The Russian periodicals of 1914-1917 about Germany: politics and research

During the World War I, for obvious reasons, the German theme was one of the "hot topics" for Russian journalism. It became the subject of a lot of works of various degrees of fundamentally - from small brochures to books of a few hundred pages. The analysis of the correlation of political and analytical elements makes it possible to trace the transformation of the "German problem" in the period from 1914 to 1917, to determine the most urgent issues, which the authors of so-called political and analytical publications drew attention to, to assess the significance of the information presented in these works for studies carried out by modern Russian Germanists. The analysis showed that the "political writings" dominated the general flow of publications in the first two years of the war, when Russian society still felt inspiration and patriotic sentiments were strong. This group of works included both the books by Russian and foreign authors. The latter were translated into Russian, as they corresponded to the official pro-Russian interpretation of the causes of the world war and the definition of its main culprit. These works were mainly devoted to exposing the predatory, aggressive intentions of Kaiser Germany. Due to the researchers it was responsible for unleashing the "world massacre". Despite the dominance of the political component in these works, they provide interesting facts and observations that are of value to modern researchers of the history of Kaiser Germany. We are talking, for example, about the plans of the Second Reich in the war, the characterization of the personality of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the sources, the reasons for the belligerence of the "German spirit" in the pre-war period, the peculiarities of Germany's relations with the leading European powers and, above all, with Great Britain. The second type of literature on the history of Germany formed books, where analytical elements prevailed over the political component. They dealt with serious, specifically historical and even philosophical problems - the metamorphosis of the German culture (in the broad and narrow sense of the word), which turned from moment to moment into an object of condemnation and denunciation, changes in the German working class, the study of the reasons for which it, being a model of "the Marxist spirit" suddenly switched to the positions of social chauvinism. One of the characteristic features of all the studies reviewed is that they, albeit to varying degrees, contain interesting factual material that can be used in further research on the problems noted. In addition, even in "political writings", not to mention analytical ones, there is a respectful attitude toward the reader. The works were addressed to quite a well-educated part of readers. Their authors, even in the rush of "righteous indignation", sought to adhere to real historical facts.

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