The Bloody White Baron (15 page)

Stepanov was to become a notoriously ruthless White leader; the ease with which the Baron cowed him shows how terrifying the slightly built Ungern could be. He emanated danger, ready for violence at any moment and to any extreme. Even battle-hardened Russian soldiers at Manchuli were easily intimidated and, with Stepanov's
help, Ungern disarmed hundreds of men in a few hours. Eventually the tiny group had succeeded in packing fifteen hundred men into the train to be shipped back to Bolshevik territory; a remarkable achievement diminished only a little by the fact that most of the homesick revolutionaries were desperate to get back to Russia anyway.

The neutralisation of the Manchuli garrison won the small White group the approval of the Chinese, and by the beginning of the New Year Semenov's success had attracted more men to his cause. Nearly half were Buriats, the rest mostly Cossacks and Mongolians, led by Russian officers. The Buriat, like other minorities, were used to special status. Like the Cossacks they enjoyed unusual dispensations; they were exempt from conscription, adept at eluding taxation and, despite imperial efforts to transform them into more compliant citizens, managed to maintain the traditional rule of their elders. The new regime threatened to strip them of their privileges and turn them into good little Russian sheep. While some Buriats fought with the Bolsheviks, most often those dissatisfied with or excluded by the complex Buriat webs of kinship and patronage, the majority were committed reactionaries. The newly formed Soviet secret police, the Cheka, began to establish control points throughout the Russian far east to filter out potential Semenovite recruits.

Semenov and Ungern's troops still numbered only in the hundreds, but they were one of the few organised armies in the Transbaikal region. Although there were numerous Bolshevik soviets and units, few had mobilised effectively and there was very little coordination between their units, nor any clear chain of command. The battle lines of the civil war were only just being drawn up, and many people were unclear where they stood. Semenov and Ungern had three clear advantages: they were unambiguously anti-Bolshevik, well organised and had a simple plan of action. They asked only three questions of their recruits - ‘Do you believe in God? Do you refuse to recognise the Bolsheviks? Will you fight them?' The new army was named the Special Manchurian Division, after the place of its formation.

Semenov's army crossed the border back into Russia on New Year's Day 1918. Ungern was at the forefront of this advance. He knew this territory, the woods and rivers and small, neat towns along the tracks; after all, he had served here for over three years. On 12 January, 1918 he pushed up another sixty miles into Russia to take
the small settlement of Oloviannaia, stealing what munitions he could before being driven out of town by Red Guards. This was scrappy, low-key fighting; the number of troops involved on either side rarely exceeded a hundred and fifty, and both were quick to retreat if things seemed to be going badly. The Buriat were experts at this kind of skirmishing, disappearing into the forests loaded with as much ammunition as they could carry. The revolutionary units rarely put up much of a fight, instead melting away as the Whites approached. It was the depths of winter, and fighting was draining for all concerned; battles often petered out in desultory exchanges of rifle fire, neither side willing to push forward. Surrender was still an option. For the moment, both sides were treating their prisoners with a modicum of decency.

By mid-January the Semenovites held two hundred miles of the railway, but they were running out of supplies and were having difficulties in their rear. Fortunately, Ungern had become something of an expert in managing mutinous garrisons; early in 1918, in the Russian quarter of the Manchurian city of Hailar, he disarmed a group of revolutionary soldiers who outnumbered him three to one. He captured them while their leaders were immersed in a series of ideological discussions - amazingly, they remained oblivious for two hours - and then sent them, stripped of weapons, back to Red territory. That he let them live, even sent them back to fight for the other side, is an indication of his relative magnanimity at this point. Not all his prisoners would be so lucky.

