History Happenings A newsletter published by the Department of History Vol. 8, no. 1 October 2011 Totalitarian Temptations Professor Andrei Znamenski, talks about his latest book, Red Shambhala, with Professor Guiomar Dueñas-Vargas Dueñas-Vargas: Professor Znamenski, What is Shambhala? Is it a prophecy? Is it a geographic place for Buddhism? Is it a land of plenty and spiritual enlightenment? Is it a violent and aggressive creed? Would you please tell us what is the Shambhala of your book? Znamenski: To make a long story short, Shambhala was a Buddhist prophecy that had emerged in the Early Middle Ages. When Muslims had advanced into Afghanistan and Northern India, they dislodged the Buddhists from these areas, and they had to ind a safe haven somewhere. So they came up with a spiritual resistance prophecy that was identiied with a land, a utopian land, a kind of a Buddhist paradise, where the members of this faith would be free to live and worship without been harassed by the “barbarians” whom the Buddhist called “Mlecca people” or, in other words, the people of Mecca. he legend claimed that somewhere in the North there was a mysterious country, a land of plenty HISTORY HAPPENINGS—10 where people lived 900 years, where they were rich and had houses where roofs were clad in gold, and where nobody sufered, and of course, where the Buddhist religion existed in its pure form and so forth. Dueñas-Vargas: But Shambhala involves, as well, a concept of holy war. Is that true? Znamenski: By the way, in original Buddhism there was no concept of Paradise. his concept emerged as a result of encounters with the Muslim world. he prophecy also claimed that when the true faith (read Buddhism) would be in danger, the king of Shambhala named Rudra Chakrin would come with a huge army and crash the enemies of the faith. So, it is a concept of a holy war, pure and simple. Many people are not aware that such concept existed in Tibetan Buddhism. he Shambhala prophecy lingered on, and in modern time was sometimes engaged, when the Mongol- Tibetan world felt threatened by outsiders. At the same time, Shambhala was also understood as an internal war against one’s own inner demons. It was an aspiration for a spiritual perfection. In the course of time, the former, the holy war part, gradually disappeared and the latter one became more relevant. A nice example for some other religions to follow. Don’t you agree? Dueñas-Vargas: Yes, in this case, Tibetan Buddhism might have served as a role model for other world religions. Yet, your book deals more with the former, the holy war part of the prophecy. Correct? Znamenski: Yes, the time I am writing about, the 1920s and the 1930s, was a period of troubles and dramatic changes for the Tibetan-Mongol world. he Manchu Empire in China collapsed in 1911 following by the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917. he entire political landscape of Eurasia became illed with ethnic, religious, and class conlicts. hat was when Shambhala and various sister prophecies resurfaced in Inner Asia as apocalyptic legends that helped local populations to deal with reality. Dueñas-Vargas: In your book you mention how Shambhala and other related Asian prophecies were used by outsiders, especially by the Bolsheviks of Red Russia. Tell us more about it. Znamenski: It’s an excellent question. See, originally Bolsheviks, when they came to power in 1917, irmly expected that Communism would win irst in the most advanced Western countries, where organized socialist movement had a long history. But, unfortunately for them, Western workers didn’t respond to the Bolshevik gospel of worldwide Communist revolution. he only success they had was among Asian people, where the Bolsheviks were able to plague themselves into local national liberation movements. hat was how they became interested in latching on MongolTibetan prophecies and linking them to Communism. he Communist International, an organization created in 1919 to promote the world-wide revolution, established a Mongol-Tibetan Section to draw the local nomads, peasants and junior lama monks to Communism. For example, in Mongolia, Bolshevik fellow-travellers explained to the populace that Communism was actually a fulillment of legendary Shambhala. Dueñas-Vargas: Yes, as wellexplained in the book, they were extremely ambitious! Znamenski: Yes, quite ambitious. You have to understand that at that time early Bolsheviks lived by a revolutionary romanticism. hey expected the coming of the worldwide revolutionary ire would cleanse the whole world from oppression. Non-Western colonial nationalities were viewed as allies in this ight against imperialist West. At one point, Leon Trotsky, one of the chief leaders of the Russian revolution, even suggested that the Bolsheviks send a cavalry division to India, straight across Inner Asia, and liberate entire Asia. In my book I describe another curious episode when Red Russia sent an expedition that was disguised as a group of Buddhist pilgrims and that tried to sway the 13th Dalai Lama to the Bolshevik side. Dueñas-Vargas: Well, in your book you proile a group of very strange characters that include not only people on the Left but also on the Right side. Can you elaborate? Znamenski: Absolutely. My book actually represents