In the heart of Asia lies the enormous, mysterious and rich countryof Mongolia. From somewhere on the snowy slopes of the Tian Shanand from the hot sands of Western Zungaria to the timbered ridgesof the Sayan and to the Great Wall of China it stretches over ahuge portion of Central Asia. The cradle of peoples, histories andlegends; the native land of bloody conquerors, who have left heretheir capitals covered by the sand of the Gobi, their mysteriousrings and their ancient nomad laws; the states of monks and evildevils, the country of wandering tribes administered by thedescendants of Jenghiz Khan and Kublai Khan--Khans and Princes ofthe Junior lines: that is Mongolia.
Mysterious country of the cults of Rama, Sakkia-Mouni, Djonkapa andPaspa, cults guarded by the very person of the living Buddha--Buddha incarnated in the third dignitary of the Lamaite religion--Bogdo Gheghen in Ta Kure or Urga; the land of mysterious doctors,prophets, sorcerers, fortune-tellers and witches; the land of thesign of the swastika; the land which has not forgotten the thoughtsof the long deceased great potentates of Asia and of half ofEurope: that is Mongolia.
The land of nude mountains, of plains burned by the sun and killedby the cold, of ill cattle and ill people; the nest of pests,anthrax and smallpox; the land of boiling hot springs and ofmountain passes inhabited by demons; of sacred lakes swarming withfish; of wolves, rare species of deer and mountain goats, marmotsin millions, wild horses, wild donkeys and wild camels that havenever known the bridle, ferocious dogs and rapacious birds of preywhich devour the dead bodies cast out on the plains by the people:
that is Mongolia.
The land whose disappearing primitive people gaze upon the bones oftheir forefathers whitening in the sands and dust of their plains;where are dying out the people who formerly conquered China, Siam,Northern India and Russia and broke their chests against the ironlances of the Polish knights, defending then all the Christianworld against the invasion of wild and wandering Asia: that isMongolia.
The land swelling with natural riches, producing nothing, in needof everything, destitute and suffering from the world's cataclysm:
that is Mongolia.
In this land, by order of Fate, after my unsuccessful attempt toreach the Indian Ocean through Tibet, I spent half a year in thestruggle to live and to escape. My old and faithful friend and Iwere compelled, willy-nilly, to participate in the exceedinglyimportant and dangerous events transpiring in Mongolia in the yearof grace 1921. Thanks to this, I came to know the calm, good andhonest Mongolian people; I read their souls, saw their sufferingsand hopes; I witnessed the whole horror of their oppression andfear before the face of Mystery, there where Mystery pervades alllife. I watched the rivers during the severe cold break with arumbling roar their chains of ice; saw lakes cast up on theirshores the bones of human beings; heard unknown wild voices in themountain ravines; made out the fires over miry swamps of the will-o'-the-wisps; witnessed burning lakes; gazed upward to mountainswhose peaks could not be scaled; came across great balls ofwrithing snakes in the ditches in winter; met with streams whichare eternally frozen, rocks like petrified caravans of camels,horsemen and carts; and over all saw the barren mountains whosefolds looked like the mantle of Satan, which the glow of theevening sun drenched with blood.
"Look up there!" cried an old shepherd, pointing to the slope ofthe cursed Zagastai. "That is no mountain. It is HE who lies inhis red mantle and awaits the day when he will rise again to beginthe fight with the good spirits."And as he spoke I recalled the mystic picture of the noted painterVroubel. The same nude mountains with the violet and purple robesof Satan, whose face is half covered by an approaching grey cloud.
Mongolia is a terrible land of mystery and demons. Therefore it isno wonder that here every violation of the ancient order of life ofthe wandering nomad tribes is transformed into streams of red bloodand horror, ministering to the demonic pleasure of Satan couched onthe bare mountains and robed in the grey cloak of dejection andsadness, or in the purple mantle of war and vengeance.
