Roman von Ungern-Sternberg

Early life

Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg was born in Graz, Austria, on 10 January 1886 [O.S. 29 December 1885] to a noble Baltic German family. The Ungern-Sternberg family had settled in present-day Estonia during the Middle Ages. Ungern-Sternberg's first language was German, but he became fluent in French, Russian, English and Estonian. His mother was a German noblewoman, Sophie Charlotte von Wimpffen, later Sophie Charlotte von Ungern-Sternberg. His father was Theodor Leonhard Rudolph Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg (1857–1918). He also had Hungarian roots and claimed descent from Batu Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson, which played a role in his dream of reviving the Mongol Empire.

In 1888 his family moved to Reval (Tallinn), the capital of the Governorate of Estonia in the Russian Empire. His parents divorced in 1891. In 1894 his mother married the Baltic-German nobleman Oskar Anselm Hermann Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene. Ungern-Sternberg grew up in the Governorate, with his home being the Hoyningen-Huene estate at Jerwakant (modern Järvakandi, Estonia), deep in the forests, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) from Reval. In the summer, Ungern-Sternberg lived on the Baltic island of Dagö (now Hiiumaa), which he liked to boast had belonged to his family for over 200 years.

As a boy, Ungern-Sternberg was noted for being such a ferocious bully that even the other bullies feared him and several parents forbade their children from playing with him as he was a "terror". Ungern was well known for his love of torturing animals, and at the age of 12 he tried to strangle to death his cousin's pet owl. Ungern-Sternberg had extreme pride in his ancient, aristocratic family and later wrote that his family had over the centuries "never taken orders from the working classes" and it was outrageous that "dirty workers who've never had any servants of their own, but still think they can command" should have any say in the ruling of the vast Russian Empire.

Ungern-Sternberg, although proud of his German origin, identified himself very strongly with the Russian Empire. When asked whether his "family had distinguished itself in Russian service", Ungern proudly answered: "Seventy-two killed in wartime!". Ungern-Sternberg believed that return to monarchies in Europe was possible with the aid of "cavalry people" – meaning Russian Cossacks, Buryats, Tatars, Mongols, Kyrgyz, Kalmyks, etc.

First World War

On 19 July 1914, Ungern joined frontline forces as part of the second-turn 34th Regiment of Cossack troops stationed on the Austro-Hungarian frontier in Galicia. He took part in the Russian offensive in East Prussia. From 1915 to 1916, he participated in rear-action raids on German troops by the L.N. Punin Cavalry Special Task Force. Ungern served in the Nerchinsk Regiment.

On the Eastern Front, he gained a reputation as an extremely brave but somewhat reckless and mentally unstable officer. Showing no fear of death, he seemed happiest leading cavalry charges and being in the thick of combat. General Pyotr Wrangel mentions Ungern's determination in his memoirs. He received the orders of St. George of the 4th grade, St. Vladimir of the 4th grade, St. Anna of the 3rd and 4th grades and St. Stanislas of the 3rd grade. These decorations were offset by disciplinary issues: he was eventually discharged from one of his command positions for attacking another officer and a hall porter during a drunken rage in October 1916, for which he was sentenced to two months in prison after a court martial.

After his release, in January 1917, Ungern was transferred to the Caucasian Theatre of the conflict, where Russia was fighting against the Ottoman Empire. The February Revolution that ended the rule of the House of Romanov was an extremely bitter blow to the monarchist Ungern-Sternberg, who saw it as the beginning of the end of Russia. In the Caucasus, Ungern-Sternberg first met Cossack Captain Grigory Semyonov, later one of the most well-known Russian anticommunist warlords in Siberia.

In April 1917, Ungern, together with Semyonov, started to organise a volunteer Assyrian Christian unit near Urmia, Iran. The Assyrian genocide under the Ottoman Empire led to thousands of Assyrians fleeing to the Russian lines. Ungern and Semyonov organised Assyrian troops to serve as an example for the Russian army, generally demoralised by the revolutionary mood. The Assyrians scored some minor victories over the Turks, but their contribution to Russia's war effort was limited. Afterwards, the Assyrian scheme led Semyonov to the idea of placing Buryat troops in Siberia. The Kerensky government gave its approval, and Ungern-Sternberg soon headed east to join his friend in raising a Buryat regiment.

