Russians are ‘White Mongols,’ Chinese Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 18 – A Chinese author says the Russians are really “White Mongols” because of significant intermarriage between the Slavs and Mongols during the latter’s occupation of much of Eurasia and that the militant spirit and desire for conquest of new lands reflects this Mongol “blood” (k.sina.com.cn/article_6972567470_19f98efae00100jtvd.html).

            The article which is hardly a scholarly production is important, however, because it both appears to reflect and likely will intensify Chinese views about Russians. That it has now been translated and disseminated in Russian cannot help but shape how Russians will view their new Chinese allies.

            Writing in the journal Sina, the journalist says that “people say that in every Russian, there are Mongol roots and that regardless of what a Russian looks like, there flows Mongolian blood in his veins. That is the product of intermarriage during the 200 years of Mongol rule over what is now Russia.

            “Russians don’t like when this period is recalled,” the Chinese writer continues.  “But all the same one cannot deny that the Mongols had enormous influence on the Russian people.”  After Scandinavians came from the north and “founded the current city of Kyiv, making it the capital of Kievan Rus, the forefather of Russia,” the Mongols looked greedily at that land.

            “In 1206, Chingiz Khan founded the Mongol Empire and over the next 50 years he and his descendants were able to seize much of Kievan Rus.  The Chinese writer says that Baty Khan occupied much of Kievan Rus but was never able to run it directly: The Mongols were good fighters but poor administrators, he says.

            The Mongols and those who became the Russians intermarried frequently, and the Russians as a result became militant, accepting the Mongol view that the conquest of land rather than its management was the measure of success. Consequently, the Chinese writer continues, Russians are also called “’White Mongols.’”  

            Evidence of just how widespread Slavic-Mongol intermarriage was, he suggests, can be seen in Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution. Lenin was one-quarter Mongol, his grandmother being a Mongolian.

            “It is interesting,” the Sina writer goes on to say, “that before the invasion of the Mongols, the current Russian capital of Moscow was only a small border town. After the Mongols came, they used Moscow as a major city and quartered their cavalry there, right at the spot where the Kremlin now is.”

            “It is ironic that the Mongols who generate sense of shame among Russians turn out to be the founders of the Russians’ capital!”  One can only imagine what a Chinese reader takes from this about Russians today.