After returning from the district of Koko Nor to Mongolia andresting a few days at the Narabanchi Monastery, we went to live inUliassutai, the capital of Western Outer Mongolia. It is the lastpurely Mongolian town to the west. In Mongolia there are but threepurely Mongolian towns, Urga, Uliassutai and Ulankom. The fourthtown, Kobdo, has an essentially Chinese character, being the centerof Chinese administration in this district inhabited by thewandering tribes only nominally recognizing the influence of eitherPeking or Urga. In Uliassutai and Ulankom, besides the unlawfulChinese commissioners and troops, there were stationed Mongoliangovernors or "Saits," appointed by the decree of the Living Buddha.
When we arrived in that town, we were at once in the sea ofpolitical passions. The Mongols were protesting in great agitationagainst the Chinese policy in their country; the Chinese raged anddemanded from the Mongolians the payment of taxes for the fullperiod since the autonomy of Mongolia had been forcibly extractedfrom Peking; Russian colonists who had years before settled nearthe town and in the vicinity of the great monasteries or among thewandering tribes had separated into factions and were fightingagainst one another; from Urga came the news of the struggle forthe maintenance of the independence of Outer Mongolia, led by theRussian General, Baron Ungern von Sternberg; Russian officers andrefugees congregated in detachments, against which the Chineseauthorities protested but which the Mongols welcomed; theBolsheviki, worried by the formation of White detachments inMongolia, sent their troops to the borders of Mongolia; fromIrkutsk and Chita to Uliassutai and Urga envoys were running fromthe Bolsheviki to the Chinese commissioners with various proposalsof all kinds; the Chinese authorities in Mongolia were graduallyentering into secret relations with the Bolsheviki and in Kiakhtaand Ulankom delivered to them the Russian refugees, thus violatingrecognized international law; in Urga the Bolsheviki set up aRussian communistic municipality; Russian Consuls were inactive;Red troops in the region of Kosogol and the valley of the Selengahad encounters with Anti-Bolshevik officers; the Chineseauthorities established garrisons in the Mongolian towns and sentpunitive expeditions into the country; and, to complete theconfusion, the Chinese troops carried out house-to-house searches,during which they plundered and stole.
Into what an atmosphere we had fallen after our hard and dangeroustrip along the Yenisei, through Urianhai, Mongolia, the lands ofthe Turguts, Kansu and Koko Nor!
"Do you know," said my old friend to me, "I prefer stranglingPartisans and fighting with the hunghutze to listening to news andmore anxious news!"He was right; for the worst of it was that in this bustle and whirlof facts, rumours and gossip the Reds could approach troubledUliassutai and take everyone with their bare hands. We should verywillingly have left this town of uncertainties but we had no placeto go. In the north were the hostile Partisans and Red troops; tothe south we had already lost our companions and not a little ofour own blood; to the west raged the Chinese administrators anddetachments; and to the east a war had broken out, the news ofwhich, in spite of the attempts of the Chinese authorities atsecrecy, had filtered through and had testified to the seriousnessof the situation in this part of Outer Mongolia. Consequently wehad no choice but to remain in Uliassutai. Here also were livingseveral Polish soldiers who had escaped from the prison camps inRussia, two Polish families and two American firms, all in the sameplight as ourselves. We joined together and made our ownintelligence department, very carefully watching the evolution ofevents. We succeeded in forming good connections with the Chinesecommissioner and with the Mongolian Sait, which greatly helped usin our orientation.
What was behind all these events in Mongolia? The very cleverMongol Sait of Uliassutai gave me the following explanation.
"According to the agreements between Mongolia, China and Russia ofOctober 21, 1912, of October 23, 1913, and of June 7, 1915, OuterMongolia was accorded independence and the Moral Head of our'Yellow Faith,' His Holiness the Living Buddha, became the Suzerainof the Mongolian people of Khalkha or Outer Mongolia with the titleof 'Bogdo Djebtsung Damba Hutuktu Khan.' While Russia was stillstrong and carefully watched her policy in Asia, the Government ofPeking kept the treaty; but, when, at the beginning of the war withGermany, Russia was compelled to withdraw her troops from Siberia,Peking began to claim the return of its lost rights in Mongolia.
It was because of this that the first two treaties of 1912 and 1913were supplemented by the convention of 1915. However, in 1916,when all the forces of Russia were pre-occupied in the unsuccessfulwar and afterwards when the first Russian revolution ............