Russia | Kalmykia | Elista | Dambijantsan

The next morning I proceed to the temple, where I am supposed to meet someone who will take me to the Kalmykian Institute for Humanistic Studies. In the lobby is a small shop selling prayer scarves, incense, and other religious paraphernalia, along with a smattering of books. One of the books is a biography of the Zaya Pandita. On the cover is a portrait of the Zaya Pandita which I had first seen in the Khovd Aimag Museum in Mongolia.

Portrait of Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), The Oirat Zaya Pandita

I had assumed that the portrait there was the original, but having seen copies of this same portrait half a dozen times already here in Kalmykia I am beginning to wonder if the original is somewhere here in Kalmykia and that perhaps the one in Khovd is a copy. I buy a copy of the book, whose author is A. B. Sandjiev, and am standing off to the side perusing it when a young man in his twenties approaches and introduces himself as Chogdor. He will be my guide to the institute. “I see you are reading my father’s book about Zaya Panditia,” he says. It turns out he is Chogdor Sandjiev. “Really!” said I. “I am quite interesting in Zaya Pandita. I would like to meet your father.” Unfortunately his father was in Moscow for the month of May.

The institute is a fifteen minute drive from the temple. In the small library we are met by another man in his twenties with a long ponytail and a mala wrapped around his wrist. His name is Bem. He is a student at the institute and is very fluent in English. He in turn introduces me to a short, stocky woman who must at in her seventies. She is in charge of research in the library, and she says she will collect all the material the library has on Dambijantsan.

Bem, Chogdor, and I proceed upstairs to the office of B. A. Bicheev, a professor at the institute. An stern looking man in this forties, he abrupty asks, “Why are you interested in Dambijantsan?” and without waiting for an answer adds, “Are you with the CIA?” Fifteen years ago, when I first lived in Russia, it was de rigueur to ask every American if they were CIA agents but this has gotten a bit old hat by now. “No,” I reply, “and in any case, I don’t think the CIA is interested in Dambijantsan.”

“Well, I don’t think Dambijantsan was a Kalmyk anyhow,” he says. It is true that the I. Lomakina, author of the book The Head of the Ja Lama, had thoroughly searched local records and archives in Kalmykia and had come up with nothing about Dambijantsan’s family or birthplace, but there is a host of peripheral and anecdotal data indicating that he was a Kalmyk of the Dörböt tribe. Why do you think he was not a Kalmyk? I asked the professor.

“Well, it is well known that Dambijantsan lived in Astrakhan in 1917, after he was released from prison in Siberia. Astrakhan was a very difficult and dangerous place to live in at that time. If he had relatives in the countryside he would have gone and stayed with them. But he didn’t. So I don’t think he had any relative here, and therefore was not a Kalmyk.”

This argument does not sound entirely convincing to me.

“But you must know that Dambijantsan was killed by a Kalmyk, a man named Kanukov,” the professor continued. I was aware of Kanukov’s claims. The indefatigable Lomakina had investigated this story at length. Kanukov, a former monk turned rabid Bolshevik, was with a detachment of Red Kalmyk agitators who came to Mongolia in the early 1920s. Apparently he was appointed Bolshevik commissar of Uliastai, the former headquarter of the Manchu administration in Mongolia, now the capital of Zavkhan Aimag, and was there when Baldandorj, then head of the Bolshevik Internal Security Department in Mongolia, arrived to plot the assassination of Dambijantsan. The assassination itself was carried out a small group of men led by the Mongolians Nanzad and Dugar-Beise. The Diluv Khutagt himself, who knew both Nanzad and Dugar-Beise and was himself involved in the plot, gives a detailed account of the assassination in his Autobiography. Indeed, the Diluv was an official in Uliastai at this time and he never even bothers to mention Kanukov. In any case, as I point out to Professor Bicheev, the details of the assassination are well known in Mongolia and Kanukov was in no way directly involved in it.

“Not so! he assert. “His report describing his role in the assassination is the State Archives of Kalmykia.”

I asked if he himself had read this report. He had not. Lomakina, a determined archival researcher, did study this report and summarizes it her book. Even in his own report Kanukov says that Nanzad and Dugar Beise carried out the actual assassination. He attempts to place himself in the middle of plotting the assassination but in Lomakina’s opinion this claim too is dubious. Elsewhere Kanukov makes the incredible claim that he himself captured Baron Ungern-Sternberg, the Notorious Psychopath who for a brief time in the 1921 had reigned as the uncrowned king of Mongolia. In Mongolia there are numerous versions of the capture of Ungern but in none of them does Kanukov play a role. In short, the picture of Kanukov which eventually emerges from the various accounts is that of a blowhard intent in insinuating himself into historical events in order to burnish his then burgeoning reputation as a certified Bolshevik Hero.

