Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj is already a retired politician (he stepped down as president in 2017, after serving two terms) and his parent Democratic Party is currently in opposition. However, he spoke through an institution that is a little on the sidelines of politics – the World Mongol Federation. The proud name of the institution is a bit of a stretch – the WMF is housed in one room of an office building, was founded a year ago, the website is slightly lame, but it already has, not insignificantly, representatives in Sweden, the USA and Japan. Elbegdorj spoke in English, with a ribbon in the colours of Ukraine in his lapel, interjecting a phrase in Russian from time to time.

Not without reason: the three-minute speech was constructed as an appeal to President Vladimir Putin. Relatively uncontroversial, by the way, for the emotions present in international politics today. Elbegdorj, a graduate of the Soviet-era officers’ school (1983-1988) began with the appeal: “Priezidient, pierekratite wojnu!” (Please end the war!)


However, it was not this that caught the attention of journalists and analysts, but the further part of the appeal. The former president, emphasising his flesh and blood lineage of the Mongolian people (“I am one of the eight sons of the shepherd”) appealed to his fellow citizens, in the broad sense. “Since the beginning of this war, ethnic minorities living in Russia have been suffering. The Mongols of Buryatia, the Mongols of Tuva and the Mongols of Kalmykia have suffered terribly, they are being used as cannon fodder, hundreds of them are wounded, thousands killed” – the politician stated. And he appealed: “Do not kill Ukrainians! Do not take part in this war! Mongolia will provide you with shelter! Take refuge under the wing of the motherland!”

From Nevada to Lake Baikal

So far, Russians are rather keen to seek protection under Mongolia’s wing: although the Mongolian border is not experiencing the same siege as the airports in Moscow and St Petersburg or the now iconic high altitude border crossing with Georgia, the vision of a country which is one of the few not yet requiring Russians to have visas is appealing to many. According to agency reports, hundreds of cars are flooding Mongolia. Some imaginative internet user even went to the trouble of reaching for a photo from the other side of the world, showing an eight-lane traffic jam of cars in the desert, and uploaded it online with the caption: “Moscow – back to the Urheimat”.

The iconic drone photo depicts a traffic jam a few years ago after the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, which doesn’t stop it (the photo, not the festival) from going viral on the internet. The reality, however, is that a relatively small percentage of Russian emigrants/refugees/defectors/pacifists are headed to Mongolia. Much more interesting in the eyes of the world is the point of Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj’s short appeal. The Mongolians of Buryatia and Tuva: do they really exist? How many are there? Are they willing to listen to the former president’s appeal? And does this mean that Buryatia will become depopulated?

The whole issue is, as is the case with former empires, highly complicated and multifaceted. The empire created by Genghis Khan was – to this day – the largest in the world, leaving far behind not only ancient Rome and Alexander the Great, but also the Duchy of Lithuania from sea to sea, China, the USSR, the British Empire and other powers of our time. At the height of its power, i.e. in the mid-13th century, it covered 33 million square kilometres, stretching, as we know it, from Kraków, Legnica and Split to the Sea of Japan.

A GIF with Genghis Khan

Popular in the past decade GIFs, those little programs that historians like to use to show how the surface of a phenomenon changes as a function of time, show this perfectly: the red stain of Mongolia spills unstoppably to the north, west, south and east.

Development and division of the Mongol Empire (1206-1294) on a map with modern borders. Autor: Strokey44 i Sting, CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia

Far fewer GIFs show the shrinking and disintegration of empires. And this is exactly what happened to Genghis Khan’s domain: when the grandchildren quarrelled, when the Ugedeys grew indolent, and when a subjugated China “took over” that shell of a state, it became apparent that there were far too few Mongols alone to rule such a vast area. Most of them – a trifling number of several million! – remained in the area of central-northern Asia, between the tundra, deserts and Lake Baikal. A few population “islands” remained in the basins further south in Asia, as far south as Jungaria. As late as the 17th century, the Ojrats, one of the “splinter” tribes of the Orda, ventured as far as the lower Volga.

The Khans’ great-grandchildren were distinguished by their facial features, which were markedly different from those of most Asian peoples, their membership of the same linguistic group and their faith: the vast majority of them remained faithful to Buddhism, despite pressure from Muslim or Christian rulers.

