Bloody White Review
May. 6th, 2009 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
Sure, I should talk about my vacation, or maybe I should work on resolving this irritating problem at work so I can get back to doing work.
But let's talk about this book I read while on vacation instead.
So I finished up The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer. It's a biography of sorts about a guy named Baron Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg. Quite the mouthful. Ungern's family were German nobles in the Baltic Sea area before the area was taken over by the Russians and they were all co-opted into Russian nobility. Ungern himself was a devout monarchist and a devout believer in Eastern Mysticism. He was also batshit crazy and was a top-notch cavalry officer.
When the Russian Revolution shows up, Ungern sides with the Whites and defends eastern Siberia until it becomes untenable and then promptly takes a small force of men and essentially conquers Mongolia. Then he goes crazy and turns Mongolia into a slaughterhouse until the Reds come after him and he makes quixotic assaults on them. Eventually, he's captured and sent to Moscow for a show trial where they pronounce him guilty of just about everything and kill him (and in this case, probably did the world a big favor).
So that's the short story. And Ungern's life is so spotty on actual facts and so deeply entwined with his legend as an insane despot that it's a pretty good capsule summary. So while the book does the best it can to cover his life, it surrounds this thin narrative with discussions about the various cultures that Ungern was immersed in and how they contributed to his various manias.
Since I love me some crazy dictator biographies, this was right up my alley, but the best part of the book was the fact that it touched on topics that are now making me scour around for better books on those particular topics. If LJ land can offer some recommendations, that'd be appreicated.
So, things in this book that I want to find out more about:
1.) The Trans-Siberian Railway during the Russian Civil War -- Apparently both sides used armored trains to try and control the towns along the route and push forward their respective causes. That seems utterly fascinating and it'd be fun to know more. It also seems like a fun idea for a model railroad. In model railroading, there's a huge drive to model railroads that actually existed or railroads that could've existed and to operate them in a realistic fashion. If your prototype is the train wars of the Trans-Siberia then realistic operation consists of raiding towns, shooting collaborators and plundering supplies. It'd be a jarring piece in Model Railroading magazine. :)
2.) The Mexican Dollar as international currency -- The book several time mentions that traders in Mongolia would rely on the Mexican dollar as a standard of trade. But since when was the Mexico dollar that useful and how did it penetrate so far into the hinterlands of the world?
3.) Imperial Japanese Spy Networks -- I'd read a bit about this before. Right up through WWII, the Japanese had secret societies that engaged in espionage and these societies were often private concerns rather than governmental departments. It'd be fun to read up more about that.
So, a fun read if you like terrible people and a fun read to stimulate your interest in Russian during the Russian Civil War.
later
Tom
Sure, I should talk about my vacation, or maybe I should work on resolving this irritating problem at work so I can get back to doing work.
But let's talk about this book I read while on vacation instead.
So I finished up The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer. It's a biography of sorts about a guy named Baron Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg. Quite the mouthful. Ungern's family were German nobles in the Baltic Sea area before the area was taken over by the Russians and they were all co-opted into Russian nobility. Ungern himself was a devout monarchist and a devout believer in Eastern Mysticism. He was also batshit crazy and was a top-notch cavalry officer.
When the Russian Revolution shows up, Ungern sides with the Whites and defends eastern Siberia until it becomes untenable and then promptly takes a small force of men and essentially conquers Mongolia. Then he goes crazy and turns Mongolia into a slaughterhouse until the Reds come after him and he makes quixotic assaults on them. Eventually, he's captured and sent to Moscow for a show trial where they pronounce him guilty of just about everything and kill him (and in this case, probably did the world a big favor).
So that's the short story. And Ungern's life is so spotty on actual facts and so deeply entwined with his legend as an insane despot that it's a pretty good capsule summary. So while the book does the best it can to cover his life, it surrounds this thin narrative with discussions about the various cultures that Ungern was immersed in and how they contributed to his various manias.
Since I love me some crazy dictator biographies, this was right up my alley, but the best part of the book was the fact that it touched on topics that are now making me scour around for better books on those particular topics. If LJ land can offer some recommendations, that'd be appreicated.
So, things in this book that I want to find out more about:
1.) The Trans-Siberian Railway during the Russian Civil War -- Apparently both sides used armored trains to try and control the towns along the route and push forward their respective causes. That seems utterly fascinating and it'd be fun to know more. It also seems like a fun idea for a model railroad. In model railroading, there's a huge drive to model railroads that actually existed or railroads that could've existed and to operate them in a realistic fashion. If your prototype is the train wars of the Trans-Siberia then realistic operation consists of raiding towns, shooting collaborators and plundering supplies. It'd be a jarring piece in Model Railroading magazine. :)
2.) The Mexican Dollar as international currency -- The book several time mentions that traders in Mongolia would rely on the Mexican dollar as a standard of trade. But since when was the Mexico dollar that useful and how did it penetrate so far into the hinterlands of the world?
3.) Imperial Japanese Spy Networks -- I'd read a bit about this before. Right up through WWII, the Japanese had secret societies that engaged in espionage and these societies were often private concerns rather than governmental departments. It'd be fun to read up more about that.
So, a fun read if you like terrible people and a fun read to stimulate your interest in Russian during the Russian Civil War.
later
Tom
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 04:06 pm (UTC)...of Ulm!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 06:41 pm (UTC)(The modern name of the Mexican basic unit of currency, peso, comes from the eight-real coin's Spanish nickname, peso de ocho, which is also where we get the common English nickname for them, "pieces of eight".)
As for why it was useful, well, coinage isn't like paper money. If you didn't set any stock by the Spanish (or Mexican) government's assertion of the real's face value, the eight-real coin was still an ounce of silver. They made b'jillions of them (and why not, with the entire mineral wealth of South and Central America to plunder)?