Desperate for manpower, Semenov turned once more to the tradition of recruiting from an ethnic minority, in this case a small group of Mongols, the Bargut, who had settled in Manchuria. The Bargut had briefly declared independence from China in 1912, with Russian assistance, but their dreams of autonomy had been comprehensively shattered by the Chinese. At present, things were complicated by the presence of another anti-Chinese Mongol group, the Karachen, who had come to Bargut territory from Inner Mongolia to escape the Chinese army. Inner Mongolia was still firmly under Chinese control, and many of the Mongols there had been pursuing a long, and ultimately futile, guerrilla struggle against the Chinese authorities for over forty years.

The Karachen were no happier in Bargut territory. Tension between the two tribes had grown, and they were practically at war. Semenov
had made contacts there during his recruitment efforts in 1917 and, with Ungern's help, not only negotiated peace between the two groups and an amnesty from the Chinese, but also managed to get them to contribute men to his new army. Both distrusted the Bolsheviks almost as much as their fellow minorities in Siberia, and they had also traditionally looked to the tsarist regime as a potential foreign patron against the hated Chinese. Since the Karachen were experienced guerrilla fighters in a region where soldiering frequently blurred into banditry, the chance to make a fortune through plunder was also appealing.

Ungern was given command of a detachment of these new Mongol soldiers, around two hundred and fifty Bargut horsemen. After helping to put down the mutiny in Hailar, they went on to occupy another station in Bargut territory, Bukhedu. The Chinese authorities, who were becoming increasingly nervous of the Semenovites, sprung a trap. Ungern was invited to lunch by the commander of the Chinese garrison. He accepted, but in a table-turning reversal of his usual practice, was himself held prisoner while his Mongols were disarmed. A furious Semenov responded quickly, constructing a fake armoured train using a dummy howitzer placed on a platform car and half-covered with a tarpaulin, which he then used to bluff the Chinese commander into releasing Ungern and his men.

Such a simple deception would not be sufficient to secure them the Transbaikal. By February, the Soviets had rallied, holding a pan-Siberian Congress which appointed a young, charismatic leader, Sergei Lazo, to drive the Semenovites out of the Transbaikal. They had more men and better arms than Semenov's forces, and they easily forced them out of the towns they had taken in January. By March the Special Manchurian Division was trapped and beaten. The only thing that saved the Whites was the intervention of the Chinese army, which, not wanting the conflict to spill over their border, enforced an armistice that allowed the Semenovites a breathing space.

Semenov and Ungern both moved into the province of Manchuria to begin looking for help and support. It was difficult work for Ungern, given his almost complete absence of social skills. On the other hand,
he could speak the language, poor as his Chinese was, and he was always more comfortable dealing with ‘Orientals' than his fellow Russians. He spent the early months of 1918 shuttling back and forth along the Manchurian railway. His work was concentrated in Harbin, the great northern city of Manchuria which had been virtually a Russian colony for many years.

He was required to act as go-between to different White factions, shame armchair generals into making real contributions, negotiate with the Japanese, and ensure that the Chinese officials stayed at least neutral, if not friendly, towards the Whites. He had to deal with bank transfers and arms shipments, hire mercenaries and hear false promises from all sides. From his letters to Semenov and others, it is clear that he found the work frustrating, and it left him exhausted, annoyed and cursing Mongol and Chinese leaders as ‘scoundrels'. There were petty intrigues and rivalries; other Russians, even professed Whites, were often not to be trusted, although the Mongols were a little more more reliable. Ungern was working closely with the leader of the Karachen Mongols, Fushenge, training and advising the Karachen and Bargut troops. Several Mongol leaders supported the restoration of the Qing dynasty, for much the same reasons as they supported the restoration of the tsar: the old imperial order had given them greater protection than the new, populist one ever would. It was an idea that stuck with Ungern.

Meanwhile, Semenov was casting around desperately for a patron who could supply the Special Manchurian Division with the arms and supplies he needed to take on the Reds. He found one in the Japanese. Not only were they deeply concerned about the possibility of Bolshevik revolution spreading to Japan, they also saw the fighting in Siberia as a golden opportunity to extend Japanese power in the region. Eventually over a quarter of a million Japanese soldiers would be sent there.

