transcript

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[00:02] This is Dana Schwartz, host of Noble Blood. Just a quick bit of housekeeping. My new book, The Arcane Arts, is coming out this May. I co-wrote it with a friend of mine. It's a dual POV, dark academia story about a grad student and a professor studying illegal magic. It's a lot of fun. It's by SD. Coverley, which is the pen name we chose for both of us writing together. But it's not a secret that we wrote it. And if you pre-ordered it, it would just mean the world to me. So if you're looking for a sexy, fun, dark academia murder mystery thriller about forbidden magic, look up The Arcane Arts. A pre-order would be super helpful. OK, and now time for the episode. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim & Mild from Erin Menke. Listener discretion advised. On the morning of January 18th, 1921, the Mongolian capital city of Urga seemed quiet, typical for a snowy morning in negative 40 degree weather. But out in the distance, you could see a series of fires had been lit in the hills surrounding the city. One witness noticed cavalry moving down the mountainside, quote, like little black dots against the snow. It turned out that the invaders were a ramshackle army of Mongolians, Tibetans, and Russians led by Russian Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a man now sometimes referred to as The Mad or Bloody Baron. A bit of historical context. When the Chinese Republican force had occupied Mongolia in 1919, they had had Bogd Khan, the highest Tibetan Buddhist authority, placed under house arrest. But placed under house arrest in his lavish European style home, surrounded by a sacred nature preserve, where animals like cheetahs, tigers, and even allegedly a pet elephant lived in cages. Roman von Ungern-Sternberg had a lofty goal in coming to Mongolia. He would rescue the Bogd Khan. Soon Tibetan horsemen fighting alongside the Russian infiltrated the gates of the temple, their clothing covered with butter, and their faces smudged with soot to frighten their enemies. The animals in the menagerie yelped and howled, and historian James Palmer even alleges that the Khan's elephant was so frightened, it broke free from its cage and charged trumpeting through the lines of battle, only to be, quote, discovered a week later nearly a hundred miles away. Other historians think that that detail strains credulity. How could an elephant survive the Mongolian cold? But the anecdote speaks to the chaos of the scene. Two Tibetan soldiers carried Khan out of the house and brought him to safety. An American merchant who witnessed the scene reported, quote, the entire action consumed exactly one half hour and was the prettiest piece of cavalry work that one could desire to witness. Apparently Roman von Ungern-Sternberg shouted, Now Urga is ours! He had pulled off an unthinkable feat, using his tiny army to take control of the capital of Mongolia. From his new base in Urga, Roman would install a brutal military dictatorship under the ostensible rule of the Khan. Roman had come a long way from his beginnings as a middling czarist officer with a long history of disciplinary problems in Russia. Historians have very little positive to say about him. Historian James Palmer called him a psychopath, who was, quote, an appalling human being in almost every way. The Baron believed, like many aristocrats, that commoners were an inferior species. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Roman's odious views. After the Russian Revolution, he believed he had been chosen by God to protect the ideals of the monarchy. And he was invading Asia to save it from the same fate that Russia had suffered. As improbable and futile as his mission would seem, he would do anything to achieve it, even putting thousands of lives at risk. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. To call Roman von Ungern-Sternberg a proud Russian would be an understatement. He constantly bragged to anyone who would listen about his connections to the Romanovs and other members of the Russian aristocracy. Historian James Palmer wrote that Romans, quote, sense of attachment to the Russian Empire was almost pathologically intense. Roman wrote in his journals that, like his fancy Russian ancestors, he had, quote, never taken orders from the working classes, and thought it was preposterous that, quote, dirty workers who've never had any servants of their own, but still think they can command should influence Russia's rule. But it actually turns out that Roman had almost no Russian ancestry. His parents were German, and he spent most of his early childhood in Estonia, which at that time was called Estland. The reason why he considered himself Russian has to do with the complicated relationships between Russia and its colonies in the 19th century. Roman's German ancestors invaded Estonia way back during the Crusades and had been there ever since. Eventually, the Russians began to take over the area. German colonists in Estonia, like Roman's family, were more aligned with the Russian invaders than the native Estonians, who these aristocrats regarded, for the most part, as lowly peasants. On the other hand, the Russians were willing to ally with the German aristocracy in their quest to expand their country's eastern frontier. Many of Roman's family members