Russia | Astrakhan | Dambijantsan

On May 12, 1917, Dambijantsan, still an exile under police supervision, arrived in Astrakhan, the ancient city near the mouth of the Volga River, and took up residence on what is now Pestelya Street.

Pestelya Street

On June 20, 1917 he received a letter from A. V. Burdukov, the Russian trader in Mongolia who had befriend him during his earlier stay in Mongolia. On the same day he sat down and wrote a reply to Burdukov. “I am extremely delighted by the warm greetings from you and your wife and by your kind and sincere wishes for me,” gushed the one-time torturer, always a gentleman in his letters. He mentions that he would be released from police supervision sometime in 1917 but added that he had no plans to return to Mongolia, contrary to what he had written before. Indeed, he now complains that the Mongol people had never properly appreciated the efforts he made on their behalf: “ . . . trying to free Mongolia from the Chinese yoke, I have gained nothing for myself except a lot of psychological and physical problems . . . as a result of my kind efforts toward the well-being of the Mongolia nation I have only suffered . . .”

He is still involved with some kind of unspecified business affairs with Burdukov and asks about the money that was supposed to be forwarded to him via Russian consulate in Khovd. Meanwhile inflation is running wild, the prices of all commodities, including mutton, bread, butter, are soaring. “Nothing is reasonable,” he grouses, and boots are altogether unavailable. He also asks for photos of Mongolian noblemen he knew and a copy of a magazine article about his exploits during the Siege of Khovd in 1912. He may have claimed that he had no intention of returning to Mongolia but his thoughts were clearly turning there. On June 30 he wrote again in reply to a letter of Burdukov’s:

I am safe and sound, thanks the Lord. I would like to thank you for your kindness and sincerity to me. You were the first among my friends whom I met in Mongolia and now the one who writes a letter with kind and faithful regards to me. I am extremely happy to receive your letter, I will never forget your kindness and friendly treatment to me. Could you please send my best regard to your wife?

He then reiterates his complaints about the ingrate Mongolians:

I am really disappointed that my efforts done for the welfare of Mongolia were not valued. I fought with China for two years in order to release my fatherland from the Chinese yoke. I was wounded twice during the war, I didn’t try to spare myself; I risked with my life for Mongolia. This year I am going be released from police supervision, but anyway I am not going to Mongolia this year. I didn’t do or even think to do anything bad for my Fatherland, but my Fatherland didn’t try to save and protect me when I was in a disastrous circumstances . . .

Oddly, he mentions a college he claims to have founded in the “Altai Region.” He only wanted the people there to be “literate and intelligent” but for this act of magnanimity the Mongols were also ungrateful. There is no other mention anywhere of this college by Dambijantsan or anyone else and it might well have been the product of his imagination.

By then situation had deteriorated even further. Bread was valuable only with a ration card. One person was permitted to buy only two pounds of flour and five pounds of rice a month. New boots were a staggering 120 rubles.

The good news was that the Astrakhan officials had been informed by telegram that the money Burdukov had given to the Russian consul in Khovd was on the way by post. He expected to receive it in a few days. He also notes in passing that on June 28, two days before, he had met with the academician B. Ya. Vladimirtsov, who had early recorded the epic poetry about Dambijantsan’s role in the siege of Khovd. For a more substantial account of this encounter we have to turn to Vladimirtsov’s own letter to Burdukov, dated Sept. 12, 1917. Dambijantsan, Vladimirtsov discovered, had changed considerable:

When he first entered the room I did not recognize him. Nothing was left of the previous Ja Lama. Try to picture a thin, gaunt man, dressed in a suit and lacquered books. He made a low bow and with great effort I finally recognized him. Once he was the formidable and awe-inspiring Dambijantsan! Such is Fate!

Dambijantsan told Vladimirtsov that he living fairly well in Astrakhan and that he was pretty much free to come and go as he pleased, although technically he had not been released from police supervision. No one was really interested in him. No one in Astrakhan knew that he had once been a monk (and apparently no one knew about his dubious past in Mongolia). He repeated his gripe that the Mongols did not appreciate his efforts to regain their freedom. He claimed that he suffered greatly in his attempts to help his own people, the Dörböts, but they too did not believe in him. Now, he claimed, he wanted to live among Russians and not Kalmyks or Buryats. He was, so Vladimirtsov thought, renouncing his whole past. “Who is this character, who is this person? wondered Vladimirtsov, “I couldn’t manage to understand this man. In most ways, he now makes a pitiful impression.”

Dambijantan appeared to be at loose ends. “To my mind, if he wanted, he could go anywhere. And despite what Dambijantsan said, Vladimirtsov could not shake the idea that he had “some special plans” up his sleeve.

On August 1 Dambijantsan replied to Burdukov’s letter of June 3, which he had received that very day. Apparently Burdukov had send him some khadags and fabric by separate mail but he had not received these yet. He says that very soon now he will be released from police supervision but that he still has no plans to return to Mongolia. “I want to live in Russia for now, maybe forever,” he writes. But his interest in Mongoiia has not died out completely. He asks Burdukov to send photos of prominent princes and lamas, including the Sartuul Tsetsen Van, Jalchiggombodorj, who ruled over the Sarts who lived in what is now northwest Zavkhan Aimag and eastern Uvs Aimag and who earlier had been a partisan of Dambijantsan’s. Was Dambijantsan just getting nostalgic, or was he actually trying to keep up his links with his former followers in Mongolia. In most of his letters he states that he has not intention of returning to Mongolia but could this have been for the benefit of the police, who might well have been reading his correspondence?