Russian Civil War

After the Bolshevik-led October Revolution in 1917, Semyonov and Ungern declared their allegiance to the Romanov dynasty, making themselves part of the White Army, vowing to fight the revolutionaries' Red Army. Late that year, they and five Cossacks peacefully disarmed a group of about 1,500 Reds at a railway station in Manchuria on the Far Eastern Railway (FER) in China, near the Russian border. They maintained it as a stronghold in their preparations for war in the Transbaikal region, raising troops in a Special Manchurian Regiment, the nucleus of forces led by Grigory Semyonov.

After the White troops defeated the Reds on a section of the FER line in Russia, Semyonov appointed Ungern commandant of troops stationed in Dauria, a railway station in a strategic position east-southeast of Lake Baikal. Semyonov and Ungern, though fervently anti-Bolshevik, were not typical of the figures to be found in the leadership of the White movement, as their plans differed from those of the main White leaders. Semyonov refused to recognize the authority of Admiral Alexander Kolchak, the nominal leader of the Whites in Siberia. Instead, he acted independently and was supported by the Japanese with arms and money.

For White leaders like Kolchak and Denikin, who believed in a "Russia strong and indivisible", that represented high treason. Ungern, nominally subordinate to Semyonov, also often acted independently. Kolchak was a conservative but not a monarchist, and he promised that after the victory of the Whites he would reconvene the Constituent Assembly, disbanded by the Bolsheviks in January 1918, which would then decide the future of Russia, including the question of whether to restore the monarchy.

Ungern, to the contrary, believed that monarchs were accountable only to God, and the monarchy was the political system that God had chosen for Russia and so it was self-evident that it should be restored as it had been before the October Manifesto of 1905. For Ungern, the opinions of the people of Russia were irrelevant, as monarchs were not accountable to them.

Because of his successful military operations in Hailar and Dauria, Ungern received the rank of major-general. Semyonov entrusted him with forming military units to battle Bolshevik forces. They enrolled Buryats and Mongols in their national military units.

Restoration of Outer Mongolian independence

After Kolchak's defeat by the Reds and Japan's subsequent decision to withdraw its expeditionary troops from the Transbaikal, Semyonov, unable to withstand the pressure of Bolshevik forces, planned a retreat to Manchuria. Ungern saw it as an opportunity to implement his monarchist plan. The ACD was then approximately 1,500 men, mostly Russian Cossacks, but with Buryat, Chinese and a few Japanese, all under Russian command, with rifles, machine guns and four artillery pieces.

Ungern drove them mercilessly in training, maintaining even stricter discipline than he had previously. Minor offences were punished by lashings with bamboo. Soldiers committing more serious violations were usually executed. On 7 August 1920, he broke his allegiance to Semyonov and transformed the ACD into a guerrilla detachment. After crossing the Outer Mongolian border on 1 October, they moved southwest, then moved westwards to the Mongolian capital of Urga (officially Niislel Khuree, now Ulaanbaatar). There, he entered into negotiations with Chinese occupying forces. All of his demands, including the disarmament of Chinese troops, were rejected.

On 26–27 October and again on 2–4 November 1920, Ungern's troops assaulted Urga but suffered disastrous losses. After the defeat, his forces retreated to the upper currents of the Kherlen River, in Setsen-Khan Aimag, a district ruled by princes with the title Setsen Khan, in eastern Outer Mongolia. He was supported by Mongols who sought independence from Chinese occupation, especially the spiritual and secular leader of Mongols, the Bogd Khan, who secretly sent Ungern his blessing for expelling Chinese from Mongolia.

Ungern's devotion to harsh discipline remained unabated. After learning that a lieutenant he had initially favored and put in command of the medical division had, during the retreat, sexually assaulted the nurses (many of whom were married to other officers), looted settlements the unit passed through and ordered all the wounded fatally poisoned because they were "a nuisance", Ungern ordered the man flogged and then burned at the stake.