Now seeing any point pursuing this matter any further with Professor Bicheev, I asked instead if he is aware of any town in Kalmykia known as Aidarkhan, the alleged birthplace of Dambijantsan. Aidarkhan, he says, and Chogdor and Bem concur, is just the Kalmyk name for Astrakhan, the ancient city near the mouth of the Volga River. None of them are aware of any town named Aidarkhan in the current territory of Kalmykia. I suspect that the sources which say Dambijantsan was born in Aidarkhan (Astrakhan) meant that he was born in the province of Astrakhan, in which the Malo-Dörböt district was located in the nineteenth century. When I mention that I might go to the city of Astrakhan from Elista the professor exclaims, “Why do you want to go to Astrakhan? Do you work for the CIA?”

Changing the subject I ask him if he knows anything about I. Lomikina’s current whereabouts. I had attempted to track down information about her on the internet but had been unable to find anything. He says she died two or three years ago. This was sad, but intriguing. How old was she, I wondered, and what did she die of? The professor did not know. I added that there was a legend in Mongolia that anyone who tried to write about the life of Dambijantsan either did not succeed or came to a bad end. “I know about this,” said the professor. “Lomakina herself wrote in an article that when she saw Dambijantsan’s head in St. Petersburg she prayed that she would be allowed to finish her book without anything bad happening to her.”

And now she was dead. Owen Lattimore, I might add, had announced in print that he intended to write a biography of Dambijantsan but it never materialized. You would think that when a scholar of Lattimore’s statue announced he was doing a project like this he would have at least gathered some research materials. If he did they are not in his archives at the Library of Congress in Washington, which I combed thoroughly. Also, Lomakina herself tells of a Russian who in the 1920s gathered masses of material about Dambijantsan in Mongolia in view of writing a biography only to be arrested and later perish in a GULAG. His research materials disappeared without a trace. Then there was the German guy who spent twenty years amassing material for a movie about Dambijantsan. In the end the movie was never made . . .

There seemed little point in pursuing the discussion with Professor Bicheev. We went back down to the library where we were greeted by the elderly woman in charge who had said she would gather all the materials they had about Dambijantsan. I had visions of a mass of unpublished manuscripts, records, and other virgin materials, and was somewhat deflated when I saw the pile of books she had gathered together. Most them were well known sources which I had already studied. There was Burdukov’s Old and New Mongolia, one of the best sources of material about Dambijantsan, but which I have in my own Scriptorium in English and Mongolian editions as well as the original Russian edition; Maisky’s 1919 Modern Mongolia, which I have in English translation; Pozdneev’s Mongolia and the Mongols, which I also have in English translation; and a few other items, most of which I had either seen or was aware of. One item I had not seen was Kanukov’s Memoirs, where he recounts his alleged involvement in the assassination of Dambijantsan. As mentioned, however, Lomakina had reprised his account in her own book, of which I do have a copy. The Russian edition of Pozdneev’s Mongolia and the Mongols is interesting to page through, though, since it contains the Pozdneev’s photographs which were left out of the later English language edition. Including are photos of Amarbayasgalant Monastery as it looked in 1892 when Pozdneev visited. Amarbayasgalant, which I have visited many times, was built to house the remains of Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia. It was here that Pozdneev first heard about Dambijantsan. Pozdneev’s book is very first written account of Dambijantsan.

It’s soon clear that there is nothing really new here. I thanked the kindly old woman—I could tell she was a fellow hard-core bibliophile—for digging out the materials and we made our exit.

Hard-core Bibliophile in Scriptorium

I went back to the Golden Temple and sat in the main hall listening to the chanting of the monks and soaking up the peaceful vibes while at the same time watching the people filing through in hopes of spotting the people who owe me the money. Even if they don’t have the cash I would like to say hello. After three hours I still had not seen them. I am beginning to wonder if they are still in Kalmykia. Or is it possible that they were not from Kalmykia at all and had simply made up the story they had told me in Graz? Had I been an unwitting victim of a con-job? Dambijantsan was a Notorious Con-Man. Had I stumbled upon his imitators in Graz?