Premiere of the eight-episode documentary film "The First World War" from the author's cycle Felix Razumovsky"WHO ARE WE?" will take place on September 11 at 20:40 on the Russia. Culture.
Felix Razumovsky told Pravmir about what the soldiers fought for in the First World War, whether the February coup of 1917 was a betrayal, and about many other things.
- In the new cycle, you are probably talking about the causes of the First World War. On this topic, you can often hear that we fought for no one knows what. And the soldiers did not know why they were sent to die.
“You know, I believe that this kind of talk contains a fair amount of slyness. Do you really think that the miraculous heroes, led by Suvorov in the Italian campaign, understood the intricacies of European politics at the end of the 18th century? Of course not. However, they did not demand an explanation about the need to cross the Alps. The order of their beloved commander was enough for them.
When, more than a hundred years later, the First World War, the situation has changed. Not a trace remained of the Russian optimism of the 18th century. Among the high command there was no national hero whom the army trusts and cherishes. Favorite commanders, of course, were, but speech in this case about other. About figures of the scale of Suvorov, Kutuzov or Nakhimov.
Leaders of the Headquarters, and first of all the Supreme Commander Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich is a man of very average abilities, who did not have the necessary military talents and spiritual qualities. Yes, at the beginning of the war, the Grand Duke was popular ... That's all. In order to send thousands of people to their deaths, this is clearly not enough.
I will say more, the Russian soldier has always poorly imagined the imperial tasks and needs. And here I do not see a big problem. Soldiers' loyalty - that's what kept a huge country. However, the First World War revealed an obvious decline in the soldier's spirit. And not only soldiers. And that's why, in the end, we didn't make it.
An amazing situation arose, unprecedented in history: on the threshold of victory, we refused to fight, betrayed ourselves, our Fatherland. For us, the First World War is not a forgotten, but a devoted war. And since it is unpleasant to remember this betrayal and betrayal, we talk a lot about the senselessness of that war, about the absence of clear goals, about the fact that the people did not understand why such sacrifices were required of them. However, the war was very, very difficult, including psychologically difficult, it's true.
–The war that was the harbinger of the revolution, the collapse of Russia?
- This war for Russia ended in a national catastrophe, the nation committed suicide. Although we had everything we needed to defeat the enemy. As once in 1812, Russia had to cast aside all internal strife. And unite, at least from the instinct of self-preservation. Alas, this did not happen. The country began to rapidly split, internally divided - into military and politicians, soldiers and generals, into government and society, into "white" and "black" bones.
The predisposition to such a collapse has been around for a long time. Tolstoy in "War and Peace" did not accidentally depict the scene of a peasant revolt in the village of Bogucharovo, in the estate of the princes Bolkonsky. It was an important sign of that wartime. The invasion of Napoleon, the "thunderstorm of 1812" shook the usual order of Russian life. And in this life both the strong and weak sides. “Bonaparte will come, he will give us freedom, but we don’t want to know the masters anymore,” such words could be heard from the peasants near Moscow. And not only suburban.
But this is not class enmity, despite serfdom. This is something more serious: it is a cultural split. A traditional village that gives soldiers and a Europeanized manor that gives officers speak different languages. A hundred years later, during the First World War, this split will lead to the collapse of the Russian army and the death of historical Russia.
–But after all, from the countries of the Entente, it seems that no one suffered so much, before self-destruction, like Russia ...
- This is an important topic. The fate of Russia, its position and role in the First World War is unique. Maybe it's not quite obvious. As you know, as a result of the war, three more empires collapsed. But as soon as we wanted to destroy ourselves “to the ground”: both the political regime and the very foundations of national existence, that is, the entire Russian world, which was built up over centuries.
Various forces pushed the country to this catastrophe, but the Bolsheviks surpassed everyone with their recklessness and cynicism. They staked on national treason, on the destruction of the country. And they won. The call to "turn the imperialist war into a civil war" (Lenin) is incitement to treason.
So, the calculation turned out to be correct, despite the fact that Lenin's understanding and vision of the First World War is nothing more than a crude and primitive simplification. The creator of the new type of party labeled the war "imperialist". Allegedly, this is only a struggle of interests, a struggle for markets, spheres of influence, and so on. Russia does not fit into this picture at all.
Our goal cannot be the assertion of national exclusivity and pride. We have enough of our own historical illnesses and ailments, why should we ascribe to ourselves strangers. It is in Germany that militant Germanism, a kind of European nationalism, triumphs. And here you can only find something opposite - the diverse manifestations of Russian nihilism. But first of all, of course, the Troubles, the collapse and self-destruction of Russian life. The war, which demanded the utmost exertion of forces from Russia, again opened the way for the Time of Troubles.
The films of the new cycle show what actions of the authorities and society contributed to the growth of the Time of Troubles. For example, it was impossible to drive a wave of Germanophobia in a country where many Germans lived. Where they traditionally served in the Russian army. Sounding everywhere and everywhere accusations against the Germans, idle talk about "hostile subjects" caused enormous damage to the army. And they provoked a German pogrom in Moscow in the summer of 1915.
- How do you assess the behavior of those senior military officials of the Russian army who participated in the coup d'état in February-March 1917. At a time when the country was at war?
- By the beginning of the 17th year, the Time of Troubles is decomposing not only the mass of soldiers, but also to a large extent the generals. In March 1917, the army, represented by its high command, would support the abdication of Nicholas II. As is known, only two generals will send telegrams to Headquarters containing a different attitude to events. Only two generals will want to support the monarchy. The rest will frivolously rejoice at the change of power.
In fact, there will be no new power, anarchy will begin. “With the fall of the tsar, the very idea of power fell,” and without this idea, both the state and the army inevitably collapse. A soldier who has renounced his oath, loyalty, duty is simply a "man with a gun." It is completely pointless in this case to discuss whether Nicholas II was good or bad. It was impossible to save the Russian army after his abdication.
All that comes after is agony. Revolution and democratization will overwhelm the army, soldiers' councils and committees will appear in the military units, and the killing of officers and desertion will become an ordinary phenomenon.
It is impossible not to notice that the Great War for the first time in Russian history did not leave a pantheon of national heroes. And it's not just about the Bolsheviks, believe me. Well, who do we remember today, who can we put on a par with the names of Kutuzov, Nakhimov, Skobelev? There is nothing to say about Rumyantsev and Suvorov. There are no such names in the history of the First World War. There were victories and exploits. There was a heroic defense of the Osovets fortress, there were victories in Galicia. And the national memory is silent. And that means ... It means that the nation as such then no longer existed.
It has been 100 years since the start of the First World War. But we have not fully comprehended it, we have not studied it. What does it mean for us?
- How could we comprehend the First World War if it was erased from historical memory? The Bolsheviks at one time did not want to remember this war, because they participated and took advantage of national betrayal, treason. The destruction of the state and the army during the war is precisely treason, there can be no two opinions. The Bolsheviks always remembered this and did everything possible to bring the First World into oblivion.
