War propaganda of the empire: World War I and its modern echoes

According to the materials of report at the meeting of the Presidium of the NAS of Ukraine, December 27, 2023

Abstract

The article deals with the war propaganda of the Russian Empire during the First World War on the territory of Ukraine. It was established that the main task of the war propaganda of the empire was to form an approving reflection in society on the war started by Russia. The goal of the war was called the liberation of the "brotherly" Slavic peoples. This myth justified the territorial claims of the Russian Empire in Europe. Such propaganda techniques as "shifting the blame for the started war onto the enemy", creating an "image of the enemy", "demonization" of the enemy, "glorification" of war, "heroization" of one's own army, creating the image of a "king-messiah" were used. The specificity of Russian war propaganda was in spreading the myth of the "reunification" or recovering the "ancient" Russian lands, which in fact never were that. This myth was spread thanks to various historical, ethnographic pseudo-scientific articles that described Ukrainian territories as "Russian" and their inhabitants as "Russian people". It is noticeable that the masks of "liberators", "defenders of brotherly nations", fighters for Orthodoxy, fanatical belief in the justice of the war, which appeared in the imperial mass media, are now also seen in the war propaganda of the Russian Federation. The similarity of the war rhetoric of the empire with that voiced by the contemporary aggressor evidences not only that 100-year-old war propaganda techniques are not outdated, but also that imperial ambitions still remain a relevant "stimulus" for Russian society.