soldiers and bureaucrats who protected and governed Russiaâs far-flung eastern provinces, although they often arrived with a pre-forged image of the peoples and territories they were about to encounter. Ungern was soon to be numbered among them.
Despite his extracurricular readings, Ungern managed, finally, to pass through an institution without being expelled from it. He graduated in the middle of his class, and found that the best option open to him was service in a Cossack regiment. Around this time he was photographed in his dress uniform, sword to his side and a pair of gloves in one hand, a rather diffident looking young officer. The sword was the Cossack sabre, or shashka , for which he had a particular liking. This three-foot, slightly curved weapon was said to originate from a Mongolian design. Ungern would use it not only in war, but to chastise underlings or threaten recalcitrant bureaucrats. Offered a chance to serve in western Siberia, he instead chose a regiment stationed near
Manchuria. He was drawn back to the region by his twin interests in religion and war. It would offer him a chance to explore Eastern beliefs, but it would also be close to the front lines if war broke out with China or Japan. The East was full of possibilities.
Ungernâs new home was the 1st Argun Regiment of the Zabaikal (Transbaikal) Cossack Host. He had chosen the 1st Argun for practical reasons - the Cossacks offered his best chance for a posting, and he hoped for the patronage of a powerful cousin, General Rennenkampf, a famous cavalry leader and an enthusiastic Asian adventurer who was affiliated with the regiment. There was a romantic attraction, too. The Cossacks were a strange collection of peoples, the descendants of outlaws and exiles who, four hundred years beforehand, had fled civilised life in Poland, Lithuania and Russia to carve out their own living on the steppe. They had âgone Mongolâ, turning from towns-people and peasants into bandits and freebooters, forming patriarchal, violent, free-spirited kingdoms of their own. The Russians had gradually absorbed them into the empire, but had always allowed them to keep their own territories and drafted them for military service not by head-count, as with most Russians, but in whole regiments, albeit with Russian commanders.
The Cossacks were famous throughout Europe, and often despised. Known as vicious anti-Semites, they often instigated their own pogroms. The Transbaikal Host was less subject to this particular prejudice than some, since there were so few Jews in the region, but Cossack brutality seemed to many to be a throwback to the Mongols themselves. The military historian John Keegan sums the relationship up well:
The Cossacks showed a cruelty which stirred in their Western European victims a reminder of the visitations of the steppe peoples, pitiless, pony-riding nomads whose horsetail standards cast the shadow of death wherever their hordes galloped, visitations that lay buried in the darkest recesses of the collective memory. 13
The Cossacks were also seen as cowards, preferring the easy work of spearing peasants and massacring Jews to the dangers of battle. They were rarely willing to face any form of resistance head-on, and during the nineteenth-century wars between Russia, Britain and France
would often retreat when confronted by trained European forces, even when they outnumbered the enemy two-to-one. They saw this as simply the intelligent thing to do, preferring to use their mobility to strike at the vulnerable flanks of enemy formations. One of their favourite tactics was the âfish hookâ, the old Mongol tactic of drawing an enemy beyond his lines with a faked retreat, then enveloping him from both sides. At the same time, they could be capable of tremendous bravery, making suicidal cavalry charges against fortified positions. Their forte was guerrilla-style raiding and pillaging, an approach to war that would leave a deep
Despite his extracurricular readings, Ungern managed, finally, to pass through an institution without being expelled from it. He graduated in the middle of his class, and found that the best option open to him was service in a Cossack regiment. Around this time he was photographed in his dress uniform, sword to his side and a pair of gloves in one hand, a rather diffident looking young officer. The sword was the Cossack sabre, or shashka , for which he had a particular liking. This three-foot, slightly curved weapon was said to originate from a Mongolian design. Ungern would use it not only in war, but to chastise underlings or threaten recalcitrant bureaucrats. Offered a chance to serve in western Siberia, he instead chose a regiment stationed near
Manchuria. He was drawn back to the region by his twin interests in religion and war. It would offer him a chance to explore Eastern beliefs, but it would also be close to the front lines if war broke out with China or Japan. The East was full of possibilities.
Ungernâs new home was the 1st Argun Regiment of the Zabaikal (Transbaikal) Cossack Host. He had chosen the 1st Argun for practical reasons - the Cossacks offered his best chance for a posting, and he hoped for the patronage of a powerful cousin, General Rennenkampf, a famous cavalry leader and an enthusiastic Asian adventurer who was affiliated with the regiment. There was a romantic attraction, too. The Cossacks were a strange collection of peoples, the descendants of outlaws and exiles who, four hundred years beforehand, had fled civilised life in Poland, Lithuania and Russia to carve out their own living on the steppe. They had âgone Mongolâ, turning from towns-people and peasants into bandits and freebooters, forming patriarchal, violent, free-spirited kingdoms of their own. The Russians had gradually absorbed them into the empire, but had always allowed them to keep their own territories and drafted them for military service not by head-count, as with most Russians, but in whole regiments, albeit with Russian commanders.
The Cossacks were famous throughout Europe, and often despised. Known as vicious anti-Semites, they often instigated their own pogroms. The Transbaikal Host was less subject to this particular prejudice than some, since there were so few Jews in the region, but Cossack brutality seemed to many to be a throwback to the Mongols themselves. The military historian John Keegan sums the relationship up well:
The Cossacks showed a cruelty which stirred in their Western European victims a reminder of the visitations of the steppe peoples, pitiless, pony-riding nomads whose horsetail standards cast the shadow of death wherever their hordes galloped, visitations that lay buried in the darkest recesses of the collective memory. 13
The Cossacks were also seen as cowards, preferring the easy work of spearing peasants and massacring Jews to the dangers of battle. They were rarely willing to face any form of resistance head-on, and during the nineteenth-century wars between Russia, Britain and France
would often retreat when confronted by trained European forces, even when they outnumbered the enemy two-to-one. They saw this as simply the intelligent thing to do, preferring to use their mobility to strike at the vulnerable flanks of enemy formations. One of their favourite tactics was the âfish hookâ, the old Mongol tactic of drawing an enemy beyond his lines with a faked retreat, then enveloping him from both sides. At the same time, they could be capable of tremendous bravery, making suicidal cavalry charges against fortified positions. Their forte was guerrilla-style raiding and pillaging, an approach to war that would leave a deep
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