Learning from the previous experience of poor disguises, Chicherin and Borisov wanted to play it safe, keeping Red Russia out of the picture. Now, instead of playing Buddhist pilgrims from Siberia, the Bolsheviks were to become a Mongol religious mission sent to establish an embassy in Lhasa and discuss an important theological issue. h e plan

was to obtain Lhasa’s permission to open a Mongol embassy, which the Bolsheviks could later use to organize a shipment of military hardware and to gradually hijack the Tibetan army by ini ltrating it with loyal Kalmyk, Buryat, and Mongol advisors.

To lead this 1927 expedition, Chicherin and Borisov chose Arashi Chapchaev (1890–1938), a Kalmyk schoolteacher and recent graduate of the three-year Marxist program at the Communist Academy. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin personally approved this choice. Since the Kalmyk 149

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Bolshevik was an educator, he would pose as a Buddhist teacher under the assumed name Tsepag Dorji. Dressed in a red robe, he was to travel with his lama apprentice—the role assigned to another Kalmyk Bolshevik, Matstak Bimbaev. h e party, which numbered i t een people, included several other “Mongols,” among them Jigme-Dorji Barduev, a Buryat lama priest who had taken part in the Borisov expedition, and Shagdur Landukov, a Kalmyk military advisor to the Mongol Red Army. At the same time, a few genuine Red Mongol fellow travelers with a good knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism were added to make the mission more credible.

A formal cover for the Mongol embassy was found in the important theological issue of recognizing a new reincarnation of the Bogdo-gegen, head of the Mongol Tibetan Buddhists. When the old Bogdo had died from old age and numerous ailments in 1924, the Red Mongols and their Moscow patrons immediately sensed that this was a perfect occasion to end the Buddhist theocracy in Mongolia and replace it with a normal Red dictatorship. h ey forbade the search for a new reincarnation: lamas and the nomadic populace were surprised to i nd out that the deceased reincarnation was to be the last. h e Red Mongols explained that Bogdo was now reborn as a great general in Shambhala, and there was no point in searching for a new reincarnation since henceforth Bogdo’s permanent adobe would be this magic kingdom, not the earthly realm. 30 Shrewd Red Mongols like Rinchino were not convinced their magic trick would work. Not wishing to completely antagonize the populace and the large number of lamas, they suggested an option to resolve the issue. Since all Bogdo’s earlier reincarnations were traditionally found in Tibet and approved by the Dalai Lama, they would go to Lhasa and discuss this important matter with His Holiness.

h e Mongol embassy delegation headed by Chapchaev pursued this theological scheme when they arrived in Lhasa in April 1927. When the l attered Dalai Lama, who did not care much anyway about his junior counterpart (the deceased Bogdo had lived a rowdy life as a heavy drinker and womanizer), seemed to welcome this plan, the Bolsheviks 150

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thought they might kill two birds with one stone: pacifying Buddhist clerics in Mongolia and simultaneously receiving another chance to get a foothold in the Forbidden Kingdom.

h e Lhasa ruler expected genuine religious pilgrims but, to his dismay, found out from his own sources and from Bailey that this group of pilgrims armed with twenty ril es and two Lewis machine guns were not even Mongols but once again Bolsheviks from Russia. Infuriated, the Dalai Lama at i rst refused to give Chapchaev a formal reception.

h e Red pilgrims were kept under constant surveillance and could not even relieve themselves without being watched. All their movements were now monitored by a double spy ring: the Dalai Lama’s agents and Bailey’s Kalmyk and Tibetan spies.

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e situation was even worse than with the Borisov party. It did not help that the atheist Chapchaev and his friends were particularly lousy actors. Lhasa monks noticed that the visitors had a hard time following tedious Buddhist rituals. 31 Yet it was not entirely bad acting that showed up their Mongol disguise. One of them, Gomojitshin, a Buryat from Siberia working for the Mongol Department of Foreign Af airs, began having doubts about the Red cause. Disgusted with their pathetic Buddhist masquerade, he solicited and received a secret private audience with the Dalai Lama, during which he revealed the covert goals of the embassy. 32

To make things worse, the most devastating and unexpected blow to the Bolshevik scheme was leveled by Dorzhiev, the Tibetan ambassador to Russia, whom both Chicherin and OGPU considered a loyal Bolshevik fellow traveler. By the mid-1920s, this old lama with sad eyes who dreamed about a vast Buddhist theocracy under Soviet protection, had become increasingly frustrated with the Bolsheviks. For a short while, he had allied himself with them, hoping Communism could help return Buddhism to its original roots. Yet quite soon Dorzhiev saw that his faith did not gain anything from this alliance. Tibetan Buddhism in Russia was on the decline, and Bolshevik authorities in Siberia constantly harassed his brethren. Realizing that the Bolsheviks were simply using him to split the Buddhist community in Russia, the old monk 151

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started a double game. While still pretending to be loyal to the Bolsheviks, Dorzhiev secretly decided to do everything to safeguard his fellow believers in Tibet from Soviet advances.