However, this is actually only half the truth. Because we ourselves also did not really want to remember that war. In a certain sense, this is natural; a person prefers to turn to unpleasant and even more shameful pages of his life as rarely as possible. The nation does the same. In a word, we did not begin to learn the bitter lessons of the First World War. And therefore we still cannot deal with the issue of historical continuity.
What kind of Russia are we inheriting: historical or Soviet? There is still no clear answer. Our sitting on two chairs continues. This "resonates" with us, in particular, the lack of political will, the inability to determine the vector of one's development. Build a memory policy. It is impossible to talk about national revival without understanding the phenomenon of the 17th year.
Vitality Soviet myth about the Great October - this is a consequence of the oblivion of the First World War. The same applies to the Civil War (more precisely, the Troubles), which began precisely before the October 17th coup and in many ways prepared it. And this greatest tragedy of ours remained unresolved. Many years have passed, but still we do not know how to restore the unity of the Russian world, the unity of Russia, destroyed by the civil war.
–In eight episodes of the film fit the entire history of the First World War?
– These series are part of a large historical project. The films that will be shown this season cover the first year of the war. The first film is called "On the Threshold of War" and is dedicated to its prehistory. And we end with the events of the autumn of 1915, when we managed to stabilize the front after the Great Retreat.
It is worth noting in passing that we then retreated not to Moscow and not even to Smolensk. This, among other things, speaks of the strength and stamina of Russian soldiers. Our almost unarmed army, deprived of shells, did not run, but gradually retreated deep into the country in perfect order.
Probably, the consequences of the "shell hunger" could not have been so tragic if not for the Headquarters and its mediocre actions. It was impossible to endure this longer, and in August 1915, Nicholas II dismissed the supreme commander in chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich. The sovereign himself takes command of the army and heads the Headquarters. This ends the first stage of the war and the first 8-episode block of our cycle.
It is recommended to check the materials of this paragraph with the help of a home test, the questions of which cover all parts of the paragraph and relate not only to facts, but also to understanding the ongoing processes in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America:1. The First World War: a) did not affect the development of countries outside of Europe and the United States; b) led to the collapse of the colonial system; c) largely influenced the development of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
2. Find the wrong statement: a) the peoples of Asia and Africa took part in hostilities; b) the peoples of Latin America took an active part in the hostilities; c) residents of dependent countries provided for the needs of the armies of their mother countries.
3. During the First World War, the colonial regimes: a) remained unchanged; b) sharply increased; c) temporarily weakened.
4. The mandate system created at the Paris Conference actually proclaimed: a) the abolition of colonial oppression; b) equal rights of former colonies in solving questions of world politics; c) maintaining the dependence of the countries of Asia and Africa on the developed countries.
5. In the 20-30s. the struggle for the independence of the countries of Asia and Africa was conducted: a) by force of arms; b) peacefully; c) in both forms.
6. An influential force helping the countries of Asia and Africa in the struggle for independence was: a) the United States (the goal is to increase influence in the world); b) the League of Nations (the goal is the struggle for a lasting peace); in) Soviet Russia(the goal is to unleash a "world revolution").
7. Crisis of 1929-1933 and the Great Depression: a) intensified the struggle for independence in the countries of Asia and Africa; b) made the countries of Asia and Africa more submissive to their mother countries; c) contributed to the establishment political union between colonies and metropolises.
9. The slogan "Asia for Asians", put forward by Japan, in fact meant: a) the creation of a military alliance of all Asian countries; b) termination of all economic and diplomatic contacts with European countries; c) the development of the Asian peoples under the control of Japan.
10. In the 30s. Japan's foreign policy was aimed at: a) territorial conquest and strengthening of influence in the world; b) the development of diplomatic relations with the leading European powers and the United States; c) strict self-isolation from the outside world.
11. By the end of the 30s. Japan planned a struggle for dominance in the area: a) the Balkan Peninsula; b) the Pacific Ocean; c) Africa.
12. The Chinese Communist Party was established: a) in 1921; b) in 1925; c) in 1929
13. The leader of the Communist Party of China became: a) Sun Yat-sen; b) Mao Zedong; c) Chiang Kai-shek.
14. The government of Chiang Kai-shek pursued in domestic policy: a) strict state regulation; b) Europeanization of culture and life; c) broad development of democracy.
15. In the 20-30s. India: a) became an independent state; b) became a US colony; c) remained a British colony.
16. The basis of the teachings of Gandhism in India was: a) the inclusion of India in the UK on the basis of equality; b) achieving the independence of India through non-violent resistance to the colonial English administration; c) achieving the independence of India by means of an armed uprising against the British administration.
17. The main force of the national liberation struggle in India was: a) the Communist Union of India; b) Social Democratic Party; c) Indian National Congress.
18. The policy of non-violent protest did not include: a) the boycott of British goods; b) tax evasion; c) immigration to Europe.
19. A new constitution was adopted in Turkey: a) in 1920; b) in 1924; c) in 1928
20. In the 20-30s. in Turkey there was: a) the formation of a secular state; b) the development of religious authority; c) strengthening the monarchy.
21. Kemal's main ideological principles do not include: a) nationalism and nationality; b) religious fanaticism and traditionalism; c) republicanism and revolutionism.
22. One of the outstanding issues domestic policy in Turkey remained: a) the question of the form of power; b) the question of ecology; c) the national question.
23. A feature of the political development of Latin American countries in the 20-30s. was: a) the development of authoritarian and military regimes; b) the development of democratic regimes; c) the development of all types of regimes.
24. The population of African countries in the 20-30s: a) still remained dependent and disenfranchised; b) has won basic democratic rights; c) won the right to form trade unions.
“Lights go out all over Europe,
our generation will not see
How do they light up again?
Edward Grey, Foreign Minister
Affairs of Great Britain (1905-1916)
The First World War in its consequences had a tremendous impact on the development of Europe and the whole world. Events of 1914-1918 not only left an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of contemporaries, but also turned the idea of a person about war and peace, about life and death, about enemy and ally. The collapse of four empires (Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman), the formation of nine new states in Europe, a huge number of killed and wounded soldiers, officers, civilians and even more crippled and shell-shocked under continuous shelling - this is an incomplete list of what left to future generations by the suicidal massacre of the early twentieth century.
The war had the most painful impact on the people directly involved in the battles. For a long time of sitting in the trenches under incessant enemy shelling, for those minutes spent in deadly attacks and counterattacks, Europe has lost a whole generation of its young people, who received the name "lost" in literature. Such a diagnosis at that time could be made throughout Europe. People who returned from the war could not adapt to a new peaceful life. This is due not only to the fear of what they managed to see and experience at the front, but also to the socio-economic and political upheavals that took place in European countries towards the end of 1918-beginning of 1919. German soldiers, for example, went to war as subjects German Empire, but returned to a country engulfed in revolutionary moods, mired in mass unemployment and inflation.
