The White Khan Archives
Articles & Historical Archives
Long-form research on the Transbaikal frontier, the Mad Baron and his Asian Cavalry Division, the Green Palace and the Urga occupation, the Jewish community of Urga, and the question that runs beneath all of it — where the missing Romanov and Kolchak bullion went, and how the Mongol'Or mining concession turned it into declared Mongolian production.
Biography · 9 min read
Who Was Baron Ungern-Sternberg?
The Baltic-German cavalry officer who became the Mad Baron of Mongolia: his origins, the Asiatic Cavalry Division, the conquest of Urga, and the money that made a four-thousand-man campaign possible.
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Politics & Religion · 8 min read
The Bogd Khan & The Liberation of Urga
Mongolia's blind theocrat, his Green Palace, his Chinese captivity, and the February 1921 rescue that turned a warlord into a Khan — and a religious restoration into an occupation.
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Gold & Finance · 10 min read
Kolchak Gold — The Missing Bullion of the Romanov Dynasty
The imperial reserve seized at Kazan, loaded onto a train, and partly lost between Omsk and Irkutsk. What the audits actually show, and where the unaccounted metal could plausibly have gone.
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Gold & Finance · 9 min read
Mongol'Or Mining Concession — Mongolia's Premier Gold Mining Company
The Russian-financed placer concession that held the Mongolian goldfields, its assay and export machinery, and why a working mine is the perfect instrument for turning stolen bullion into declared production.
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History · 10 min read
Russian Civil War & 1920s Mongolia: Urga, Ulaanbaatar & The Path to Democracy in Modern Mongolia
How a Russian civil war spilled across the Transbaikal frontier, ended a theocracy, produced the world's second communist state — and set up the peaceful democratic revolution of 1990.
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Community History · 9 min read
Jews of Mongolia — History of the Jewish Community in Urga / Ulaanbaatar
Merchants, engineers and tea traders who came south from Siberia to a frontier city with no Pale of Settlement — and the 1921 pogrom that destroyed the community in a matter of weeks.
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Military History · 10 min read
Battle of Urga — Details & Military Strategies of War in 1920s Mongolia
Two failed assaults, one winter of reconstruction, and a three-day operation that took a garrisoned city with cavalry. A tactical reconstruction of the Urga campaign.
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Law & Ideology · 8 min read
The Ungern Trial — The Ideological Duel of Monarchy vs Bolshevik Revolution
Six hours in a Novonikolayevsk theatre: a show trial designed as political theatre, in which the defendant refused to defend himself and argued instead for the destruction of the modern world.
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Gold & Finance · 10 min read
Romanov Gold — What Happened to the Russian Dynasty's Gold Reserves
The largest gold reserve in Europe in 1914, dismantled in a decade: war shipments to London, the Brest-Litovsk indemnity, the Kazan seizure, foreign collateral accounts, and the residue no ledger explains.
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