Published July 28 in the UB Post
It’s no stretch to say that the Mongolia we see today, the world’s
fastest growing economy, has had a powerful and interesting past. With its
colorful cast of historical figures and conquerors, none are more puzzling than
psychopathic warlord Freiherr Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg,
or, as many called him, the “Mad Baron.”
The self-proclaimed last Khan of Mongolia, the Baron played an
important role in deciding the twentieth century fate of Mongolia. Without the
Baron’s interventions, antagonization, sheer violence, and hollow revelations,
twentieth century might never have matured in the way it did.
Worshiped by many as a demon and by others as a living God, the
Baron was born to a Baltic-Russian aristocratic family in Graz, Austria
sometime in the mid-1880s. Adding to his tyrannical enigma, the Baron’s
birthdate is difficult to pin down because of two reports that separate his
birth by over a year. More puzzling is his last name, Sternberg, a traditional
Jewish last name that means “star mounted,” especially when prefaced with Ungern,
which means “unwilling.” Unwillingly star-mounted. Not a great fan of his own
name, especially when taken into account with his anti-Semitism, the Baron would
later have his name translated as “Great Star Mountain” during his reign in
Mongolia.
His sadistic tendencies, which would later show up in the ways he
punished his enemies and those around him, were seldom reported while the Baron
was a child. He grew up during a trying time in Eastern Europe but had a more
privileged childhood than most. The Baron claimed his lineage could be traced
all the way back to Attila the Hun and that his family had always been “warlike
and given to mysticism and asceticism.” He was fond of detailing his family
lineage and their carnage, including his great uncle Baron Wilhelm Ungern, who
had been known as “brother of Satan” due to his alchemical inclinations and
general insanity.
Various descriptions of the Baron only add to his intrigue. Some
described him as tall, others as short; some said he had green eyes, others
blue. He’s been depicted as a raving lunatic and as a pseudo-philosopher of
history and esoteric concepts. One of the few existing pictures of him depicts
him in a shiny Mongolian deel adorned with the Russian Order of St. George
lapel. Perhaps the best description of him comes from Ferdinand Ossendowski’s Beasts,
Men and Gods as a man with “a small head on wide shoulders; blonde hair in
disorder; a reddish bristling moustache; a skinny, exhausted face, like those
on the old Byzantine icons. Then everything else faded from view save a big,
protruding forehead overhanging steely sharp eyes. These eyes were fixed upon
me like those of an animal from a cave.”
The Baron’s philosophy was also baffling. “I have spent all my
life in war or in the study and learning of Buddhism,” he once said, when asked
about his religious preference. Practicing what he deemed “Military Buddhism,”
the Baron took it upon himself to kill or punish as many as he could to help
speed up their Buddhist rebirths. His admiration for Buddhism grew with his
disgust for the Bolshevik revolution happening in Russia. The Baron claimed
that Military Buddhism protected the processes of humanity by steering it
towards evolution; this as opposed to revolution, which only led humanity “to bestiality”
and same sword different leader mentalities.
His path of carnage began after the Baron volunteered as a soldier
in the Russo-Japanese War, a war fought entirely on the collapsing Chinese
Empire. By the time he had arrived at the front, the war had all but
dissipated, leaving the Baron to gain his first appreciation of the Central
Asian landscape. He continued his military service after his first taste of
Asia by serving as an officer in East Siberia. While in Siberia, he became
obsessed with the nomadic culture of passing Mongolians. In 1913, he was transferred
to a small Russian consulate in Khovd, a small western city in Mongolia. At the
start of the First World War, he joined the Austrian Front. As the war
concluded and the Boleshevik Revolution began, he backed the Romanovs and
earned the “Mad Baron” moniker which would stick with him in various forms
until his death.
Believing himself to be a reincarnation of Chinggis Khan, the
Baron rode with a horde of renegade soldiers to Mongolia on October 1, 1920.
His goal was to establish a pan-Asiatic state founded on Buddhism, or more
appropriately, Military Buddhism. He made plans to free the Bogd Khan, the emperor
of Mongolia who had been imprisoned by the Manchu. After three days of drunken horsemen
galloping the streets shooting, raping, pillaging, and killing
indiscriminately, the Baron successfully sieged Ulaanbaatar in February of 1921.
Two weeks later, he freed the Bodg Khan, and was given the high title darkhan khoshoi chin wang. He began
promoting order and cleanliness in Urga, forcing the citizens to clean the town,
thread lights along the streets from the newly built electricity plant, build
bridges, and set up schools and hospitals. He also protected trade by publicly
hanging Russian and Mongolians guilty of stealing from Chinese merchants.
The violent nature of the Baron bloomed during his short reign
over the now semi-sovereign nation of Mongolia. A fan of alcohol himself, he savagely
tortured any soldiers found drunk or hung over by forcing them to camp naked on
frozen rivers. Everyone was a suspect to the baron, who favored lashings by
stick until flesh separated from the bone. He pooled many of his torture
methods from Buddhist concepts of hell, such as burning in fire pots. His
collection of soldiers, a group of about six thousand composed mostly of
Cossacks and Mongolians, would flee like mice when the Baron stumbled around
his encampments looking for someone to discipline.
As his rule continued, the Baron grew increasingly eccentric, and
took to riding around shirtless and growing out his beard. He surrounded
himself with shamans and fortune tellers, and grew increasingly bold on the
battlefield. There are eye witness accounts of him taking tea breaks and
smoking cigarettes during the heat of battle. Other accounts see him galloping
blindly into seas of bullets with little or no armor. People around him started
to grow frightened of the Baron, especially as his close circle began to
question his stability and vision. Meanwhile, D. Sukhbaatar, the future Mongolian
revolutionary leader, was bringing his Bolshevik-backed forces from Russian to
Mongolia.
Several fights ensued in the summer of 1921, eventually leaving
the Baron to retreat towards Tuva to prepare for an escape to Tibet. His soldiers—outnumbered,
outgunned and frightened by their leader—mutinied and planned to kill the Baron
and his inner circle. Days later, after an unsuccessful assassination attempt,
the Baron was captured by a Soviet detachment. En route to his trial in Moscow,
The Times reported in September 13,
1921 that the Baron was being publicly exhibited as a monster. He denied all
charges levied against him, defending himself to the end by saying that all
those who died because of him died because they were “too red.” He was executed by a firing squad on September
15, 1921.
“My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one
can judge what is the truth and what is false, what is history and what myth,”
the Baron said in 1921. A special sort of crazy, the Baron lived according to
his own truth but unfortunately for others, they too fell prey to his brutal
madness. He was a sad man, filled with carnage, blood lust and burdens. “I am
not a simply a man, I am a leader of great forces and have in my head so much
care, sorrow and woes!” he once said to travel writer Ossendowski. While the change
to Communism may very well had happened with or without the Baron, he played an
important part in sparking the national grasp for Communism through his
outlandish ideologies and wild abandon. By inspiring
fear in those who met him, the Baron created an opening and some would argue,
necessity, for outside forces to swoop into Mongolia.
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