Caught between states: Urjin Garmaev and the conflicting loyalties of trans-border Buryats

ABSTRACT

Following the personal history of one individual, this chapter aims to highlight the fears, hopes and considerations of trans-border Buryat–Mongols ‘caught between States’ during the ideological, political and territorial splits of the 1920–1940s in North Asia. Through discussion of the life of General Urjin Garmaev and his changing loyalties I show how investigating loyalty introduces a new framework for understanding the relationship between emigrant groups and the political interactions of the Soviet Union, Mongolian People’s Republic and Manchukuo. Rival states manipulated frontier populations and used their intense cross-border kinship ties for military tactics and spying. This culminated dramatically in 1939 when Buryat soldiers (all from one small area) found themselves fighting against each other in three different armies at the battle of Khalkhin Gol / Nomonhan.

KEYWORDS:

• Pan-mongolism
• Khalkhyn Gol / Nomonhan incident
• Manchukuo
• trans-border Buryat migration
• collaboration

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the generous support offered by International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS, Leiden) which offered me six months’ funding in 2016 to do field research and to focus on final revisions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Sayana Namsaraeva http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4670-9448

Notes

1. Aginskoe is the centre of Aginsky okrug (or Aga), an administrative unit comprising three sub-districts (raion), forming an ethnically based Buryat district with some autonomous rights. In 2008 it lost its autonomous status and merged with Chitinskaya Oblast’ to form a new administrative unit, Zabaikal'ski krai in Transbaikal region.

2. The battle of Khalkhyn Gol (or its Japanese-derived name “The Nomonhan Incident”) was a large military confrontation in summer 1939 between Soviet–Mongolian allied forces and the Japanese Kwantung Army, fought on the unratified border between the Mongolian People's Republic and Inner Mongolia, part of which was inside Manchukuo, a colonial state backed by Japan. This border conflict was provoked by the Kwantung high command to test the military strength of the Soviet–Mongolian alliance in anticipation of a further intervention into Russian Siberia (Coox 1985).

3. The Kwantung Army was set up to control the territories in North China and Inner Mongolia occupied by Japan. It operated somewhat independently from the Imperial Japanese Army command and played a controlling role in political administration of Manchukuo.

4. The Pan-Mongol movement was a political project to unite the Mongol-speaking peoples of Inner Asia and carve out vast new realm from the existing countries of Inner Asia (see Peshkov 2017).

5. Manchukuo (State of Manchuria) had a short life, from 1932 to1945. Created by Japan after its invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Manchukuo formally detached Manchuria and part of Inner Mongolia from China to form a territorial and industrial stronghold for planned further military invasions of the Asian continent.

6. I am aware that the concept of identity has been subject to criticism, and that Brubaker and Cooper (2000) have even suggested abandoning it entirely. Nevertheless I prefer to use the term ‘identity’ with its etymologically related companion ‘identification’ (no identifications without identities) to refer to the social process and temporality of choices people make about themselves, and the recognition of such attachments by others.

7. For a biography of Gantimur, see Hummel (1943, 269).

8. Buryat Cossacks constituted 15% of the Transbaikal Buryats at the beginning of the twentieth century (Rupen 1964).

9. This article is based on first-hand sources and various secondary publications such as: memoirs of his Urjin's son Dashi-Nima (Tsongol 2008) and of his son-in law Dashyn Tsedeb (2000); oral testimonies of Shenehen elders; and reminiscences of family members of Buryat soldiers of the repressed Kwantung Army. Citations from Urjin's Interrogation materials are quoted from Boris Bazarov (2001). In the late 1990s Bazarov was probably the only researcher who had access to these materials, which are held in the Central Achieve of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in Moscow.

10. For example, according to local histories, Urjin was a classmate of Dorjiin Budazhab, who later became an ardent communist and political instructor in Lazo's Red Army in Siberia.

11. Oral histories even mention that Urjin himself was of mixed Russian origin. According to local elders, one of his great grandfathers was a Russian orphan who was adopted by a Buryat family. They found a young Russian boy tied to their ger. The adopted child was given the name ‘Uyalga’ [‘knotted’, tied or attached]. Because of his mixed blood, as one of my informants reasoned, Urjin was taller than other Buryats and had a lighter face (interview with Vasily Zhalsapov, native to Dogoi, 68 years old, August 2016).

12. Conversation with Dari Darieva (around 80 years old, native to Dogoi) in Ulan-Ude, summer 1994.

13. After this agreement, one badly wounded Russian soldier was given care by my great-grandfather. Later this soldier had a good career in the Red Army and in his turn he saved Chimit, who was a comparatively well-off herder in Aga, from dekulakization (expropriation and punishment) in the 1920s and political repression in the 1930s.

14. Kharachin Mongols joined the short-lived 1916 rebellion of Inner Mongolian General Babuzhab against the Chinese government. After his defeat, they withdrew to Barga, where in 1918 their leader Fushinga joined Semenov.

15. Deli (Mong.) is a long Mongol gown with distinguishable patterns that show ethnic and territorial distinctions.

16. Interview with Rinchen Manle (born 1910), Suduntui village Aginsk district, July 2010.

17. Asianism’ in its initial interpretation was the idea that Asia should unite against European imperialism. Before and during the Second World War, it became a part of Japanese propaganda used to justify their invasion in Asia: see Brook (2005) and Shih (2012).