The Chinese had tightened their control of Outer Mongolia by then, by strictly regulating Buddhist services in monasteries and imprisoning Russians and Mongols whom they considered "separatists". According to the memoirs of M. G. Tornovsky, the ACD numbered 1,460 men, while the Chinese garrison was 7,000 strong. The Chinese had the advantage in artillery and machine guns and had built a network of trenches in and around Urga.

Mongolia and Ungern (February to August 1921)

Ungern, Mongolian lamas and princes brought the Bogd Khan from Manjusri Monastery to Urga on 21 February 1921. On 22 February, a solemn ceremony took place to restore the Bogd Khan to the throne. As a reward for ousting the Chinese from Urga, the Bogd Khan granted Ungern the high hereditary title darkhan khoshoi chin wang in the degree of khan, and other privileges. Other officers, lamas and princes who had participated in these events also received high titles and awards.

On 22 February 1921, Mongolia was proclaimed an independent monarchy. Supreme power over Mongolia belonged to the Bogd Khan, or the 8th Bogd Gegen Jebtsundamba Khutuktu.

Ossendowski had served as an official in Kolchak's government and, after its collapse, fled to Mongolia. He became one of Ungern's very few friends, and in 1922, published a best-selling book in English, Beasts, Men and Gods, about his adventures in Siberia and Mongolia. Comparison of Ossendowski's diary with his book and documents on Mongolia revealed that his reports on Mongolia at Ungern are largely true, except for a few stories. Ossendowski was the first to describe Ungern's views in terms of Theosophy, but Ungern himself had never been a Theosophist.

A similar novel, Asian Odyssey, written by Dmitri Alioshin, who was a soldier in Ungern's forces, describes the millenarist beliefs common among Ungern's supporters:

The whole world is rotten. Greed, hatred and cruelty are in the saddle. We intend to organize a new empire; a new civilization. It will be called the Middle Asiatic Buddhist Empire, carved out of Mongolia, Manchuria and Eastern Siberia. Communication has already been established for that purpose with Djan-Zo-Lin, the war lord of Manchuria, and with Hutukhta, the Living Buddha of Mongolia. Here in these historic plains we will organize an army as powerful as that of Genghis Khan. Then we will move, as that great man did, and smash the whole of Europe. The world must die so that a new and better world may come forth, reincarnated on a higher plane.

According to the interrogation protocol, which is given in the book "Baron Ungern in Documents and Memoirs," he never sought the independence of Mongolia:

Defeat, capture and execution

The Bolsheviks started infiltrating Mongolia shortly after the October Revolution, long before they took control of the Russian Transbaikal. In 1921, various Red Army units belonging to Soviet Russia and to the Far Eastern Republic invaded the newly independent Mongolia to defeat Ungern. The forces included the Red Mongolian leader Damdin Sükhbaatar. The Soviets also began supporting the newly formed Mongolian People's Party and its partisans in actions against Ungern and the government.

Spies and various smaller diversionary units went ahead to spread terror to weaken Ungern's forces. Ungern organised an expedition to meet these forces in Siberia and to support ongoing anti-Bolshevik rebellions. Believing that he had the unwavering popular support of locals in Siberia and Mongolia, Ungern failed to strengthen his troops properly, although he was vastly outnumbered and outgunned by the Red forces. He did not know that the Reds had successfully crushed uprisings in Siberia and that Soviet economic policies had temporarily softened in Lenin's New Economic Policy. Upon Ungern's arrival in Siberia, few local peasants and Cossacks volunteered to join him.

In the spring, the Asiatic Cavalry Division was divided into two brigades: one under the command of Lieutenant General Ungern and the second under Major General Rezukhin. In May, Rezukhin's brigade launched a raid beyond the Russian border, west of the Selenga River. Ungern's brigade left Urga and slowly moved to the Russian town of Troitskosavsk (present-day Kyakhta in Buryatia).