In his formal letter introducing Chapchaev, Dorzhiev praised Russia and Mongolia for their treatment of Buddhists and asked the Dalai Lama to give the “Mongol pilgrims” the best treatment. Yet simultaneously, through a trusted merchant, he smuggled to His Holiness another letter in which he wrote: “I am an old man and will die very soon. Mongolia is not a peaceful country as it was formerly. h e government is deadly against religions and monks, and they are helpless. Please don’t have anything to do with the mission. I had to write a letter at their dictation to Your Holiness for these Bolshevik agents to take with them, but please do not take any notice of that letter.” 33

Although the Dalai Lama was angry, he did not dismiss Chapchaev and his company right away but, as always, played a good diplomat. Af-ter all, he did not want endanger the large Tibetan community in Mongolia. Besides, the Lhasa ruler still held a large amount of money in the Mongol central bank and did not want to lose it. Still refusing to receive Chapchaev, the Dalai Lama nevertheless allowed the visitors to wander around, gather intelligence, and socialize with local Mongol and Buryat monks. Yet all their movements were monitored. Finally, the Mongol diplomats were permitted to have an audience with His Holiness. But in exchange for this favor, as the stunned visitors learned, they were to promise to leave Lhasa immediately at er they i nished their talk.

During this meeting, the Lhasa ruler played his favorite game of expressing friendship without promising anything. Trade between Mongolia and Tibet? Sure, let us trade; we might buy Mongol horses, they will be good for our cavalry. We Tibetans might even want to buy gunpowder from you. Opening a permanent Mongol mission in Lhasa? We would like to do it, but England, which does not have an embassy either, might be mad. Let us continue talking about it, and we will see.

Chapchaev tried this and that, but he was not able to accomplish the major goal of the expedition—opening a permanent Mongol embassy.

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At the same time, the Dalai Lama repeatedly shit ed the conversation to the conditions of Buddhists in Siberia and Mongolia, surprising the Bolshevik visitors with his detailed knowledge of the situation. Chapchaev sensed that somebody had i lled in His Holiness very well. Yet he never could i gure out who.

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us, the Bolshevik plan to tie Tibet to Red Russia through Mongolia completely fell through. Red pilgrims again had to leave Lhasa empty-handed. If they still had some expectations about the Dalai Lama before coming to Lhasa, now they realized that His Holiness could not be duped, played, or manipulated. h e Lhasa ruler did not feel at all that his budding nation needed Russian, or for that matter English or Chinese, presence.

In December 1927, two months before the humiliated Chapchaev and his “Mongols” departed from Tibet, a messenger brought to Lhasa unpleasant news from the governor at Nagchu on the northern border: another group of pilgrims coming from Mongolia was about to enter the country. Not again, Lhasa oi cials might have thought in desperation. Yet there was something odd about this new party, which stood out among real and false pilgrims coming from Siberia and Mongolia. h e head of the party, a sage-looking man with a trim beard, insisted that he and his European friends were Buddhists from the West.

h ey also traveled under a strange l ag covered with stars and stripes and called themselves Americans. Still, trusted people reported to His Holiness that the man in charge was a Russian. h e Dalai Lama was

also surprised to hear that this strange expedition carried another l ag, a familiar sacred scroll with an image of Buddha Maitreya. h e sage-looking man insisted that he and his people came to consummate the union between Western and Eastern Buddhists under His Holiness’s leadership.

Who was this man? Whom was he working for? Was he a genuine ambassador or, like these recent Red Mongol visitors, a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Welcome to the world of Nicholas Roerich, Shambhala warrior and one more pilgrim on a mission to unlock the Forbidden Kingdom.

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Make no little plans, they have no power to stir men’s souls.

—Daniel Burnham, American architect

Seven

The Great Plan:

Nicholas and Helena Roerich

On December 26, 1923, in eastern Tibet, one hundred heavily armed Buddhist monks, hidden in the morning fog, saddled their horses and quickly galloped northward away from Tashilumpo monastery, heading toward Mongolia. In the middle of the crowd, shielded on all sides by his bodyguards and followers, rode the sixth Panchen Lama (1883–1937), abbot of the monastery and the spiritual leader of Tibet.

