Roman Fyodorovich von Ungern-Sternberg

Роман Фёдорович фон Унгерн-Штернберг

1886–1921 ✕ Executed by firing squad

The White Army warlord who liberated Mongolia and dreamed of reviving the empire of Genghis Khan

My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one can judge what is true and what is false, what is history, and what is myth.

Born to a Baltic German noble family of the Russian Empire and convinced he descended from Genghis Khan, Ungern was a White Army lieutenant general who led the Asiatic Cavalry Division under Grigory Semyonov in Siberia before crossing into Mongolia in 1920. In February 1921 he expelled the Chinese occupation forces and restored the Bogd Khan's theocratic monarchy, earning the title darkhan khoshoi chin wang, but ruled through terror, purging Jews and suspected Bolshevik sympathizers. His brief regime extended the Russian Civil War onto Mongolian soil and represented the most extreme fringe of the White movement: an occult-obsessed monarchist who fused Russian imperialism with a vision of a restored pan-Asian Buddhist empire. Captured by his own mutinous Mongol troops in August 1921 and handed to the Red Army, he was executed by firing squad in Novonikolayevsk after a six-hour show trial.