part in establishing the Transbaikalia government and a division of Asian cavalry which will be made up of men coming from very different ethnical backgrounds: Cossacks, Buryats, Russians and Mongolians. The idea was to create a Great Mongolia stretching from the Baikal lake to Tibet and from Manchuria to Turkhestan. The barons destiny started to come to pass in October 1919, when he decided to attack Urga, the capital city in which the Chinese were detaining Bogdo Gegen, or Living Buddha, the third most important leader in Lamaism Buddhism after the Dalai and Panchen Lama. Bogdo Gegen, or Bogdo Khaan, is shrouded in legend and he himself would warrant attention. Von Ungerns’s aim, hardly a secret, was to re-create the Central-Asian Empire, like Chinggis Khaan, as a kind of panMongolian state in which republican and nationalist Chinese and enemies which were foreign to the Mongolian and Tibetan life style, were considered to be like the Bolsheviks, deserving nothing but death. After Urga was conquered and after Bogdo Khaan appointed him as the First Prince of Mongolia, Ungern’s metamorphosis began, immersing himself more and more in the practises of tantric Buddhism and in shamanic divination. Besides the Cross of saint George, his entire body was covered by charms and mala. The only element which still kept him connected to the
western world was, incredibly, a powerful red Fiat who nobody knows how it got to Mongolia. The Baron used it especially at night during his spiritual wakes to visit monasteries, as in the initial quote, to check out guard posts or to reach godforsaken outposts to question prisoners. The red Fiat undoubtedly helped to create the legend, since his lightning fast and unseen movements fuelled the belief among his allies and his enemies that he could be in all places and see all things. While he was in Urga, the Baron leapt from acts of extreme generosity, like building hospitals or supplying the first citywide lighting system, to acts of extreme cruelty. Ossendowski talks about the training of his army. This training, in opposition to all military manuals, was based on tantric opposites. The soldiers were given huge amounts of vodka and drugs during the night, and whoever, at sunrise, did not present himself in perfect military order, was shot. Another “curiosity” concerns one of his body guards, a massive Mongolian of Uigurian ethnicity, whose name, loosely translated, meant “Teapot”. In fact, whoever was admitted to the Baron’s ger and was unfortunate enough to say something which displeased the Baron’s ear, was kindly offered a cup of tea. As soon as Von Ungern gave the order to serve the tea his assassin would jump out and proceed to strangle the unfortunate guest. Furthermore, Ungern’s decision were more and more based solely on the words of his shamans and oracles who were continuously consulted. Legend has it that they foretold that the Baron would die in bloodshed (not that that took a great deal of imagination), and that he had no more than 130 days to live. The destiny of the General-Baron and of his men came to pass during the fights with the red army and against the partisans of Sukhbataar, the future founder of the Mongolian Socialist Republic. Sukhbataar means “courageous hero”: a hero while the Russians were in Mongolia and a statue cast from extremely resistant Soviet concrete still dominates Ulaan Bataar’s main square, dedicated to him.
In defeating him Sukhbataar completes Ungern’s destiny. The Baron attempted uselessly to flee to Tibet, but he was abandoned by the Dalai Lama as well. Finally captured by the red army he was tried and sentenced to death by firing squad; thus, on a cold and clear September morning of 1921, Baron von Ungern Sternberg fell under the shots of a firing squad and, as it always happens for those defeated, forgotten by those who write history. But he certainly was not forgotten by the steppe’s horse riders whose mounts continue to imprint his initial with every step they take: the U-shaped hoof prints of the small Mongolian horses remind everyone traveling through magical Mongolia that, even though invisible, the Baron’s spirit is there, and continues to ride across this endless spaces on his red Fiat.