a series of biographical essays that are linked together because all my characters were somehow connected with each other. Let’s start with the Bolsheviks and their fellow travellers. he irst one is Alexander Barchenko, an occult writer from St. Petersburg, and his Bolshevik secret police patron Gleb Bokii, the master of codes, who was actually one of the spearheads of the Communist Revolution 1917. At some point, Bokii decided to use Tibetan Buddhism and its spiritual techniques to change the minds of the people, in other words, to help engineer the new communist human being. Dueñas-Vargas: To engineer? Znamenski: Yes, he and some other Bolshevik intellectuals were upset that the revolution did not change the human nature, and they were playing with an idea of transforming the human beings in order to make them better. One of the HISTORY HAPPENINGS—11 chapters of the book carries a peculiar title “he Engineer of the Human Soul.” In fact, in the 1920s, unlike later times, there were lots of social experiments in Red Russia, crazy experiments. It was like the United States in 1960s. here were communes, diferent types of left groups, avant-garde artists, poets, and anarchists. Dueñas-Vargas: I haven´t brought a question about Bokii’s attempt to use the Buddhist tantra and naturism. Znamenski: Well, we are not going now there because, it’s something that readers might learn from the book on their own. Dueñas-Vargas: Another two major characters are a Russian American painter Nicholas Roerich and his wife Helena. hey were also interested in Shambhala. hey wanted to go to Tibet and retrieve Tibetan wisdom. Was their goal purely spiritual? Znamenski: Not really. his ambitious couple nourished a megalomaniac idea to build in the heart of Asia a Tibetan Buddhist utopia (they called it the Sacred Union of the East) that would throw light to the rest of the humankind. At one point, in 1926, they tried to lirt with Communism because Helena and Nicholas Roerich believed that since the Shambhala legend said salvation would come from the North, they wanted to use Red Russia in their grand scheme. In fact, Roerich went to Tibet, posing as reincarnated Dalai Lama and pretended to dislodge the existing 13th Dalai Lama. Red Russia refused to wholeheartedly support such a reckless project and the couple became frustrated with the Bolsheviks. Dueñas-Vargas: hey were living their own fantasy. Weren’t they? Znamenski: Yes, pretty much. It was a geopolitical fantasy that, by the way, perfectly it the context of the time, which historian Eric Hobsbawm called, the age of extremes. When they parted with the Bolsheviks, the Roeriches began courting American sponsors. Among them we ind a rich currency speculator Louis Horch and future FDR’s vice president Henry Wallace, who in fact later sponsored the Roerich’s second expedition Asia. Dueñas-Vargas: his is unbelievable. Now, let’s turn to another peculiar character, the “Bloody Baron,” a right-wing opponent of the Bolsheviks. Znamenski: Roman von Ungern Sternberg, a Baltic German baron, a descendant of Teutonic knights. HISTORY HAPPENINGS—1 Dueñas-Vargas: Yes, he was a very ruthless character. Znamenski: Pretty much an evil character, and in fact one predecessors of the Nazis. his baron who acquired such notoriety in Inner Asia in 1920-1921 belonged to the elite of Old Russia. After the 1917 revolution, he became obsessed with a grand project of restoring monarchies from China and Russia to Germany and Austro-Hungary. Eventually he escaped from the Bolsheviks because they had a popular support and he didn’t and, while escaping southward, hijacked Mongolia. He milked for a while national sentiments of Mongols and helped them to liberate their country from the Chinese. And that is why he lost that country. he Mongols, who at irst gloriied him and declared him a reincarnation of Mahakala, a god-protector of Tibetan Buddhism, suddenly realized that the baron simply had his own agenda that was utterly strange to them. For example, trapped in the world of his European xenophobia, Ungern was talking to them about the so-called Jewish conspiracy, which sounded quite bizarre to the nomads who asked themselves a question, “What’s going on?” Dueñas-Vargas: He was out of place. Znamenski: Exactly. Dueñas-Vargas: Your primary sources are impressive. How and where did you ind these documents? Znamenski: I became interested in the topic about seven years ago, and began reading relevant literature while, simultaneously gathering primary sources in archives of Moscow, New York, and St. Petersburg, but the actual writing took me two years, from 2008 to 2009. Quest Books, my publisher, gave me an advanced contact in 2008 and speciied that the book should have no more than 80,000 words, which is about 300 pages; an editor explained to me that anything that goes beyond that will simply scare people away. his helped to discipline my mind. Dueñas-Vargas: hank you for sharing with us the information about your most recent book, and good luck with feature projects. Znamenski: hank you too. I wanted to add that the book is available on amazon.com, where I also created my author’s page - a nice amazon feature that allows authors to proile their books like, for example, posting video clips that sample book chapters.