benefited from that partnership by pursuing military careers in the Russian army. Throughout the 1860s, Russia also implemented an intense program of Russification in the border territories like Estonia to embed them more deeply into the empire. Roman's birth certificate indicates how entwined these two cultures became. He has two different birth dates. According to the Western Gregorian calendar, he was born on January 10th, 1886, and according to the Russian Julian calendar, he was born on December 29th, 1885. Russia's attempt to exert greater cultural control over Estonia may have worked a little too well on Roman. As a child, he loved hearing stories about his warlike crusader ancestors with names like the Axe and the Brother of Satan. He saw the powerful Russian Empire as an extension of that military lineage. He considered himself Russian because he wanted to be on the winning team. His excitement about war and violence made him, by all accounts, a terrifying and terrible child. As one relative put it, Roman was a terror to his fellow pupils and his masters. According to one source, at 12 years old, he tried to strangle his cousin's pet owl. In class, he had a habit of tossing his books out of the window of the classroom in the middle of the lesson, running outside to grab them, and never coming back. As you might expect, his grades were abysmal. In 1902, he was ranked the worst student in his class. When he transferred to military school as a teenager, he racked up 42 demerits in just a year and a half. Including oversleeping, skipping class, fighting, smoking in bed, keeping his hair too long, and losing his homework. He was simply too entitled to care. Once, while on watch during military training, he just wandered away. He told his supervisor, I'm not some sort of manservant. I don't have to stand in one place. In February 1905, the head of the school wrote to his family, asking them to withdraw him from the school or he would be expelled. They chose withdrawal, and the following year he was sent to war. The Russo-Japanese War was winding down, and Roman spent a little under a year puttering around Manchuria before coming back to Russia. But while he was away, the peasantry of Estonia rose up to demand better conditions through a series of riots. In just over a week in December 1905, one-fifth of all German-owned property was destroyed, including much belonging to the Ungern-Sternbergs. Even the manor house where Roman grew up was left nothing more than, quote, a blackened shell. The ideology of the Russian Army helped Roman process the destruction of his family home and aristocratic lineage. Unfortunately, it imbued him with an even uglier, more vengeful sense of elitism. Much of the Russian nobility believed that peasants were a biologically inferior race, with actual black blood that distinguished them from the elite. Because of that, imperial rule was divine and natural law, making a peasant revolt a world-shattering crisis. This idea would have galvanized someone like Roman, who found almost all of his self-worth in his proximity to the Russian monarchy. He wrote later that he considered these revolutions an omen of, quote, ...famine destruction, the death of culture, of glory, of honor, of spirit, the death of states, and the death of peoples. Having found new moral purpose in the Russian army, he enrolled in a prestigious military academy in St. Petersburg and began training as a cadet. There, Roman transformed from a failing student into merely a mediocre one, as James Palmer put it. This gave him limited options when he graduated in 1908. Those at the top of the class had first pick over where they'd be stationed. Roman, over a hundred spots down on the list, decided to set off for the Trans-Baikal region, an area of Eastern Siberia out past the Urals and bordering Mongolia and China. Why he decided to go so far away is still something of a mystery. It was an unconventional choice for a new graduate to one of the furthest and most unstable parts of the Russian Empire. But a photo from around this time gives us a clue. Roman was photographed in a uniform with what one historian called his bullet-shaped head and stage villain mustache. One of his buddies, a Russian merchant, described Roman this way, a scrawny, ragged, droopy man. On his face had grown a wispy blonde beard. He had faded blank blue eyes and he looked about 30 years old. His military uniform was in abnormally poor condition, the trousers being considerably worn and torn at the knees. He carried a sword by his hip. End quote. This wouldn't be just any sword, but a three-foot curved Cossack saber, a design that originated in Mongolia, which would eventually become the site of his biggest military achievements. While Roman was a controversial and unsuccessful figure in Europe, out in the farthest reaches of the Russian Empire, his career was just beginning. Roman stepped off the Trans-Siberian Railway to report for duty in the Siberian city of Chita on July 27th, 1908. By the time he had arrived, the region was in crisis. Nearby Mongolia had been independent for two years after three centuries of Chinese rule. Russia tacitly encouraged Mongolian independence, thinking it would help them expand further into Asia. As a Russian general put it at the time, quote, in the future, a major global war could flare up between Asia