Fire kills people. War destroys entire empires
The First World War claimed the lives of more than 10 million soldiers and officers, about 12 million civilians, about 55 million were injured, destroyed four empires (Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman), redrawn the political map of Europe beyond recognition. It brought to the world new types of weapons (tanks, gas), a new character of warfare (trench, positional), new battles striking in their cruelty (Verdun, Ypres, Galicia). The First World War took away a huge number of young people from Europe, and returned the crippled and embittered "lost generation".
The First World War had a special character of warfare that distinguished it from other wars. First of all, it was trench warfare. The soldiers, along with the equipment, dug into the ground as much as possible, showing that they prioritize defense over attack. Secondly, tanks, which were first used by the British in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, also had a defensive character. Thirdly, the monotonous method of warfare. The classic attack of the First World War looked like this: a preliminary 2-hour artillery preparation, after which the infantry offensive began, accompanied by a large number of dead and wounded soldiers, who faced the fierce defense of the enemy. Then the attack was followed by a counterattack. It often happened that in the course of a months-long offensive, the attacking side managed, straining a huge amount of forces, to break through the enemy defenses and move forward only a few tens of kilometers. Fourthly, the use of prohibited weapons, primarily the military poison gas chlorine, used by the German army near the town of Ypres in 1915, will forever remain one of the most shameful pages in the history of mankind.
During the First World War, the world witnessed bloody and brutal battles that it had not yet seen. Verdun "meat grinder", Brusilovsky breakthrough, battle on the river. The Somme, in which the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers, showed everyone the very essence of a suicidal war.
The collapse of four empires, the formation of new states, the international isolation of Russia, the humiliation of Germany, which was given full responsibility for unleashing the war, became the foundations of a new world order, formed on the basis of the year signed at Versailles on June 28, 1919. New system international relations had the following characteristics:
1. Zoomed in international system. If earlier it was limited mainly to Europe, now, with the entry into the international arena of new non-European actors (USA, Japan), it has acquired a global character.
2. The principle of collective security was to replace the principle of "balance of power".
3. The formed League of Nations was to become an instrument for maintaining peace, order and stability.
4. The new system of international relations could not provide a solution to the problems assigned to it, due to the presence of contradictions in it, expressed in the unwillingness of the United States, France and Great Britain to give Russia and Germany a worthy place in the new world order. Instead, the first found itself in international isolation, while the second was humiliated and crushed by the pressure of reparations.
Obscene World: How the Great War Was Forgotten
The Great October Revolution and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks radically changed foreign policy Russia, subordinating it to communist ideology. Having given the First World War the status of an imperialist one, they threw all their forces into the search for a speedy way out of hostilities.
Taking into account the fatigue of the army and society from the war, the cases of desertion and fraternization at the front, as well as the simple unwillingness of the soldiers to go on the attack, led the Bolshevik government to the decision to conclude a separate peace treaty with Germany and withdraw the country from the war.
The agreement concluded in March 1918 in Brest, which deprived Russia of a territory of a total of 780 thousand square meters. km, with a population of 56 million people, V.I. Lenin was characterized as "obscene". He wrote: "The world is obscene, but if war breaks out, our government will be swept away and peace will be made by another government." Of course, the separate treaty was of tactical importance for the Bolsheviks, they needed to save their strength for a decisive blow. But, nevertheless, the "obscene world" had a tremendous impact on former allies according to the Entente, who considered it a betrayal. Because of this, instead of Constantinople and victory, Russia received defeat, civil war and international isolation. Churchill wrote: “Fate was not so cruel to any country as to Russia ... Holding the victory already in her hands, she fell to the ground, alive, like Herod of old, devoured by worms.”
Thanks to the Soviet government, the very memory of the First World War was erased, of its soldiers who fearlessly fought for their homeland, and all the military graves of Russian soldiers and officers were destroyed. The Great War remained “forgotten” for a long time, but the worst thing is that the memory of the participants in this war and their exploits was destroyed. This decision to “forget” was one of the most shameful pages in our history.
Difficult years in Europe
After the end of the First World War and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, many politicians and journalists believed that peace on the planet was now established for all time. This was a delusion. The Versailles-Washington system of international relations, initially unfair, turned out to be unable to save humanity from the horrors of war. After a suicidal massacre that lasted 4 years, the suffering of Europe did not end.
In 1918-1919. the whole world was hit by an epidemic of the Spanish flu, or "Spanish flu", which claimed the lives of 90 million people. Those who could not be killed by the fire of a cruel war were finished off by a deadly disease, which can rightly be called the plague of the twentieth century.
Crushed and humiliated Germany, which lost its place in the rank of great powers by the decision of the USA, Great Britain and France and turned out to be the only country that bore the moral responsibility for unleashing the war, will still make itself felt. The national feelings of the Germans were so hurt that sooner or later there would be forces that would touch the sore points of German society and give the country such a policy aimed at revising the “fetters of Versailles”.
Isolated Russia, now acting under the name of the USSR, for a long time considered a stranger in Europe, over which the “ghost” of communism hung, lost a huge territory under the Brest Treaty and also considered its place in the new world order unfair. Moreover, Western politicians saw the danger in the Soviet government in the form of a "red flood" that could flood the Old World. As it will become clear later, in London and Paris they will make a terrible mistake, deciding that fascism and Nazism are less dangerous for Europe than communism.
In Italy, which did not receive the regions of Istria, Dalmatia and the city of Rijeka promised to it by the results of the Versailles Treaty, they gave rise in this country to the myth of a “trimmed victory”, which was painfully perceived in Italian society. This was also perceived as a national humiliation and prepared the coming to power of the fascist forces led by B. Mussolini in 1922.
The problems also affected the socio-political atmosphere in Germany. The growth of instability, unemployment, and crime in a country engulfed in revolution exacerbated the formation of social inequality in this country. Thus, it created culture medium to form radical parties that, playing on the feelings of the Germans, rushed to power.
The climax came in 1929 with the onset of the economic crisis and the onset of the Great Depression. This led to mass unemployment, rising inflation and a slowdown in economic growth. In the wake of these events, forces led by A. Hitler came to power in Germany, openly calling for a revision of the articles of the Versailles Treaty and striving to pursue a policy based on the notorious theory of racial superiority. Skillfully playing on the national feelings of the German people and intimidating France and Great Britain with the “red threat”, from which only Germany is able to protect Europe, Hitler managed in a short time, unilaterally, to throw off the “fetters of Versailles”, recreate the army and aviation and begin to carry out territorial seizures. . All this will plunge the Old World and the whole world into a new, even more destructive and cruel, World War II.
Lost generation
What happened to the people who experienced all the hardships and torments of the First World War? How did four years of sitting in the trenches and attacking change their view of life and death? What did the soldiers face at the front? How did the war affect their psyche and what impact did it have on the formation of their post-war worldview?
After the First World War, most of Europe and the world were diagnosed with a "lost generation" or, as they used to say in Britain, a generation of "embittered young people". It is believed that the term itself is already in postwar period introduced by the American writer Gertrude Stein. But it is most fully developed and presented in the works of E.M. Remarque and E. Hemingway.
