Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

In October 1920, he appears to have split with Semenov, abandoning Dauria with his men shortly before his commander’s arrival there. Soon afterward he entered Mongolia, at the invitation of the head of the Mongolian theocracy, Bogdo Gegen (1869–1924), who had been dethroned during a Chinese republican invasion of the country in 1918–1919. In January 1921, Ungern’s forces attacked the Chinese garrison at Urga (now Ulaanbaatar) several times and were repulsed, but on 1–3 February that year entered the city without a fight, Ungern having duped the Chinese into believing that his forces were far more numerous than they actually were. The liberated Bogdo Gegen (who now assumed the title Bogdo Khan) then named Ungern a Mongolian “Prince of the First Rank” and “Supreme Commander of Mongolia” (31 March 1921). As the Bogdo Khan was a dissolute character and almost blind (reportedly as a consequence of contracting syphilis), Ungern was now, in effect, the country’s military dictator. However, it was now clear that he was acutely mentally disturbed; he had escalated from a vague philosophical attraction to Eastern cultures and a brand of “military Buddhism” to a fixed belief that he was the personal reincarnation of Genghis Khan, placed on Earth to cleanse and redeem Western civilization through a new Mongol invasion of Europe. Meanwhile, his forces instigated a reign of terror in the area under his control.

In late May 1921, having been joined by the forces of General A. S. Bakich, Ungern led a small, 5,000-man force (with a grand name, the Asiatic Cavalry Division) across the border onto the territory of the Far Eastern Republic (FER) near Troitskosavsk (Kiakhta), but was defeated by the superior 5th Red Army and local units of the FER’s People’s-Revolutionary Army. As his corps disintegrated and fell back into Mongolia, Ungern suggested to his men that they should march to Tibet. They refused, and attempted to kill him by strafing his tent with machine guns (possibly at the instigation of Cheka agents who had infiltrated his camp). He escaped (although wounded), but on either 19 or 22 August 1921 (sources differ), he and some 30 Mongol troops were waylaid and captured, in the open steppe, by the Red partisans of P. E. Shchetinkin. According to some accounts, Ungern’s men had bound him and forced him to surrender. He was then taken to Soviet Russia, according to some accounts being exhibited in a cage at railway stations along the way. The following month, on 15 September 1921, after a brief trial before the Supreme Extraordinary Revolutionary Tribunal at Novonikolaevsk—where, dressed in the yellow kaftan of a Mongolian lama, he was accused and found guilty of the mass murder of Siberian and Mongolian workers and peasants, banditry, the instigation of pogroms, plotting to restore the Romanov dynasty, and collaborating with the Japanese to overthrow Soviet power and divide Russia—he was executed by firing squad. Some accounts have it that after his death Soviet doctors performed an autopsy on Ungern’s head (which was remarkably small in comparison to the rest of his body) and found that the right lobe of his brain was almost completely atrophied. Others claim that, after his death, the 13th Dalai Lama declared Ungern to have been an incarnation of the Black Mahakala, a six-armed demon, prone to manifest itself in a necklace of human skulls. In 1998, Ungern’s family petitioned the Russian authorities for his posthumous rehabilitation, but the application was refused.

UNIFORMS (COSSACKS). For most Cossacks the basic uniform comprised the standard loose-fitting tunics and wide trousers of Russian regular troops during the period after 1881. However, men of the Kuban Cossack Host and the Terek Cossack Host wore the long, open-fronted, cherkesska coats, with ornamental cartridge loops and colored undercoats (beshmety), that are associated with the popular image of the Cossacks. In addition, members of most Cossack hosts wore fleece hats with colored cloth tops in full dress and with peaked caps for ordinary duties, although the Kuban and Terek hosts generally wore high fleece caps on most occasions. While most Cossacks served as cavalry, there were infantry (plastun) and artillery units in several of the Hosts. In addition, each Host was distinguished by elements of its uniform, as distinguished in table 3 (adapted from Tablitsi Form’ Obmundirovaniia Russkoi Armii, by Colonel V. K. Shenk, published by the Imperial Russian War Ministry, 1910–1911).

Table 3.

Host

Year Established

Cherkesska or Tunic

Beshmet

Trousers

Fleece Hat

Shoulder Straps

Don Cossacks

1570

blue tunic

none

blue with red stripes

red crown

blue