and Europe. For this purpose, Russia must occupy northern Manchuria and Mongolia. Only then will Mongolia be harmless, end quote. Russia had increased its presence in the newly independent Siberia. Administrators from the Resettlement Administration, the Russian state's new colonization agency, were stationed throughout the country, administering land, handing out cheap guidebooks, and managing, quote, settler relay camps. Away from the rigid hierarchies and forced decorum of his life in Europe, Roman was finally in an environment that rewarded his, let's say, toughness, independence and viciousness. But there wasn't much for him to do, aside from traipsing around the mountains of Eastern Siberia and Mongolia. With few actual duties, he spent his time scribbling new Mongolian words into his notebook. One witness recalled that he would sit alone in silence before suddenly becoming animated enough to ride his horse across the plains in, quote, wild charges towards nowhere in particular. At the Mongolian border, Roman also had an opportunity to deepen a burgeoning interest in Buddhism. Back in Europe, Roman had developed an extracurricular interest in Eastern religion and the occult. This wasn't entirely unprecedented. Roman's cousin wrote that even as a tween, Roman had always had an interest in Tibetan and Hindu philosophy, and called Roman, quote, one of the most metaphysically and occultally gifted men I had ever met. His cousin apparently believed that Roman could actually read minds. At the time, many Russian intellectuals were entertaining what they considered, quote, exotic ideas, encapsulating both spiritualism and Eastern philosophy. Roman may have walked by bookstores with occult or spiritualist titles on display, or encountered fringe religious groups in St. Petersburg. Palmer alleges that Roman would have resonated with the, quote, elitism baked into occult religious ideas. He suggests that occultism rests on the principle that there is secret knowledge that only a few worthy people can understand, appealing to Roman's belief in hierarchy and innate sense of superiority. The historian also hypothesizes that Roman's unwavering belief in the Tsar's inherent right to rule had a mystical element that would have aligned with more fringe religious beliefs. However, all of that doesn't explain Roman's interest in Buddhism specifically. Historian William Sunderland argues that Roman was spiritually restless and a self-styled iconoclast, making an unfamiliar religion like Buddhism particularly appealing. However, Sunderland hedges that we don't have any proof of Roman's motivations, only possibilities. In any case, Roman was able to spend his idle hours talking to the lamas and monks who dominated Mongolian society after the country's independence. Roman took a particular interest in the Bogd Khan, or Holy Emperor, who ruled over the country. While the two had never met, the Bogd Khan was an infamous political figure and celebrity. He was the head of Mongolian Buddhism, and much like the Dalai Lama, he was considered a living bodhisattva. All that said, rumor had it that the Bogd Khan wasn't the most pious man. He was apparently a binge drinker, and members of his cabinet reported meetings turning into night-long bakhanals. He was going blind, either from drinking or from having contracted syphilis after sleeping with one of the monks at his court. He was also said to be cruel and violent. Apparently, he would toss an electrified rope over the wall of his palace, and when passersby would touch it, they'd get shocked and believe they had received a spiritual blessing. When he got bored, he'd fire a pair of guns that had been given to him by a Russian visitor at random targets. He had a vast collection of taxidermy, from pufferfish and penguins to elephant seals, and a zoo with giraffes, tigers, chimpanzees, and more who were left to weather the cold in outdoor cages. These sensational stories may be mostly apocryphal, especially given that so many of these reports come from Europeans who justified their own colonial interests by making Mongolia seem exotic and brutal. That said, even more measured accounts portray the Bagan as a mercurial and violent figure, not entirely unlike Roman, who angered quickly and had no difficulty executing anyone who got in his way. After Roman spent a few years in Eastern Siberia, he was reassigned in 1913. It was a routine move, but Roman was disappointed. He hadn't accomplished much, and he returned to Estonia unemployed and aimless. In peacetime, he struggled. As Palmer put it, quote, He was a loser, albeit an upper class one who would always be sheltered from the consequences of his own actions, but a loser nonetheless. Luckily for Roman, if not for anyone else, peace would not last long. World War I had broken out, giving him a new opportunity to prove himself in battle. He was mobilized on July 19th, 1914, and for the next two years, he bounced around from Ukraine to Southern Lithuania and eventually back to Siberia. For the first time in Roman's life, he was apparently a, quote, exemplar to the other officers and soldiers, according to one of his supervisors. One officer described his wartime service as, quote, a feat of uninterrupted heroism performed for the glory of Russia. Apparently, he would go first in every charge, even in dangerous missions, and hyped