Japanese ambitions overseas had grown stronger since the Russo-Japanese war, and elements within the Japanese military, nobility and political establishment increasingly saw Manchuria, Mongolia and eastern Siberia as their natural territory. Ultra-nationalist secret societies were formed to promote Japanese expansion overseas, some of which had strong ties to mystical forms of Buddhism. They had close links to the messy world of Japanese intelligence, dominated by
nobles who ran private spy networks only loosely affiliated with the government. Several of these were based in Harbin. The Japanese needed a Russian proxy, however, and were eager to find a White leader they could back. Semenov impressed them with his usual charm and vigour, and they began supplying him with money, arms and numerous military and political advisers. He was also able to secure guns and funds from the British and French, though on a much more limited scale. He used his fresh resources to hire and arm Chinese mercenaries, merging them with his Mongol troops under Russian leadership.

Semenov was still, in theory, a mere captain, and his brash manner and overreaching ambition made him unpopular with many in the White hierarchy, several of whom regarded him as little more than a puppet of the Japanese. The worst breach was with Admiral Kolchak, who became leader of the Whites in western Siberia, eventually establishing a military dictatorship based at Omsk. He was older and more renowned than Semenov, and the quarrel between them started when Semenov insolently failed to meet his train as promised. From that point on there was a permanent rift between Kolchak's followers and Semenov's. It was representative of a deeper division within the White movement. Kolchak's followers tended to be more liberal, more committed to democratic ideals, supporters of the February constitutional revolution but not the Bolshevik coup. Many had been involved in socialist movements themselves. The Semenovites, on the other hand, were mostly deep-dyed reactionaries who regretted the fall of the old regime. Kolchak began to work to block Semenov's funding, while Semenov denounced the admiral as an elderly idiot.

In March 1918, newly invigorated by foreign aid, the Special Manchurian Division began to push back into the Transbaikal region. By early June they were some two hundred miles across the border, but were still being pressed hard by the Red forces. The Bolsheviks brought thousands of men to bear against Semenov's ragtag collection of Cossack and Buriat cavalry. It seemed as though their efforts were doomed once again, until salvation appeared from another unlikely source. During the First World War the Russians had captured many Czech and Slovak soldiers who had no love for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and had tried to form them into a unit to fight for their country's liberation. After the Bolsheviks came to power,
the ‘Czechoslovakian Legion' decided to attempt to return to the Western Front to fight. Since the Germans blocked the way west, the only route was east - along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, and from there round the world to home.

They had an uneasy relationship with the Bolsheviks, especially since the latter made peace with the Germans in March 1918. The Bolshevik leaders vacillated over whether they should be allowed to leave, and the Czechs became increasingly frustrated. On 17 May, a fight between a Czech and a Hungarian internationalist escalated into a series of violent clashes between the Legion and Bolshevik troops, which culminated eight days later in Trotskii ordering the Legion to disarm. This was the last straw, and fifty thousand Czechoslovakian soldiers erupted against the Soviets. Their main target was the Trans-Siberian Railway, their only way back to Europe, and they seized stations and rolling stock across the country. White sympathisers joined them, and the Bolsheviks were driven out of cities across Siberia and the Urals.

The Special Manchurian Division attempted to help the Czechs on 13 July, throwing themselves against Red-held towns in a desperate outnumbered assault. After days of savage fighting, they were yet again forced back across the border at Manchuli, where the Bolsheviks, despite Chinese promises, were this time able to pursue them. The division was almost wiped out, not least because one of Semenov's commanders defected to the Reds. Only a heroic charge by a battalion of Japanese ‘volunteers' repelled the Bolshevik assault. During a brief ceasefire negotiated by Ungern's Chinese contacts, Semenov was able to evacuate his troops deeper into Manchuria. Eventually they regrouped in Hailar. Ungern and Semenov began to put the force back together, benefiting from increasing Bolshevik cruelty, which drove over ten thousand refugees to Manchuria and provided them with a steady stream of recruits.