The Volga Oyrats were the hardest hit, having to accept first the name “Kalmyks”, given to them by their Turkic-speaking neighbours and taken over by the Russians, and then Russian rule. The rest of the post-Tatars functioned as a loose federation of tribes under the protectorate of distant Beijing. They inhabited the northern fringes of the waning Chinese empire, occupying an intermediate position between “ being as snug as a bug in a rug” and “living out in the sticks”, feeding on legends of past glory and making cottage cheese from camel’s milk.

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  The great turmoil in Mongolian lands began at the dawn of the 20th century, with the break-up of China – and it is a whirlwind that, reported in detail, would burst the modest framework of this article. All the more so given that the blowing up of that whirlpool was of close interest to two other powers in the region: Russia and Japan, always keen to weaken China by establishing some kind of state formation on its periphery. Hence, soon after the outbreak of revolution in China in 1911, part of Mongolia (the so-called Outer Mongolia, in practice – located further from Beijing) declared independence under the protectorate of Russia, creating one of the few theocratic states in the 20th century.

Red, white and mad

It did not last long: in 1915, Russia, weakened by the First World War, agreed under the so-called Kiachtan Treaty to hand over protection to Beijing, and two years later the real turmoil began. Japan joined the game (for the time being in the role of an observer), as did a number of “red” and “white” Russians (such as Ataman Grigory Semyonov, attempting to establish an anti-Bolshevik Far Eastern Republic) and simply half-crazed individuals, such as Baron Roman Nicolaus von Ungern-Sternberg, a favourite character in thriller novels since the days of Ferdinand Ossendowski.

And nowhere was it easier than in the dust of the desert to gouge the borders of Eastern Mongolia, Western Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Greater Mongolia, the Mongolian People’s Republic and – yes – also the Buryat-Mongolian Republic with its capital in Chita. Functioning a little in the dreamworld, a little on camelback and a little in the buffer zone between the Bolshevik territories and the Far Eastern Republic – but for as many as three years, from 1917 to 1920!

In the mid-1920s, when the dust had settled a little, raised by the hooves of cavalrymen and the sketches of home-grown cartographers, it became apparent that on the geopolitical stage in the region remained: The Mongolian People’s Republic (since 1924), which would soon experience Stalinism in its sharpest form, with the Great Purge and gulags in the desert, and become, half a century before Albania, the first officially atheist state; Tannu-Tuwa, a miniature state that existed between 1921 and 1944, recognised only by the USSR and Mongolia, and known to the world only by its postage stamps, which were quite a rarity (the issuing of postage stamps was one of the most serious manifestations of Tuvan statehood).

The third entity turned out to be two Soviet autonomous republics, changing their names and union boundaries several times: one Buryat-Mongolian (a little more east of Lake Baikal) and the other, for balance, Mongolian-Buryatian (a little more west of Baikal). The two were happily united in 1923 to form the Autonomous Mongolian-Buriatic (from 1958 – Buryatian) Republic, which smoothly and peacefully became the Republic of Buryatia between 1990 and 1992.

A dying titular nation

It is all very nice, but despite all the nods to the titular nation, the Buryats have never been in the majority in any of the aforementioned formations since the early 20th century, while today they make up approximately 30% of the population. Russians, by comparison – 66%. The other thing is that these figures are from a census from 12 years ago and by yesterday may have changed significantly in favour of the Buryats. The dynamics are unmistakable: in the 1959 census they barely made up 20%. So perhaps by yesterday they may have made up 40%?

By yesterday. Because not until today.

President Elbegdorj’s words about cannon fodder are not exaggerated. They are corroborated – to the unkind ear and eye of a witness to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine – by numerous reports of the over-representation of Buryats in the most infamous military units carrying out war crimes there. The 64th Independent Mechanised Brigade, which carried out the massacre in Bucha (actually stationed in Khabarovsk), was said to come from Buryatia; its sadistic commander, Azatbek Omurbekov, was said to be a Buryat (in fact he is of Karakalpak nationality). More testimonies of apathetic and stupefied Buryat captives, as if they had munched on human flesh, appear online…

There is hard data too – recently published by Rajan Dugar de Ponte, an ethnographer and Buriatic activist who has been active in exile in France for years. According to her estimates, based on official Russian data, but also the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Buryats, who make up 0.4 percent of Russia’s population, simultaneously make up nearly 3 per cent of the fallen soldiers claimed by Moscow.

