In the 1890s, Peter Badmaev’s medical practice in Saint Petersburg gained considerable popularity . . . Many representatives of Russian political elite were personally acquainted with him, since, along with medical practice, Badmaev was actively engaged in social and political activities, trying to provide an assistance to expand Russian imperial influence in Asia, and, therefore, met many high-ranking public officials.
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| Pyotr Badmaev |
Soon he was counseling the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Asian Bureau. Opining that the Qing Dynasty in China was on its last legs, in 1893 he proposed to high-ranking Russian officials, including the Russian Finance Minister, Count Sergei Witte, who was one of his patients (he was also a first cousin of Madame Helena Blavatsky), that Russia annex Mongolia, Tibet, and Manchuria once they were free from Qing domination. “Mongolia, Tibet and China represent the future of Russia. May we hold together in our hands Europe and Asia all the way from the shores of the Pacific ocean to the heights of the Himalaya,” he trumpeted, elaborating:
. . . Russia’s destiny was to rule over continental Asia because the Russian Emperor was in fact the White Tsar . . . [who] ought to be considered either as the reincarnation of the Buddhist goddess Dara-eke [Tara], who freed beings from suffering (in Mongol belief), or as the emanation of the king of the mystical kingdom of Shamballah, a reservoir of beneficial forces, a sort of heaven whose kings were divinities close to Vishnu (in Tibetan belief).
. . . the geographic position of Tibet is politically greatly important to Russia, especially in view of the British attempt to penetrate into that country and bring it under their political and economic influence. Russia, according to my conviction, should make every attempt to foil the British attempt to establish her influence in Tibet.
Badmaev was instrumental in asserting Russian influence in Tibet. Using a loan of two million rubles from the Russian government, he established a trading house in the city of Chita, in Buryatia, ostensibly to buy medicinal herbs for his medical practice. The business also served as a cover for intelligence operations. In 1895 a group of Badmaev's agents operating out of Chita made its way to Lhasa disguised as pilgrims. One of the agents was a Buryat named Ochir Jigjitov. According to one historian, “The Buryat's task was presumably to collect economic and political information on Tibet. Doijiev received his compatriot secretly and in order to conceal the true purpose of Ochir's visit he presented him to the Tibetan officials in the Potala as an ordinary Mongol pilgrim.”
Dorzhiev was also sending intelligence briefings to Badmaev, one of which was leaked to the St. Petersburg newspaper Novoye Vremya. British agents in St. Petersburg in turn sent a précis of the newspaper article back to London:
In this report, the customs of Lhasa and the intrigues surrounding the Dalai Lama are described. His Court consists of a number of Lamas divided into parties and quarrelling among each other. The party in power holds the seals and acts in the Dalai Lama's name. The latter is indifferent to party strife, and is concerned only that his authority should not be diminished, so that the people should continue to revere him. As a diminution of his authority is contrary to the interests of the parties, he remains outside their disputes.
Dorzhiev’s activities earned him the gratitude of Czar Nicholas II. In 1896 the Dalai Lama sent Dorzhiev back to Buryatia on a mission to strengthen the Dharma among the Buryats. While staying at Atsagat Datsan near Khara Shiber, his birthplace, Russian officials presented him with an inscribed gold watch, a gift from the Czar himself to show his appreciation for the assistance Dorzhiev had provided Badmaev’s agents in Lhasa.
Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtomsky, yet another of Badmaev’s patients, arranged Dorzhiev’s first visit to Russia. Ukhtomsky who, like artist, mystic, spy, arch-intriguer, and hard-core Aghartian-Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich, traced his ancestors back to Rurik, the Scandinavian chieftain who in the year 862 was invited to Novgorod, in Russia, where he founded the first ruling dynasty of medieval Russia. Ukhtomsky’s lineage may have been genuine; Roerich’s Was Fabricated. (The family of Madame Helena Blavatsky, the Dolgorukovs—Blavatsky was her married name)—also claimed to be descended from Rurik.)