He was running for his life from the wrath of the Dalai Lama. In the eyes of Lhasa, the Panchen Lama, who ruled as a powerful local lord and refused to pay taxes, was a dangerous separatist defying the ef orts of His Holiness to turn Tibet into a modern nation-state. h e oi cer sent to chase the l eeing party was quite fond of the mild and friendly abbot and did not rush to fuli ll his assignment. Pretending to be ill, he camped with his detachment for two days, and when the pursuit was renewed, it was too late: the Panchen Lama was far ahead of his pursuers, deep in Chinese Mongolia beyond the reach of the Dalai Lama. h e runaway abbot settled into a self-imposed exile near the border with Red Mongolia.

At er the Panchen Lama’s escape, a prophecy spread throughout Inner Asia that the runaway abbot would come back to Tibet as the king of Shambhala and punish evildoers. h e Panchen Lama’s own grim predictions added to the general excitement: 155

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h e time has already arrived when it is rather dii cult to escape such terrible suf erings. Dead bodies will i ll the ravines and channels and rivers of blood will l ow. Even if there will be roads, there will be no one to walk along them. Even if there will be yurts, there will be no one to live in them. Even if there will be clothes, there will be no one to wear them.

Remember that the supreme nobles will be exterminated by diseases, and also the lower poor ones will be troubled by illness. Rich and poor will be equal. Only good ones and evil ones will be distinguished. 1

h e l ight of the Panchen Lama stirred diplomatic and spy games that involved England, Japan, China, and Red Russia. Surprisingly each, for its own reasons, wanted the Panchen Lama back in Tibet. China had plans to use him as a puppet to keep the Land of Snows in its orbit and disrupt nation-building in Tibet. Britain wanted to reconcile the runaway abbot with the Dalai Lama to make Tibet into a nation that would serve as a buf er between British India and Red Russia and China. h e Bolsheviks were wary of the Panchen Lama hanging around the borders of Red Mongolia where he enjoyed skyrocketing popularity and could present an ideological challenge to the sprouts of Communism. Added to this was a slim hope that he might be used to help the Bolsheviks get a foot into the Forbidden Kingdom. Finally, Japan, a latecomer to this game, wanted to use the Panchen Lama and his Shambhala war to squeeze the Chinese out of Inner Asia.

In the same fall of 1923, a peculiar sage-looking European appeared in Darjeeling in the northernmost part of India near the Tibetan border. A plump man with a round face and a small Mongol-styled beard, he moved and talked like a high dignitary. He announced that he was a painter, and, indeed, from time to time people could see him here and there with a sketchbook, drawing local landscapes. Yet, even for an eccentric painter, he acted strangely. To begin with, he argued that he was an American, although he spoke English with a heavy Slavic accent. He also demonstrated a deep interest in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly in the Maitreya and Shambhala legends, which was not unusual—except 156

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that the painter had a ceremonial Dalai Lama robe made for himself and donned it occasionally, hinting he was the reincarnated i t h Dalai Lama, the famous reformer in early modern times. His behavior raised the eyebrows of local authorities, who passed this information along to the British intelligence service.

As strange as it might sound, the “sage” did strike a chord with some local Tibetan Buddhists, for several visiting lamas did recognized him as the reincarnated Dalai Lama by the moles on his cheeks. At that time, no one except several close relatives and disciples of the painter knew that he had a grand plan, which included dislodging the Dalai Lama, bringing the Panchen Lama back to Tibet, reforming Tibetan Buddhism, and establishing in the vast spaces of Inner Asia a new theocracy, which he planned to call the Sacred Union of the East. He saw the l ight of the Panchen Lama as an occult signal of the coming Shambhala war that would bring to the world the new golden age of Maitreya. h e name of this ambitious dreamer was Nicholas Roerich.

Education of a Practical Idealist

Roerich, who liked to call himself a practical idealist, came from a family with Baltic German roots on the paternal side; his father was a notary and his mother, a Russian, came from the ranks of city burghers.

Nicholas had three siblings: an elder sister and two younger brothers.

Since early childhood, his great passion was archaeology. As a nine-year-old, Roerich already took part in archaeological digs. h is love for the past, legends, and fairy tales would remain with him for the rest of his life, and from the beginning he took legends and prophecies seriously, considering them rel ections of actual events.