Young people and girls at the age of 18 went straight from school to the front, not knowing what awaits them there. Initially, it seemed that the war would not last long, and they, as winners, covered with glory, would return to their hometowns, villages, villages, to their families. A trip to the military registration and enlistment offices as volunteers, followed by sending to the war, was accepted in European countries as a short and exciting adventure. No one then knew that most of them would take part in the bloodiest and most brutal battles in history, which the world had not yet seen, some would experience terrible torment from gas attacks, some would die under shelling in the trenches, and some would forever remain disabled. Many will understand that everything they were taught at school, telling stories about great battles, about valiant heroes, about love for their homeland, is not reflected in reality in any way. The idea of war as a jousting tournament in the brightest colors of the Middle Ages, after the first battle, will be replaced by a dirty soldier's overcoat and eternal fear that every day may be the last. In the novel by E.M. Remarque "On Western front without change”, one of the heroes, remembering his school days, quite interestingly notes: “... no one taught us at school how to smoke in the rain and in the wind or how to kindle a fire from damp firewood, no one explained that it is best to strike with a bayonet in the stomach, and not in the ribs, because in the bayonet does not get stuck in the stomach. This phrase perfectly shows how war changes people, how it takes away their sense of beauty, forcing them to pay attention only to what they immediately need in order to survive, forgetting everything superfluous that can interfere with this. Maybe those who came to the war did not realize what a family, love, but they clearly knew that "a blow with a bayonet must be directed to the stomach, and not to the heart."
In the novels dedicated to the First World War, special attention is paid to how ordinary soldiers themselves reflect on the causes of military conflicts. Moreover, the search for an answer to this question is accompanied by a misunderstanding of how one people, experiencing incredible suffering from pain and fear, from the loss of friends and relatives, pushes another people on the same path. This is clearly traced in Remarque's other novel, The Return, where you can find the following: "Perhaps, only because wars arise again and again, that one can never fully feel how the other suffers."
Another explanation for the emergence of wars can be found in the novel by the famous writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature, E. Hemingway, “Farewell to arms!”, One of whose characters says: “The country is ruled by a class that is stupid and does not understand anything and will never understand. That's why we're fighting." This shows the desire to place the responsibility for the war on the ruling classes, who profess their own selfish interests and for their sake draw the peoples into a suicidal slaughter. In this case, the lack of hatred for the soldiers of the enemy armies is very revealing. Understanding perfectly well that the French and Russians, just like the Germans, are fighting for their homeland, the participants in the First World War see each other not as irreconcilable enemies, but as people equally exhausted by the war.
At the same time, when reading the literature of the writers of the lost generation, one comes across pages that describe all the hardships and torments experienced by the soldiers. Fear for one's life sometimes exceeds fear for the death of one's Fatherland. Sometimes no one even understood what the war was about. For some straits or territories in the Middle East. In battle, the soldiers, first of all, thought about how not to die themselves and help their comrades avoid this fate. The war was no longer about glorious conquests, but about one's own survival.
The fear of war did not leave the soldiers even after they returned home. Those who managed to survive under deadly fire, to recover from their wounds, could not forget the feelings that they had to endure. Many even after the war did not feel alive, knowing full well that even a peaceful life, to which it was so difficult for them to adapt, would not be able to return them to a normal state. E. Hemingway in the novel "Farewell to Arms!" wrote: "What a joy it is not to be wounded, if at the same time you die of fear."
There was also pronounced war weariness in Russian society. This was especially clear in the military environment. Russian soldiers, to put it bluntly, are tired of sitting in the trenches and endless attacks in which they risked their lives. Many crippled, killed and wounded - that's what the war left for a society that, like in the West, had to go through the syndrome of the lost generation. Despair and resentment at one's fate are reflected in the soldiers' songs. For example, lines from the song "Galician Fields":
The Russian brigade took
Galician fields,
And got me as a reward
Two maple crutches.
Do not forget about the role of women during the First World War. Of course, that the main hardships were assumed by men in military uniform. It was they who fell under gas attacks, they were torn to pieces under artillery fire, they attacked the river. Somme and near Verdun. But women, too, paid a heavy price in this war. Many have lost husbands, brothers, fathers, sons on the battlefields. A large number of women worked in hospitals, where sometimes, under heavy fire, wounded soldiers had to perform complex operations. But most importantly, this is the contribution that women made while working in the rear. First of all, at chemical industry plants, endangering their lives and health, sometimes forgetting about sleep and rest. Many of the women received permanent burns to their hands and faces while making chemicals and most have lost the opportunity to have children forever.
As we can see, the Great War affected everyone. A heavy burden fell on the shoulders of both men and women. Most have not been able to adapt to civilian life. Many were left crippled. Some committed suicide or went insane. There were even cases when a person who returned from the war fell into hysterics from the mere sight of a military uniform. The First World War turned out to be, unfortunately, stronger than people. As E.M., who has already been mentioned by us more than once, Remarque: "Thousands and thousands of those who returned will still regret that they did not lie down with the dead."
Sergey Ignatiev, master student of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, National Research University Higher School of Economics
For a major conflict, the European powers feverishly prepared for several decades before 1914. Nevertheless, it can be argued that no one expected or wanted such a war. The general staffs expressed confidence that it would last a year, a maximum of one and a half. But the common misunderstanding concerned not only its duration. Who could have imagined that military leadership, faith in victory, military honor would turn out to be not only not the main qualities, but sometimes even harmful to success? The First World War demonstrated at the same time both the grandiosity and the senselessness of faith in the ability to calculate the future. Faith, which was so full of optimistic, clumsy and short-sighted nineteenth century.
Photo by BETTMANN / CORBIS / RPG
In Russian historiography, this war (“imperialist,” as the Bolsheviks called it) has never enjoyed respect and has been studied very little. Meanwhile, in France and Britain, it is still considered almost more tragic than even the Second World War. Scientists are still arguing: was it inevitable, and if so, what factors - economic, geopolitical or ideological - most of all influenced its genesis? Was the war a consequence of the struggle of the powers that entered the stage of "imperialism" for sources of raw materials and markets? Or perhaps we are talking about a by-product of a relatively new phenomenon for Europe - nationalism? Or, remaining "the continuation of politics by other means" (the words of Clausewitz), did this war only reflect the eternal intricacy of relations between large and small geopolitical players - is it easier to "hack" than "unravel"?
Each of the explanations looks logical and… insufficient.
At the First World War, the rationalism familiar to the people of the West from the very beginning was overshadowed by the shadow of a new, terrible and bewitching reality. He tried not to notice her or tame her, bent his line, completely lost, but in the end - contrary to the evidence, he tried to convince the world of his own triumph.
