Patriotic Culture in Russia During World War I

In this heavily illustrated book, Hubertus Jahn explores the variety of ways in which Russian expressed their popular patriotic fervor. He assembles little-known evidence from diverse sources--postcards and fairground peepshows, operettas and circuses, posters and movies--to illuminate the cultural life of the nation in the last years of the tsar. Patriotism invaded the world of entertainment and popular culture during the First World War, shaping the imagination of Russians of all classes and changing with the fortunes of the nation at war. Between 1914 and 1917, cartoons of a bewhiskered Kaiser gave way to caricatures of greedy speculators; the exploits of Cossack heroes faded into sentimental images of heroic nurses; and sensationalist movies offered an increasingly popular escape from the disaster of the Eastern front. Throughout this book, Jahn correlates these metaphoric shifts with changes in the way Russians understood their nation.