COLLECTION · Series · 2006

东归英雄传

Original title

In the 1630s, to escape the threat of the increasingly powerful Dzungar tribe, the Torghut Mongols migrated west to nomadize in the Volga River basin inside Russia. The Volga steppe had rich soil and abundant water and was far from war, and the herdsmen, long tempered by warfare, finally found a quiet and peaceful land. But no one expected that they would soon fall under the terrifying rule of the Russian tsar, for this was the era of Catherine II, notorious in Russian history for her extortionate rule. Having overthrown her husband, Tsar Peter III, to take the throne, she pursued aggressive expansion abroad, and in the end even forced the herdsmen of the Torghut tribe to take part in the war of aggression against Turkey. Then there emerged a hero destined to lead the Torghut herdsmen out of the tsar's clutches — Ubashi. In 1761, Dunluobu Lashi, chief of the Torghuts, died, and his 19-year-old son Ubashi succeeded to the khanship. Over the next ten years, Tsarist Russia enslaved and controlled the Torghuts with growing severity, shrinking their pastures and conscripting large numbers of Torghut soldiers for the war against the Turks, causing tens of thousands of Torghuts to die on the battlefield. The Russian tsar not only forced them into submission, but also intervened directly in their internal affairs, promoting Eastern Orthodoxy within the tribe and prohibiting Buddhism. The long-suffering Torghut people eagerly hoped to break free from the tsar's rule at an early date, and in this moment of life and death for the nation, the young and courageous Ubashi resolved to lead all his people in an uprising against Russia and return to the motherland. Blocked in front by the forces of various tribes and relentlessly pursued from behind by the Russian army, Ubashi led 170,000 fellow Torghuts on a long and arduous trek through every kind of hardship, carrying out one of the great marches in human history...