"Planning is the basis of success"
The pinnacle of the rational planning system is rightly called the famous "Schlieffen plan" - the favorite brainchild of the German Bolshoi General Staff. It was he who rushed to perform in August 1914, hundreds of thousands of Kaiser soldiers. General Alfred von Schliefen (by that time already deceased) sensibly proceeded from the fact that Germany would be forced to fight on two fronts - against France in the west and Russia in the east. Success in this unenviable situation can be achieved only by defeating opponents one by one. Since it is impossible to quickly defeat Russia because of its size and, oddly enough, its backwardness (the Russian army cannot quickly mobilize and pull up to the front line, and therefore it cannot be destroyed with one blow), the first “turn” is for the French. But a frontal attack against them, also preparing for battle for decades, did not promise a blitzkrieg. Hence the idea of a flank bypass through neutral Belgium, encirclement and victory over the enemy in six weeks.
The plan was simple and uncontested, like everything ingenious. The problem was, as often happens, precisely in his perfection. The slightest deviation from the schedule, the delay (or, conversely, excessive success) of one of the flanks of a gigantic army that performs a mathematically precise maneuver over hundreds of kilometers and several weeks, threatened not only with a complete failure, no. The offensive "only" dragged on, the French had a chance to take a breath, organize a front, and ... Germany found itself in a strategically losing situation.
Do I need to say that this is exactly what happened? The Germans were able to advance deep into enemy territory, but neither captured Paris, nor surrounded and defeated the enemy, they failed. The counteroffensive organized by the French - the “miracle on the Marne” (the Russians also helped, who rushed to Prussia in an unprepared disastrous offensive) showed with all clarity: the war would not end quickly.
Ultimately, Schlieffen's successor, Helmuth von Moltke Jr., was held responsible for the failure and retired. But the plan was unrealistic in principle! Moreover, as the subsequent four and a half years of fighting on the Western Front, which were distinguished by fantastic persistence and no less fantastic fruitlessness, showed, the much more modest plans of both sides were unrealistic ...
Even before the war, the story “The Feeling of Harmony” appeared in the press and immediately became famous in military circles. His hero, a certain general, obviously copied from the famous war theorist, Field Marshal Moltke, prepared such a well-thought-out battle plan that, not considering it necessary to follow the battle itself, he went to fish. The detailed development of maneuvers became a real mania for military leaders during the First World War. The task for the English 13th Corps alone at the Battle of the Somme was 31 pages (and, of course, was not completed). Meanwhile, a hundred years earlier, the entire British army, entering the battle of Waterloo, had no written disposition at all. Commanding millions of soldiers, the generals, both physically and psychologically, found themselves much further from real battles than in any of the previous wars. As a result, the “general staff” level of strategic thinking and the level of execution on the front line existed, as it were, in different universes. The planning of operations under such conditions could not but turn into a self-contained function divorced from reality. The very technology of war, especially on the Western Front, ruled out the possibility of a breakthrough, a decisive battle, a deep breakthrough, a selfless feat, and, in the final analysis, any tangible victory.
"All Quiet on the Western Front"
After the failure of both the "Schlieffen Plan" and the French attempts to quickly capture Alsace-Lorraine, the Western Front was tightly stabilized. The opponents created a defense in depth from many rows of full-profile trenches, barbed wire, ditches, concreted machine-gun and artillery nests. The huge concentration of human and firepower made a sudden attack unrealistic from now on. However, even earlier it became clear that the deadly fire of machine guns deprives the standard tactics of a frontal attack with loose chains (not to mention dashing cavalry raids - this once most important branch of the military turned out to be absolutely unnecessary).
Many regular officers, brought up in the "old" spirit, that is, who considered it a shame to "bow to the bullets" and put on white gloves before the battle (this is not a metaphor!), Laid down their lives already in the first weeks of the war. In the full sense of the word, the former military aesthetics, which required the elite units to stand out in the bright color of the uniform, turned out to be deadly. Rejected at the beginning of the century by Germany and Britain, it was preserved by 1914 in the French army. So it is no coincidence that during the First World War, with its psychology of “burrowing into the ground,” it was the Frenchman, cubist artist Lucien Giran de Sevola, who came up with camouflage net and coloring as a way to merge military objects with the surrounding space. Mimicry became a condition for survival.
But the level of losses in the active army quickly surpassed all conceivable ideas. For the French, British and Russians, who immediately threw the most trained, experienced units into the fire, the first year in this sense became fatal: the regular troops actually ceased to exist. But was the opposite decision less tragic? In the fall of 1914, the Germans sent divisions hastily formed from student volunteers into battle near the Belgian Ypres. Almost all of them, who went on the attack with songs under the aimed fire of the British, died senselessly, as a result of which Germany lost the intellectual future of the nation (this episode received the name “Ypres Massacre of the Innocents”, not devoid of black humor).During the first two campaigns, by trial and error, the opponents developed a certain common combat tactics. Artillery and manpower were concentrated on the sector of the front chosen for the offensive. The attack was inevitably preceded by many hours (sometimes many days) of artillery preparation, designed to destroy all life in the enemy trenches. Correction of fire was carried out from airplanes and balloons. Then the artillery began to work on more distant targets, moving beyond the enemy's first line of defense in order to cut off the escape route for the survivors, and, on the contrary, for the reserve units, the approach. Against this background, the attack began. As a rule, it was possible to "push through" the front for several kilometers, but in the future the onslaught (no matter how well it was prepared) fizzled out. The defending side brought up new forces and launched a counterattack, with more or less success recapturing the given spans of land.
For example, the so-called “first battle in Champagne” at the beginning of 1915 cost the advancing French army 240 thousand soldiers, but led to the capture of only a few villages ... But even this turned out to be not the worst compared to the year 1916, when in the west, the most massive battles unfolded. The first half of the year was marked by the German offensive near Verdun. “The Germans,” wrote General Henri Pétain, the future head of the collaborationist government under the Nazi occupation, “tried to create such a death zone in which not a single unit could hold out. Clouds of steel, cast iron, shrapnel and poisonous gases opened up over our forests, ravines, trenches and shelters, destroying literally everything ... ”At the cost of incredible efforts, the attackers managed to achieve some success. However, the advance of 5-8 kilometers due to the staunch resistance of the French cost the German army such colossal losses that the offensive bogged down. Verdun was never taken, and by the end of the year the original front was almost completely restored. On both sides, the losses amounted to about a million people.
The Entente offensive on the Somme River, similar in scale and results, began on July 1, 1916. Already its first day became "black" for the British army: almost 20 thousand killed, about 30 thousand wounded in the "mouth" of the attack, only 20 kilometers wide. "Somma" has become a household name for horror and despair.