Every day he went to the post office checking for the money which the Russian consul in Khovd had supposedly sent him. Thus he was in the uncomfortable position of having to wait for the proverbial check in the mail. By mid-September he was even more desperate for funds. On September 18, 1917, he wrote to Burdukov that he would like to borrow 14,000 rubles from him. Apparently permission from the Mongolian government is needed to transfer the money out of the country, and he planned to make a formal request to the Russian Consulate in Örgöö, asking that they acquire the proper authorization from the Mongolian authorities. He states again, this time emphatically, that he has no intention of returning to Mongolia. Why would Burdukov be willingly to loan what was then a considerable sum of money to a man with no apparent source of livelihood, who lived thousands of miles away, and who had no intention of returning to Mongolia? Why would the Mongolian government, which had been only too happy to be rid of Dambijantsan, be willing to authorize such a loan?

Meanwhile, on October 25 (Julian Calendar) Bolshevik Red Guards seized the headquarters of the Provincial Government in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, triggering the Second Revolution setting in motion a civil war which was to last until 1922 when the Soviet Union was created. In his next letter, dated December 23, Dambijantsan makes no direct mention of the October Revolution, noting only that “it is still quiet and peaceful in Astrakhan city, as well as the whole province,” and that prices of mutton, beef, butter, and flour have soared even higher since he last wrote. The main reason for this letter is to thank Burdukov for forwarding via the Russian Consul in Örgöö 1000 rubles, apparently an advance on the 14,000 ruble loan he had requested. Gushed the Two White Camel Lama:

“I am grateful to you,” and I am really delighted to hear about your good health and the friendly efforts you have made on my behalf. I had been worrying about you and your health since I hadn’t heard from you for so long. There is no one dearer than you for me in this world, you are my only faithful friend forever.”

He also has nothing but kind words for the Russian Consul in Mongolia. It is not clear if this is the same official who had earlier arrested him; if so, all is now forgotten:

Could you pass my regards and gratitude to Mr. [Russian] Consul for his help to me in difficult time, he was the one who pitied me when I was in difficult condition, sending the money he . . . please tell Mr. Consul that I would be grateful to him till the end of my life, that I would never forget his kindness and could you also ask him if he could send me the rest of the money.

As soon as he gets the entire 14,000 rubles, he goes on, he intends to buy a house near the Kalmyk Bazaar about seven miles from Astrakhan. Here, he claims, he intends to “settle down.” The Bolshevik Revolution does not seem to be worrying him unduly at this point, and he once again makes it clear—at least in writing—that he has no intention of returning to Mongolia. Intriguingly he adds: “As you suggested, I have started taking notes and writing down my life experiences up until now. I will I will be able to send these to you in the spring, as soon I finish them.” Was the mysterious badarchin finally going to lift the veil from his myth-strewn life? Would his memoirs shed light on his past, or would they, like the self-serving accounts of maguses like Madame Blavatsky and George Gurdjieff, simply add another layer to the obfuscation? If he did start his memoirs they have not survived

On December 23 Dambijantsan writes again to Burdukov in much the same vein. He has received another 1000 rubles and is waiting for the remaining 12,000. Here he says, confusingly, that the money is not a loan from Burdukov but instead funds owed to him by the Mongolian government. “Transfer the money as quickly as possible,” he pleads, “as I would like to stay forever in Astrakhan, living among the Kalmyks. I would like to buy a house for 4000 rubles near the Kalmyk Bazaar, seven miles from Astrakhan town; flats are very expensive here in the city.”

Dambijantsan’s final letter from Astrakhan is dated February 5, 1918. Civil war has broken out in Astrakhan. On one side are Astrakhan Cossacks, with whom most and the Kalmyks have sided, and on the other is a garrison of soldiers and local workers loyal to the Bolsheviks. The soldiers and workers barricaded themselves in building in the middle of the city and fighting raged for eigthteen days. Dambijantsan:

There were almost 800 Cossacks, with 200 officers . . .and about 1200 soldiers and workers. The Cossacks were armed with twelve field guns, thirteen machine guns and many rifles. The soldiers were armed with rifles and machine guns. The soldiers won the fight. The best part of the center of Astrakhan town has been burnt. Many shops and stores have been robbed by looters. There has been a loss of several millions of rubles. Lots of people-—fighters and peaceful citizen alike—died, about two and a half thousand people. . . Everywhere there is huge unemployment. The capital of all the merchants and the rich have been confiscated.

He has not received the 1200 rubles he was expecting and is in dire straits. Prices of all commodities are now outrageous. “Everything is so expensive I cannot afford anything.” He finally did receive at least some of the money owned him, but here was no longer any question of buying a house and settling down in Astrakhan. The soldiers and workers had established a Soviet and taken tentative control of the region but the civil war was far from over. Astrakhan was not longer a safe haven. Dambijantsan gathered up what money he had and sometime March took the Trans-Siberian Railroad east. Somewhere near Lake Baikal he bought a horse and headed south along the Selenge Valley into Mongolia.

The last and most dramatic chapter of the Ja Lama’s life was about to begin.