up his fellow soldiers. He wrote later that, quote, life is the result of war, and society is the instrument of war. To refuse war means to refuse an epic life. However, on October 22, 1916, Roman would get in trouble yet again. He got drunk with another officer in Ukraine while they were both on regimental leave. And when they went back to a hotel at the end of the night, the receptionist wouldn't let Roman book a room without a certificate from his commander, which he didn't have. Roman tried to swing at the receptionist and broke a glass window instead. Roman called his commander and tried to convince him to approve the hotel stay, but the commander refused. Furious, Roman yelled, Whose face do I have to mess up? He turned toward the officer he got drunk with, who was still with him in the lobby, called him a swine, and scratched his face with his sword. With that, Roman was discharged and put in military prison until January 1917. After his release, Roman returned to the Eastern Front in Siberia, but by then, there was little left to return to. No more than a month after he was out of prison, the monarchy that Roman had been so devoted to in Russia collapsed. Russia suffered thousands of casualties on the battlefield and rampant food shortages on the home front. Workers protested rising prices for scanty provisions. Even soldiers joined the riots they had been ordered to suppress. In February 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, ending 300 years of Romanov rule. Later that year, Lenin seized the Winter Palace and took over the government. The Bolsheviks attacked everything that Roman had stood for. Religion, elitism and the monarchy. The revolution threatened to strip him of his regiment and his authority. To Roman, it seemed like the Estonian riot in 1905 had spread to the rest of the country, upending life as he knew it. Over in Siberia, morale was low. Soldiers had defected en masse, exhausted by years of war trudging through the snow far away from home. As civil war took hold across the country, Russia split into shifting zones of control. The Bolsheviks, the Reds, held the central heartland, while anti-Bolshevik forces, the Whites, occupied the peripheries, including Siberia. Roman aligned himself with the anti-Bolshevik White forces and viewed the civil war as an extension of World War I, where he had to, quote, defend the motherland. But this was a guerrilla war, consisting of, quote, identity checks, detentions, beatings, executions, and occasional raids and skirmishes. On suspected dissidents, as opposed to formal battles between two opposing forces. These tactics befitted chaotic, anti-authoritarian figures like Roman. From 1917 to 1920, Roman enacted his sadistic Reign of Terror, overseeing beatings and interrogations of suspected Bolsheviks in a Siberian detention center. To the hills, he would shout as he sent prisoners away to be executed. When he wasn't terrorizing prisoners, he traveled through Siberia to Manchuria and Mongolia, buying horses or checking in on gold mines. Even those more banal, routine missions required brutality from Roman. To fund these excursions, he stole money and jewelry from travelers and grain, livestock and other goods from warehouses and cargo trains. But by 1920, Roman's coalition among the whites was falling apart. The Bolsheviks pressed the whites even further and further east, and they lost control of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In October of that year, the Reds marched into Cheetah, the white Siberian stronghold, and Roman's home base, taking over the city. But by the time the Reds arrived, Roman was already gone. He was off to Mongolia, about to embark on the most ambitious military campaign of his life. This time, he wasn't fighting under Russia. He was on his own. This is the end of part one of our two-part episode on Roman von Ungern-Sternberg. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit about one of his most colorful modern descendants. Whatever legacy Roman von Ungern-Sternberg had imagined for himself, he almost certainly could not have imagined where his name would end up in 2026. TikTok. Over on TikTok, his distant descendant, Leonie von Ungern-Sternberg, makes content about her daily life in videos she calls the Modern Baroness Diaries. She's an MBA student, and it seems like her content is fairly typical for wealthy influencers. Videos about travel, skincare, and fashion. But then there are also videos where she acknowledges that, yes, her ancestor was, in fact, the Bloody Baron, but no, she does not want the far-right edgelords who have re-appropriated his ideology to think that she agrees with them. In fact, she had family killed by the Nazis for trying to protect Jews. In her own words, quote, all these people telling me I should reclaim the throne to Mongolia, but I'm literally just a girl who drinks matcha. Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim & Mild from Erin Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble Blood are Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffe, Natasha Lasky, and me, Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk and Gnomes Grippen, with supervising producer Rima Ilkayali, and executive producers Erin Manke, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. 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