The list of fantastic, incredible in terms of "effort-result" ratio of operations can be continued for a long time. It is difficult for both historians and the general reader to fully understand the reasons for the blind persistence with which the headquarters, each time hoping for a decisive victory, carefully planned the next “meat grinder”. Yes, the already mentioned gap between the headquarters and the front and the strategic stalemate played their role, when two huge armies ran into each other and the commanders had no choice but to try to move forward again and again. But it was easy to catch a mystical meaning in what was happening on the Western Front: the familiar and familiar world was methodically destroying itself.The resilience of the soldiers is amazing, which allowed the opponents, practically without moving, to exhaust each other for four and a half years. But is it any wonder that the combination of external rationality and the profound senselessness of what was happening undermined people's faith in the very foundations of their lives? Centuries of European civilization were compressed and ground on the Western Front - this idea was expressed by the hero of an essay written by a representative of the very “military” generation that Gertrude Stein called “lost”: “You see a river - no more than two minutes away from here? So, it took the British then a month to get to her. The whole empire went forward, advancing several inches in a day: those who were in the front ranks fell, their place was taken by those who walked behind. And the other empire just as slowly retreated, and only the dead remained lying in countless piles of bloody rags. This will not happen again in the life of our generation, not a single European people will dare to do this ... "
It is worth noting that these lines from the novel “Tender is the Night” by Francis Scott Fitzgerald were published in 1934, just five years before the start of a new grandiose massacre. True, civilization "learned" a lot, and World War II developed incomparably more dynamically.
Saving madness?
The terrible confrontation was not only a challenge to the entire staff strategy and tactics of the past, which turned out to be mechanistic and inflexible. It became a catastrophic existential and mental test for millions of people, most of whom grew up in a relatively comfortable, cozy and "humane" world. In an interesting study of front-line neuroses, the English psychiatrist William Rivers found that of all the military branches, pilots experienced the least stress in this sense, and observers who corrected fire from stationary balloons above the front line experienced the most. The latter, forced to passively wait for a bullet or projectile to hit, had fits of insanity much more often than physical injuries. But after all, all the infantrymen of the First World War, according to Henri Barbusse, involuntarily turned into "waiting cars"! At the same time, they did not expect a return home, which seemed distant and unreal, but, in fact, death.
They drove crazy - in the literal sense - not bayonet attacks and martial arts (they often seemed like deliverance), but many hours of artillery shelling, during which several tons of shells were sometimes fired per linear meter of the front line. “First of all, it puts pressure on the mind ... the weight of a falling projectile. A monstrous creature is rushing towards us, so heavy that its very flight pushes us into the mud, ”wrote one of the participants in the events. And here is another episode relating to the last desperate effort of the Germans to break the resistance of the Entente - to their spring offensive in 1918. As part of one of the defending British brigades, the 7th Battalion was in reserve. The official chronicle of this brigade drily narrates: “At about 4.40 in the morning, enemy shelling began ... Rear positions that had not been shelled before were subjected to it. From that moment on, nothing was known about the 7th battalion. It was completely destroyed, as was the 8th, which was on the front line.The normal response to danger, psychiatrists say, is aggression. Deprived of the opportunity to manifest it, passively waiting, waiting and waiting for death, people broke down and lost all interest in reality. In addition, opponents introduced new, more and more sophisticated methods of intimidation. Let's say war gases. The German command resorted to the large-scale use of poisonous substances in the spring of 1915. On April 22 at 17 o'clock, 180 tons of chlorine were released at the position of the 5th British Corps in a few minutes. Following the yellowish cloud, creeping above the ground, the German infantrymen moved cautiously to attack. Another eyewitness testifies to what was happening in the trenches of their enemy: “First surprise, then horror and, finally, panic seized the troops, when the first clouds of smoke enveloped the entire area and forced people, choking, to fight in agony. Those who could move ran, trying, mostly in vain, to overtake the cloud of chlorine that pursued them inexorably." The British positions fell without firing a shot - the rarest case for the First World War.
However, by and large, nothing could disrupt the established pattern of military operations. It turned out that German command just not ready to build on the success obtained in such an inhuman way. No serious attempt was made to introduce large forces into the resulting “window” and turn the chemical “experiment” into a victory. And the allies quickly, as soon as the chlorine dissipated, moved new ones to the place of the destroyed divisions, and everything remained the same. However, later both sides used chemical weapons more than once or twice.
"Brave New World"
On November 20, 1917, at 6 o'clock in the morning, German soldiers, "bored" in the trenches near Cambrai, saw a fantastic picture. Dozens of frightening machines slowly crawled into their positions. So for the first time the entire British mechanized corps went on the attack: 378 combat and 98 auxiliary tanks - 30-ton diamond-shaped monsters. After 10 hours the battle was over. The success, according to current ideas about tank raids, is simply insignificant, by the standards of the First World War it turned out to be amazing: the British, under the cover of "weapons of the future", managed to advance 10 kilometers, losing "only" one and a half thousand soldiers. True, during the battle, 280 vehicles failed, including 220 due to technical reasons.
It seemed that a way to win in a positional war had finally been found. However, the events near Cambrai became more of a harbinger of the future than a breakthrough in the present. Clumsy, slow, unreliable and vulnerable, the first armored vehicles nevertheless, as it were, denoted the traditional technical superiority of the Entente. They appeared in service with the Germans only in 1918, and they were counted by a few.
No less strong impression on contemporaries was made by the bombing of cities from airplanes and airships. During the war, several thousand civilians suffered from air raids. In terms of firepower, the aviation of that time could not be compared with artillery, but psychologically, the appearance of German aircraft, for example, over London meant that the former division into a “belligerent front” and a “safe rear” was becoming a thing of the past.Finally, a truly enormous role was played in the First World War by a third technical innovation - submarines. Back in 1912-1913, naval strategists of all powers agreed that the main role in the future confrontation on the ocean was to be played by huge battleships - dreadnought battleships. Moreover, in the arms race, which has exhausted the leaders of the world economy for several decades, the lion's share fell precisely on naval spending. Dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers symbolized imperial power: it was believed that a state claiming a place "on Olympus" was obliged to demonstrate to the world a string of colossal floating fortresses.
Meanwhile, the very first months of the war showed that the real significance of these giants was limited to the sphere of propaganda. And the pre-war concept was buried by inconspicuous "water striders", which the admiralties for a long time refused to take seriously. Already on September 22, 1914, the German submarine U-9, which entered the North Sea on a mission to impede the movement of ships from England to Belgium, discovered several large enemy ships on the horizon. Having approached them, within an hour she easily launched the cruisers Kresy, Aboukir and Hog to the bottom. A submarine with a crew of 28 people destroyed three "giants" with 1,459 sailors on board - almost the same number of Britons died in the famous battle of Trafalgar!
It can be said that the Germans started the deep-sea war as an act of desperation: they could not come up with a different tactic to fight the powerful fleet of His Majesty, which completely blocked the sea routes. Already on February 4, 1915, Wilhelm II announced his intention to destroy not only military, but also merchant and even passenger ships of the Entente countries. This decision turned out to be fatal for Germany, since one of its immediate consequences was the entry into the war of the United States. The most notorious victim of this kind was the famous Lusitania, a huge steamship that sailed from New York to Liverpool and was sunk off the coast of Ireland on May 7 of the same year. 1,198 people were killed, including 115 neutral US citizens, which caused an uproar in America. A weak excuse for Germany was the fact that the ship was also carrying military cargo. (It is worth noting that there is a version in the spirit of the “conspiracy theory”: the British, they say, themselves “framed” the Lusitania in order to draw the United States into the war.)
