Desert Autocrat

The historical study is dedicated to the life of one of the most odious figures of the White movement - Baron Ungern von Sternberg. Based on documents, the author talks about the origin of the baron, service during the First World War , actions in Transbaikalia during the Civil War , about the Mongolian epic. According to Yuzefovich, it was Ungern’s attempts to create a new Mongol empire that made him a legend:

The white general, who had never entered into battle with regular Soviet units, the executioner and neurasthenic, known for punitive rather than commander’s merits, he turned into a half-mad “autocrat of the desert” and as a result became a hero of the myth, a terrible symbol of not only Russian unrest, but also those trends of the world spirit, which are still felt today, threatening in the future to turn into a new storm from the East.

An interest in Baron Ungern, as well as an interest in Mongolia and Buddhism , arose with Leonid Yuzefovich during his service in the Soviet Army, which he held in Transbaikalia. After the end of the service, he wrote the story " Sand Riders " about the last years of the life of the baron. The story was based on a legend that Yuzefovich, in his words, had heard in Transbaikalia from an old Buryat. The Desert Autocrat, created no longer by Yuzefovich the writer, but by the Yuzefovich historian, was a natural continuation of a long-standing interest. The documentary novel, in which, unlike the Sand Riders, has no elements of fiction, was published in 1993 in fifty thousand copies and became Russia's first research work on Ungern. In 2001, it was published in French under the title Le Baron Ungern. Khan des steppes ^[1] .

In 2010, Ad Marginem published a revised and expanded edition of the book of the same name.

• Leonid Yuzefovich. An autocrat of the desert . - M .: Ellis Luck, 1993 .-- ISBN 5-7195-0020-0
• From Ungern to Putilin
• Leo Danilkin . One hundred and forty years among murderers and robbers