Meanwhile, the Reds moved large numbers of troops towards Mongolia from different directions. They had a tremendous advantage in equipment (armoured cars, aeroplanes, rail, gunboats, ammunition, human reserves etc.) and the number of troops. As a result, Ungern was defeated in battles that took place between 11 and 13 June, and he failed to capture Troitskosavsk. Combined Bolshevik and Red Mongol forces entered Urga on 6 July 1921 after a few small skirmishes with Ungern's guard detachments.

Chinese forces slaughtered most of a 350-strong White Russian force in June 1921 under Colonel Kazagrandi in the Gobi desert, with only two batches of 42 men and 35 men surrendering separately as Chinese were wiping out White Russian remnants following the Soviet Red army defeat of Ungern-Sternberg. Other Buryat and White Russian remnants of Ungern-Sternberg's army were also massacred by Soviet Red Army and Mongol forces that same summer. In Uliastai, Mongols beat Colonel Vangdabov's Buryats to death with clubs for being loyal to Ungern-Sternberg.

Religious thoughts

Although he was raised as a Lutheran, his mysticism and interest in Eastern esotericism led him to explore various religions. He was, however, antisemitic, and likely a reader of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He was fascinated by the beliefs and religions of the Far East, such as Buddhism, and his philosophy was an exceptional blend of Russian nationalism with Mongolian and Chinese beliefs. He attempted to be accepted as a reincarnation of Mahākāla, a dharmapāla of Vajrayana Buddhism.

Legacy

Geopolitical impact

In 2022, John Jennings, a history professor at the United States Air Force Academy, argued that Ungern was one of the worst military leaders ever. His campaigns in Mongolia were, at best, quixotic efforts to re-establish dead empires, marked by brutality and violence directed at not only his own troops but the local populace. They, ironically, made it easier for the Reds to further the reach of Soviet communism, a goal Ungern bitterly opposed. His expedition to Mongolia and conquest of Urga, by driving the Chinese out the country, also eliminated the one force in the region which might have been a match for the Red Army and made it inevitable that the Soviets would invade. The establishment of the Mongolian People's Republic, the first Soviet satellite nation, after the death of the Bogd Khan in 1924 could not have happened without Ungern, Jennings writes.

2020 statue controversy in Estonia

In late-2020, members of Blue Awakening, the former youth wing of the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE) and the current Estonian Nationalists and Conservatives (Estonian: Eesti Rahvuslased ja Konservatiivid, abbr. ERK), formed an NGO called Ungern Khaan with the goal of promoting von Ungern-Sternberg's memory. The group was subsequently granted €45,000 in funding by the three parties in the Estonian coalition government in power at the time, EKRE, the Estonian Centre Party, and Isamaa, to build a statue of von Ungern-Sternberg. After the funding was met with a backlash, the group announced that it would turn down the funding and rely on private donations instead.

In popular culture

In 1938, Ungern-Sternberg was the protagonist of a novel published in Germany, Ich befehle! Kampf und Tragödie des Barons Ungern-Sternberg (I Order! The Struggle and Tragedy of Baron Ungern-Sternberg) by Berndt Krauthoff, which often glossed over his more brutal tactics in order to paint him in the best light.

Ungern-Sternberg is featured in the 1974 graphic novel Corte Sconta detta Arcana by the Italian writer Hugo Pratt.

The novels of the Russian surrealist writer Victor Pelevin often feature Ungern-Sternberg, most notably his 1996 novel Chapayev and Void.

Ungern-Sternberg is often mentioned in the novels of the Spanish thriller writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

"Ungern-Sternberg" is a 2001 song by the French punk rock group Paris Violence, which contains the lyrics "Ungern-Sternberg, chevalier romantique / Tu attends la mort comme un amant sa promise" ("Ungern-Sternberg, romantic knight / You wait for death like a lover [waits] for his fiancée").

Ungern-Sternberg is the main villain in the 2002 video game Iron Storm.

Works

"Letters captured from Baron Ungern in Mongolia" (1921)