Rumors, Images, Emotions. Mass Moods of Russians During the War and Revolution (1914–1918). 3rd ed.

The years of World War I became a time of global changes: not only the political and social structure of many countries changed, but also public consciousness, the perception of historical time, characteristic of the 19th century. The war largely became the culmination of the crisis caused by the clash of traditional culture and the emerging culture of modernism. In his fundamental monograph, historian V. Aksyonov shows how this crisis manifested itself at the level of mass sentiments in Russia. The author analyzes patriotic ideas, mass actions, visual images, religious and political symbols, peasant discourse, written urban culture, phobias, rumors and the emotions associated with them. According to the author, by 1917, the emotional perception of reality began to prevail over the rational and logical, and the conflict between traditional and modern worldviews did not allow the unification of Russian society on the basis of patriotic ideas built around the outdated autocratic mythology. During the revolution of 1917, rumors largely determined the course of political events. Vladislav Aksenov is a specialist in the social history of Russia in the early 20th century and a senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.