Feast in time of plague? Demoralization of Russian society in prerevolutionary epoch: reasons and consequences (1914-1916)

The beginning of World War I was accompanied by burst of excessive expectations from all strata of the Russian society. However, the official propaganda couldn't produce a convincing ideological justification of the aims of the war. As a result, with the growth of disaster the paternalistic consciousness was shaken in its own foundation. Prohibition on alcohol entailed consumption of all kinds of surrogates. Under these conditions the total demoralization of all social classes began progressing. Usual «war demoralization» was stimulated with the exaggerated representations of total debauchery of ruling circles. Gradually such defamatory concentrated around the imperial couple. Power began to seem absolutely immoral. Such kind of mass imagination accelerated an approach of revolutionary explosion.