A scandal erupted in the neutral world, and for the time being, Berlin "reversed" and abandoned the cruel forms of fighting at sea. But this issue was again on the agenda when the leadership of the armed forces passed to Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff - "the hawks of total war." Hoping with the help of submarines, the production of which was growing at a gigantic pace, to completely interrupt the communication of England and France with America and the colonies, they persuaded their emperor to re-proclaim February 1, 1917 - on the ocean, he no longer intends to restrain his sailors with anything.
This fact played its role: perhaps because of him - from a purely military point of view, in any case - she was defeated. The Americans entered the war, finally changing the balance of power in favor of the Entente. The Germans did not receive the expected dividends either. The losses of the Allied merchant fleet at first were really huge, but gradually they were significantly reduced by developing measures to combat submarines - for example, the “convoy” sea system, which was already so effective in World War II.
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War in numbers During the war, more than 73 million person, including: The number of submarines in the world increased between 1914 and 1918 from 163 to 669 units; aircraft - from 1.5 thousand to 182 thousand units |
"Weak Link"
By a strange irony of history, the erroneous step that caused the intervention of the United States was made literally on the eve of the February Revolution in Russia, which led to the rapid decay of the Russian army and, in the end, the fall of the Eastern Front, which again returned Germany hope for success. What role did World War I play in national history, did the country have a chance to avoid the revolution, if not for her? Mathematically, it is impossible to answer this question precisely. But on the whole, it is obvious: it was this conflict that became the test that broke the three-hundred-year-old monarchy of the Romanovs, as a little later - the monarchies of the Hohenzollerns and the Austro-Hungarian Habsburgs. But why are we first on this list?
“Fate has not been so cruel to any country as to Russia. Her ship sank when the harbor was already in sight. She had already weathered the storm when everything collapsed. All the sacrifices have already been made, all the work has been completed... According to the superficial fashion of our time, it is customary to interpret the royal system as a blind, rotten, incapable tyranny. But an analysis of the thirty months of the war with Germany and Austria should have corrected these superficial notions. We can measure the strength of the Russian Empire by the blows it has endured, by the disasters it has endured, by the inexhaustible forces that it has developed, and by the restoration of strength to which it proved capable... Holding the victory already in its hands, it fell on earth alive, like ancient Herod, devoured by worms, ”these words belong to a man who has never been a fan of Russia - Sir Winston Churchill. The future prime minister had already grasped that the Russian catastrophe was not directly caused by military defeats. "Worms" really undermined the state from the inside. But after all, internal weakness and exhaustion after two and a half years of hardest fighting, for which it turned out to be prepared much worse than others, were obvious to any unbiased observer. Meanwhile, Britain and France stubbornly tried to ignore the difficulties of their ally. The eastern front, in their opinion, should only divert as many enemy forces as possible, while the fate of the war was decided in the west. Perhaps this was the case, but the millions of Russians who fought in the war could not inspire such an approach. It is not surprising that in Russia they began to say bitterly that "the allies are ready to fight to the last drop of the blood of a Russian soldier."The most difficult for the country was the campaign of 1915, when the Germans decided that since the blitzkrieg in the west had failed, all forces should be thrown to the east. Just at this time Russian army experienced a catastrophic shortage of ammunition (pre-war calculations turned out to be hundreds of times lower than actual needs), and had to defend themselves and retreat, counting every cartridge and paying with blood for failures in planning and supply. In defeats (and it was especially hard in battles with a well-organized and trained German army, not with the Turks or Austrians), they blamed not only the allies, but also the mediocre command, the mythical traitors "at the very top" - the opposition constantly played on this topic; "unfortunate" king. By 1917, largely under the influence of socialist propaganda, the idea was widespread among the troops that the slaughter was beneficial to the propertied classes, the "bourgeois", and they were specifically for it. Paradoxically, many observers noted that disillusionment and pessimism grew with distance from the front line, especially affecting the rear.
Economic and social weakness immeasurably multiplied the inevitable hardships that fell on the shoulders of ordinary people. They lost hope of victory earlier than many other warring nations. A terrible tension demanded such a level of civic unity, which was hopelessly absent in Russia at that time. The powerful patriotic impulse that swept the country in 1914 turned out to be superficial and short-lived, and the “educated” classes are much less than the elites. Western countries sought to sacrifice their lives and even well-being for the sake of victory. For the people, the goals of the war, in general, remained distant and incomprehensible ...
Churchill's later assessments should not be misleading: the Allies perceived the February events of 1917 with great enthusiasm. It seemed to many in liberal countries that, having “thrown off the yoke of autocracy”, the Russians would begin to defend their newfound freedom even more zealously. In fact, the Provisional Government, as is well known, was unable to establish even a semblance of control over the state of affairs. The "democratization" of the army turned into its collapse in the conditions of general fatigue. "Keeping the front," as Churchill advised, would only have meant accelerating disintegration. Tangible successes could stop this process. However, the desperate summer offensive of 1917 failed, and since then it has become clear to many that the Eastern Front is doomed. It finally collapsed after the October Revolution. The new Bolshevik government could only stay in power by ending the war at any cost - and it paid that incredibly high price. Under the terms of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, on March 3, 1918, Russia lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine and part of Belarus - about 1/4 of the population, 1/4 of cultivated land and 3/4 of the coal and metallurgical industries. True, less than a year later, after the defeat of Germany, these conditions ceased to operate, and the nightmare of world war was surpassed by the nightmare of civil war. But it is also true that without the first there would be no second.
Respite between wars?
Having been able to strengthen the Western Front at the expense of units transferred from the east, the Germans prepared and carried out a whole series of powerful operations in the spring and summer of 1918: in Picardy, in Flanders, on the rivers Aisne and Oise. In fact, this was the last chance for the Central Block (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey): its resources were completely depleted. However, this time the successes achieved did not lead to a turning point. “The enemy resistance turned out to be higher than the level of our forces,” Ludendorff stated. The last of the desperate blows - on the Marne, as in 1914, completely failed. And on August 8, a decisive Allied counteroffensive began with the active participation of fresh American units. At the end of September, the German front finally collapsed. Then Bulgaria capitulated. The Austrians and Turks had long been on the brink of disaster and were kept from concluding a separate peace only under the pressure of their stronger ally.
This victory was expected for a long time (and it is worth noting that the Entente, out of habit exaggerating the strength of the enemy, did not plan to achieve it so quickly). On October 5, the German government turned to US President Woodrow Wilson, who had repeatedly spoken in a peacekeeping spirit, with a request for a truce. However, the Entente no longer needed peace, but complete surrender. And only on November 8, after the revolution broke out in Germany and Wilhelm abdicated, the German delegation was admitted to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the Entente, the French Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
What do you want gentlemen? asked Foch without giving his hand.
- We want to receive your proposals for a truce.
- Oh, we don't have any proposals for a truce. We like to continue the war.
- But we need your conditions. We can't keep fighting.
“Oh, so you came to ask for a truce, then?” This is another matter.