A chewy cannon fodder

This means, writes Dugar de Ponte, that the mortality rate of Buryats in the 18-45 age bracket has increased by 70% since the beginning of the conflict, while in the most promising population bracket of 18-30 years it has increased by 270%! The ethnographer writes, citing relatives’ accounts, of villages and hamlets depopulated in the first days of conscription, of the republic’s capital, Ulan-Ude, from which 5,000 men “disappeared” – and of Moscow’s multi-storey mobilisation and PR strategy, which consists of several elements.

Firstly – the recruitment of volunteers from regions with catastrophic unemployment and debt, where an army contract was the only chance for a young man. Secondly, the unique qualities of the Buryat “cannon fodder”: seasoned for murderous work in the steppe, obedient to their “elders”, so subordinate, and less drunk than the Russians – under the conditions of the improvised field war unleashed by Moscow, they are reliable…

Thirdly, they feel less emotionally connected to Ukrainian citizens; the risk that relatives, acquaintances, colleagues from studies, boarding school or trips will be among the victims is almost nil. And fifthly, how easy it is in the “subconscious” message to shift the burden of guilt for the crimes (or at least part of them) onto the “Mongolian savages”! The good old school of the Third Reich, sending formations of Latvians, “Kalmyks” and Dirlewanger’s men to do the dirtiest work.

Both Elbegdorj and Dugar de Ponte and, predictably, most of the Buryatian and Mongolian elites are aware of these threats: demographic, political and image. But what can they do?

Perhaps more than one may think. It is too early to say what proportion of the refugees camped out at border crossings with Mongolia are now Buryats and Tuvins (it is a little further from Kalmykia to Mongolia), but they in particular can count on a warm welcome. They too will find their way to Ulaanbaatar – in terms of customs and language, often renewing clan and family ties. And the argument of Moscow’s cynics, who send Buratian conscripts into battle as indifferent to the Ukrainian cause, may also prove double-edged. The same argument can already be heard in Ulan-Ude as in Dagestan Machachkala: “Fighting for Slavic unity, as the president repeats? What’s in it for us? It’s not our war!”

Or will things go a step further too? The idea of “Pan-Mongolism” smouldered for a while a century ago, more in the opium dreams of Baron Sternberg than in reality. But what is stopping it – like a ball of opium – from snowballing now? In Mongolia, besides the Congress mentioned in the introduction, the “Movement for the Unity of the Mongolian People” is active in Buryatia – the Nagadal Unity Movement and the “Buryatian-Mongolian People’s Party”. Yes, these have been couchsurfing formations over the years, but in the great steppe, where horse riding is practised from a young age, it is easier than elsewhere to leap from the couch straight to the saddle…

Music to their ears

And the funniest thing about it is the reversal of the signs. 123 years ago, in 1899, the great Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, in his famous “A Brief Tale about the Antichrist”, amused himself by arranging a four-line poem extolling a dangerous – and contrived – Pan-Mongolism. In Vladimir Wozniuk’s translation, these four lines read as follows (from collected essays Politics, Law, and Morality):

Panmongolism! Though the name is savage,
It caresses my ear
As if it is full with portent
Of a great Divine Fate . . .

Most of the world is familiar with this quotation not from Soloviev’s treatise, but from Aleksandr Blok’s unevenly more famous poem “The Scythians” (1918), a generation later, in which it was used as a motto.

What does the price of tea in China have to do with the Scythians and the Mongol civilisation? – but Sasha Blok scared the West the way he liked.

Millions are you – and hosts, yea hosts, are we,
And we shall fight if war you want, take heed.
Yes, we are Scythians – leafs of the Asian tree,
Our slanted eyes are bright aglow with greed.
(Tr. Einde O’Callaghan)

And the West was frightened of the Scythians in budenovkas, and feared them – for a century. But what if, four generations after Soloviev, three after Blok, Pan-Mongolism becomes music to Chinese, European and American ears?

– Wojciech Stanisławski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

– Translated by jz