DHARAMSHALA DIARY: White & Red Russians and Tibetan Buddhists in Poland

Wednesday, 23 May 2007, 4:39 p.m.

By Thubten Samphel

ON THE SIDELINES OF the recent Tibet Support Group conference held in Brussels from 11 to 14 May, I had the chance to interview Adam Koziel of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights on Buddhism in Poland. He said that one man who could be possibly credited with sparking Polish interest in Buddhism might be Ferdinand Ossendowski, a Polish officer who served in the White Russian army during the October Revolution in 1917.

After the defeat of the Tsar and his army at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Ferdinand Ossendowski joined other officers in the White Russian army and fled to Mongolia. There they tried to galvanize the proud descendants of Genghis Khan and his Golden Horde to mount a Mongol counter-attack on behalf of the fallen Tsar. To make their plan spiritually appealing to the Mongols who were then devout Buddhists and had been so for centuries, Baron von Ungern, who commanded the remnant of the Tsar’s army in Mongolia, posed himself as the earthly manifestations of the most powerful of Mongolia’s many protective deities. The military attempt and spiritual ruse failed. Soon Mongolia was overrun by communist Russia.

However, out of this experience came a book called Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski. “It must have been quite popular in the 1920s as it was translated into German, French and Spanish,” said Adam Koziel. This was one of the first Polish memoirs of the encounter.

Adam Koziel’s own interest in Tibet and Buddhism was kindled by the books of Alexandra David Neel, the intrepid French traveller to Tibet. These books had been translated into Polish before II World War. After the war, only books on Tibet and Buddhism that had a socialist slant were favoured in Poland. “In the 1960’s three reporters visited Lhasa, people like Anne Louis Strong and other left-wing reporters,” Adam Koziel said. That was the time when the British couple, Stewart and Roma Gelder, visited Lhasa and came out with Timely Rain, an unabashed hymn to the blessings brought to the Tibetans by the communist presence. “Their books had been translated into Polish. Apart from this there was very limited information on Tibet in Poland.”

“The start of Mongolian studies at Warsaw University in the 1950’s and 60’s changed the situation a bit,” Adam Koziel said. “Professor Stanislaw Godzinski focussed on Mongolian language and he worked really hard. He translated The Cultural History of Tibet by David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson into Polish. We emphasised a lot on books to obtain information on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.”

This interest in Tibet was helped by the policies of the authorities. The communist government allowed the study of different religions as a counter to decrease the hold of Catholicism on the Polish people. However, Poland’s communist authorities “prohibited political information, including atrocities in China,” said Adam Koziel.

This argument is supported by Malgurzata Ablamowicz-Borri in her paper Buddhist ‘Protestantism’ in Poland, who asks, “Why was Buddhism, especially Tibetan, successful in Poland and not in other communist countries?” She says the main cause was the Polish identity crisis “following the communist military dictatorship in 1981.” At the time about 88% of Poland’s total population were Catholics. As such Catholicism constituted not only religious but political power. The communists’ ability to impose martial law in Poland was less due to their power and more to the failure of the Catholic Church to stop them. Many Poles who felt betrayed joined the Buddhist fold.

It is for this reason, Malgurzata Ablamowicz-Borri argues, “The communist government tolerated non-Catholic and non-Christian religious groups in order to counter the influence of the Catholic Church.”

In those days, “We printed underground magazines,” Adam Koziel said. “Underground printing was very important.” And it seems at the time Poland possessed a richer literature on Tibetan than other neighbouring communist states. For example, Adam Koziel said, Czech and Polish languages are very close and books on Buddhism in Polish were smuggled out from Poland to Czechoslavakia. In this struggle for greater political and religious freedoms, Radio Free Europe played an important role. So did the role of individuals like Erkin Alptekin, the son of Isa Alptekin, the prime minister of the short-lived government-in-exile of East Turkestan.

In this quest for political freedom and greater spiritual meaning, the Poles travelled to India and came across books on Buddhism in English. This cross-fertilization deepened the Poles’ understanding of the Buddhist heritage.

In all this a Pole was elected as the Pope and the struggle of Solidarity began. For the Poles the struggle of the Tibetan people and their leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so clearly became a mirror image of their own struggle that the Poles embraced both Buddhism and the political cause of the Tibetan people.

Consequently, where there was a lake, the swans flocked in. The first lama to visit Poland was Beru Khentse Rinpoche of the Kagyu lineage, according to Adam Koziel. The next was Tenga Rinpoche from Kyigodo in north-eastern Tibet. His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited Poland for the first time in 1993.

“You receive this most precious gift not only for this life, but for lifetimes to come,” Adam Koziel said. “We have been offered this wisdom, guarded by masters for centuries. If you give me something beautiful, I will also give you something beautiful back,” Adam Koziel added, as a way of explaining the Poles’ deep empathy for the Tibetan people.