World War I officially ended 3 days after that, on November 11, 1918. At 11 o'clock GMT, 101 gun salutes sounded in the capitals of all Entente countries. For millions of people, these volleys meant a long-awaited victory, but even then many were ready to recognize them as a mourning commemoration of the lost Old World.
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Timeline of the war June 28, 1914 Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip kills the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. Austria delivers ultimatum to Serbia |
Peace or truce
“This is not the world. This is a truce for twenty years, ”Foch prophetically described the Treaty of Versailles concluded in June 1919, which sealed the military triumph of the Entente and instilled in the souls of millions of Germans a sense of humiliation and a thirst for revenge. In many ways, Versailles became a tribute to the diplomacy of a bygone era, when there were still undoubted winners and losers in wars, and the end justified the means. Many European politicians stubbornly did not want to fully realize: in 4 years, 3 months and 10 days of the great war, the world has changed beyond recognition.
Meanwhile, even before the signing of peace, the massacre that ended caused a chain reaction of cataclysms of various scale and strength. The fall of the autocracy in Russia, instead of becoming a triumph of democracy over "despotism", led it to chaos, the Civil War and the emergence of a new, socialist despotism, which frightened the Western bourgeoisie with a "world revolution" and the "destruction of the exploiting classes." The Russian example turned out to be contagious: against the backdrop of a deep shock to people by the past nightmare, uprisings broke out in Germany and Hungary, communist sentiments swept over millions of residents in completely liberal "respectable" powers. In turn, in an effort to prevent the spread of "barbarism", Western politicians hastened to rely on nationalist movements, which seemed to them more manageable. The collapse of the Russian, and then Austro-Hungarian empires caused a real "parade of sovereignties", and the leaders of the young nation-states showed the same dislike for both the pre-war "oppressors" and the communists. However, the idea of such absolute self-determination, in turn, proved to be a ticking time bomb.
Of course, many in the West recognized the need for a serious revision of the world order, taking into account the lessons of the war and the new reality. However, good intentions too often only masked selfishness and a short-sighted reliance on strength. Immediately after Versailles, President Wilson's closest adviser, Colonel House, remarked: "I don't think this is in the spirit of the new era we swore to create." However, Wilson himself, one of the main "architects" of the League of Nations and Nobel Peace Prize winner, turned out to be a hostage to the former political mentality. Like other gray-haired elders - the leaders of the victorious countries - he was inclined to simply not notice much that did not fit into his usual picture of the world. As a result, the attempt to comfortably equip the post-war world, giving everyone their due and reasserting the hegemony of the "civilized countries" over the "backward and barbaric", completely failed. Of course, in the camp of the winners there were also supporters of an even tougher line towards the vanquished. Their point of view did not prevail, and thank God. It can be said with certainty that any attempt to establish an occupation regime in Germany would be fraught with great political complications for the Allies. Far from preventing the growth of revanchism, they would, on the contrary, sharply accelerate it. By the way, one of the consequences of this approach was the temporary rapprochement between Germany and Russia, which were excluded by the allies from the system of international relations. And in the long term, the triumph of aggressive isolationism in both countries, the aggravation of numerous social and national conflicts in Europe as a whole, and brought the world to a new, even more terrible war.
Of course, other consequences of the First World War were colossal: demographic, economic, cultural. According to various estimates, the direct losses of the nations that directly participated in the hostilities ranged from 8 to 15.7 million people, indirect (taking into account the sharp drop in the birth rate and the increase in mortality from hunger and disease) reached 27 million. If we add to them losses from civil war in Russia and the famine and epidemics caused by it, this number will almost double. Europe was able to reach the pre-war level of the economy again only by 1926-1928, and even then not for long: the world crisis of 1929 completely knocked it down. Only for the United States did the war become a profitable enterprise. As for Russia (USSR), its economic development has become so anomalous that it is simply impossible to adequately judge the overcoming of the consequences of the war here.
Well, millions of those who “happily” returned from the front were never able to fully rehabilitate themselves morally and socially. "The Lost Generation" long years vainly tried to restore the broken connection of times and find the meaning of life in the new world. And having despaired of this, they sent a new generation to a new slaughterhouse - in 1939.
On August 1, 1914, Russia entered the First World War on the side of the Entente. Without touching on all the events of the course of the war, let us dwell on the influence that it had on the general development of the situation. In the traditional interpretation of Soviet historiography, the war was viewed as a "powerful accelerator" of the revolution. Today, due to the fact that many authors tend to consider both the revolution and the cataclysms caused by it as a tragedy and catastrophe, there is a tendency to "whitewash" this war, to present it in an ennobled romantic-tragic halo. If earlier they wrote about the world imperialist slaughter, now they write more often about the just nature of the war on the part of Russia, about the vile role of the Bolshevik defeatists, about wonderful people who clearly showed themselves on the battlefields, etc. In one such authors are right: for Soviet historians The First World War was "foreign", "imperialist" and because of this, its objective history was not written. Speaking about the significance of the war for the fate of Russia, it is necessary first of all to recognize several indisputable facts. The war was not going well for our country. The year 1915 was especially difficult, when the Russian army was forced to leave Poland and Lithuania and was forced out of Austrian Galicia. Military defeats had a depressing effect on public opinion, strengthened the critical attitude towards the ruling regime, and contributed to the fall of its authority. The war demanded from Russia an enormous strain on its material and human resources. Three-quarters of industrial enterprises by 1917 worked for the needs of the war; 16 million people, mostly peasants, were mobilized into the army during the war years and were cut off from their main occupations. The war markedly worsened the life of various sections of the population, especially the middle and lower ones, due to the reduction in production in civilian industries and the militarization of the economy. The war for Russia was associated with great casualties and human losses: about 2 million killed, millions wounded, maimed, captured. For many families, this meant the loss of a breadwinner, worsening poverty and calamity. A huge number of people placed under arms could not but lead to an increase in the role of the army in the life of society, and much depended on its position in the reversal of political passions. No matter what they say today about this war, in many respects its goals and objectives remained unclear, did not reach the heart of every soldier, which Bolshevik propaganda skillfully used. Why, they say, the peasant needs Constantinople, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which were promised to Russia in case of victory. A long stay in the trenches, blood, dirt, deprivation caused bitterness and bestiality, a decline in morality, moral principles, traumatized people and left a deep mark on society. The value of an individual human life was rapidly falling. Social instability constantly increased, social confrontation intensified. Many people were torn out of their habitual nests, were, as it were, in a suspended state due to continuous mobilizations, movements, evacuations, etc. The number of lumpenized elements increased. The population became more and more subject to the influence of various rumors, panic, impulsive unpredictable actions. In the First World War 1914 - 1918. 38 states participated. The war brought innumerable disasters to the peoples of the world: 10 million people were killed, 20 million were wounded. The economies of many countries were undermined. The war showed the inability of the ruling elite to cope with the misfortunes that hit the country. You can list other phenomena related to the impact of the war on the situation in the country. But already from what has been said, it is obvious that the war exposed and sharpened the contradictions inherent in Russia to the limit, and its state mechanism could not stand it.