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| Helena Blavatsky |
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| A young Helena Blavatsky |
In any case, Ukhtomsky was at home in the very highest levels of the Russian aristocracy. He was the principal companion and advisor to Crown Prince Nicholas Alexandrovich on the future Czar’s Grand Tour of the East, which lasted from October 1890 to May 1891 and made stops in Egypt, Yemen, India, Ceylon, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and Japan. Ukhtomsky also traveled on his own to China, Mongolia, and Buryatia, where he made in-depth studies of Buddhism and amassed over 3000 Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese artifacts, said to be the largest collection of Asian art in Russia. By the mid-1890s, he was "the only member of the Russian elite to proclaim himself a Buddhist.”
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| Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtomsky |
Ukhtomsky eventually became one of the chief spokesmen for Vostochichestvo, or Easternism, which proclaimed that Russia's true cultural and historical affinities lay with Asia rather than Europe. Ukhtomsky maintained that Russia was at heart an Asian civilization and possessed both a manifest destiny to lead the Asian world and a moral obligation to protect Asian peoples, particularly those of Buddhist cultural traditions, from Occidental colonialism. Specifically, Ukhtomsky wrote: “Trans-Baikalia [essentially Buryatia] is the key to the heart of Asia, the forward post of Russian civilization on the frontiers of the ‘Yellow Orient.’” Thus when he learned that a Buryat by the name of Agvan Dorzhiev, who was also a Russian citizen, was one of the Dalai Lama’s chief advisors and had already been of assistance to Badmaev’s spies in Lhasa it was only natural that he would invite him to Russia to discuss Russia’s role in keeping Tibet out of the clutches of British colonialism.
At Ukhtomsky’s invitation Dorzhiev proceeded to Russia. According to his own account he took a rather roundabout way. Instead of following the traditional caravan route north to Mongolia and on to Russia, he traveled south to Darjeeling in India and then to Calcutta. Here he apparently caught a steamship to Tientsin in China. He proceeded to Beijing and then took the traditional caravan route through Kalgan (modern-day Zhangjiakou) to Örgöö (Ulaanbaatar) and hence north to Russia. The Trans-Siberian Railroad had not yet reached Irkutsk, the Russian city on the Angara River, the outlet of Lake Baikal, 135 miles north of the Mongolian border, but at some point east of Irkutsk Dorzhiev and his traveling companion, the high-ranking Buryat official Taisan Tseten, boarded the train and continued on to St. Petersburg. Ukhtomsky met them when they arrived in St. Petersburg and they were taken to the Peterhof, the immense palace built by Peter the Great.
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| The Peterhof in St. Petersburg |
Here Dorzhiev was introduced to Czar Nicholas ii. The Czar opened the discussion by suggesting that an official Russian representative be stationed in Lhasa. Dorzhiev was forced to point out that foreigners were still forbidden in Tibet and that for the time being at least an official Russian presence was impossible. Neither the Czar nor Ukhtomsky were pleased by this response. Then Dorzhiev relayed a verbal message from the Dalai Lama asking that Russia provide assistance of an unspecified nature to Tibet to help it ward off British aggression. The Czar, put off because the message had not been put in writing and unsure of Dorzhiev’s official role—he was not an accredited diplomat—reacted coolly to this suggestion and promised nothing. As one historian points out, “neither party derived much satisfaction from the meeting, but it was nevertheless important in opening up communications between Lhasa and St. Petersburg.”
Next, Dorzhiev met with officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry and presented them with a petition from the Dalai Lama requesting that a Buddhist meeting place or temple be established in St. Petersburg. A contingent of Buryat and Kalymk Buddhists lived in the capital, along with Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and other Buddhists attached to diplomatic staffs. Then there was an “elite coterie of European sophisticates and intellectuals, most of them from the upper echelons of society,” who “‘saw in the mystic cults of India and Tibet a kind of universal religion of the future.’” These devotees and enthusiasts had no place to congregate, as there was no Buddhist temple or meeting place in St. Petersburg. Nothing was done about a new temple at the time, but the seed was sown. During later trips to St. Petersburg Dorzhiev would oversee the construction of Datsan Gunzechoinei, as the new temple was called. It was officially consecrated on August 10, 1915. Shut down during the communist era, it is once again active.