18. In Transbaikalia Red partisans committed violent outrages, as well as Semenov's soldiers. Recent publication of Buryat migrants’ petitions to the Buryat-Mongol Committee in Urga dated 1920–1922 reveals extreme forms of cruelty against Buryats committed by Russians during the Civil War. “All Buryat hostages have been bestially killed [by so-called Red Russians], axed into pieces. Hands and legs cut off and broken, eyes poked out, ears, noses and genitals all cut off, all naked. Their family members all were burned alive” (quoted in B. Natsagdorj Tsongol [2013, 63–64]). Such cruelty terrified many Buryats and impelled them to run to Mongolia.

19. Oral history quoting Dmitry Bagaev. http://www.buryatia.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=15010&start=105 (accessed 19 June 2017).

20. There was a Mongol amban for the Mongol population and a Chinese daoyin supervising the amban.

21. Interview with Shenehen community elder Dashiev Sandan (Bolotov 1999, 4).

22. Garmaev's interrogation material (quoted in Bazarov 2001, 15).

23. Bolotov (1999, 4). Dashiev served as a sergeant in Manchukuo border troops for five years under Urjin's command. From 1945 till 1954 he was sentenced as a prisoner of war in a Soviet gulag camp in Kazakhstan. After his release for many years till the 1990s he was not allowed to go to China, where his family still lived in Shenehen.

24. Garmaev (1947, 36) – cf note 30 (quoted in Bazarov 2001, 16).

25. Urjin continued to insist in his interrogation that his main duty was “military training of the Mongol units and their border watch service”. See Bulag (2009, 14), on the high calibre of training of the Hingan Division.

26. NKVD was a law enforcement body in the USSR with the functions of secret police and intelligence activity.

27. The NKVD used the same method of employing native agents, to judge from how many Buryats from the Russian side served as secret service agents according to the List of Aga WWII veterans.

28. Buryats were forcibly relocated from the Dauriya border section and moved several hundred kilometres deeper into the hinterland to cut their cross-border connections. The relocated Buryats formed several collective farms in Aga district, for example, Ulan Tya [Red Sunrise] and Pobeda [Victory]. According to oral histories, those who did not want to be relocated were immediately shot by NKVD guards. (Interview with Rinchen Manle [born 1910], Suduntui village, Aginsky district, July 2010.)

29. By the mid-1930s Lingsheng became very critical of the Japanese, disappointed by their intrusive rule and policy of settling Japanese peasant immigrants in Hingan province. The Japanese suspected him of leaking intelligence to Mongolia and accused him and other Hingan officials of plotting with Mongolia and the Soviets to separate Barga from Manchukuo. He was executed in 1936. For more detail, see Rupen (1964, 227) and Bulag (2009).

30. Garmaev (1947, 56) quoted in Bazarov (2002, 22).

31. Interview with Dulma Galsanova (born 1933) in Amitkhashi village, Aginsky district, July 2009.

32. http://vsr.mil.by/2014/09/03/napor-stali-i-ognya-byl-usilen-prizyvami-k-kapitulyacii/ (accessed 19 June 2017).

33. http://www.aginsk-pravda.ru/news/slavnye_syny_agi_uchastniki_voennogo_konflikta_na_reke_khalgin_gol/2014-08-13-2574 (accessed 19 June 2017).

34. http://www.buryatia.org/modules.php?file=viewtopic&name=Forums&start=60&t=12875 (accessed 19 June 2017).

35. Perhaps for these reasons a number of Russian Buryats (e.g. Zhalsariin Dembrel) were appointed as official representatives of the NKVD in the Russian Consulate in Hailar.

36. http://www.infpol.ru/news/society/60713-pochti-neobyavlennaya-voyna/ (accessed 19 June 2017).

37. http://www.chekist.ru/article/856 Consulted September 2016.

38. To my knowledge only one Buryat officer from Mongolia was studying around this time at the Moscow Military Academy, Bazaryn Tseden-Eshi, also originally from Aga. Born in 1906, he had migrated to Mongolia with his parents when he still was a child. General Tseden-Eshi served in the MPR border guard from 1931 and also participated in the Khalkhyn Gol battle. His official biography recalls his years of studying in Moscow without mentioning this episode of meeting Urjin (Boldokhonov 2010) – though an official biography might intentionally silence such a controversial episode.

39.

Urjin: We are Mongols. Mongols value honor, love their homeland and never leave each other in danger. Now our brothers are facing danger. Think about it. The recent history of our nation [Buryats] is full of tragedies. We lost our homeland and many brothers died. Now we must protect our Mongol brothers. We have extensive land, but small population. We cannot lose a single life in vain. Each life should be valued. We are leaving now for Noro Hills to save them there! Soldiers: Hail ! Hail ! (Yasuhiko 2000, 146–148)

My special thanks to Prof. Borjigin Burensain, who drew my attention to this Manga comic, and to Prof. Akira Yanagisawa, who helped me to translate it.

40. http://ulanmedia.ru/news/society/17.03.2016/495354/spori-o-lichnosti-beloemigranta-urzhina-garmaeva-ne-utihayut-v-buryatii.html (accessed 30 April 2016).

41. http://www.infpol.ru/news/society/77999-mongolovedy-buryatii-odobrili-skandalnuyu-postanovku-buryaad-teatra/ (accessed 19 June 2017).