Neurasthenia and “Spirit of 1914”: A causal relationship (on the materials of the right-bank Ukraine)

Abstract

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Using newspaper materials of Right-Bank Ukraine at the beginning of the twentieth century. and theoretical developments of domestic and foreign experts, the authors investigated one of the little-known aspects of the history of the First World War – the role of the mental state of the population in the formation of public attitudes at the beginning of wartime – a historical phenomenon that entered science under the name of the "spirit of 1914". During the post-reform period, the region experienced a trend characteristic of European countries and Russia – an unprecedented spread of mental illnesses among the urban population, the most famous of which was neurasthenia. This disease was caused by the impact of rapidly developing modernist processes on the psyche of the townspeople. Correspondingly, this process affected the Right-Bank Ukraine – the leading region in terms of urbanization in the Russian Empire, where in 1897 a specialized medical institution was created by the government. The authors investigated the statistics of suicides in Kiev, which both indicated the dynamics of the growth of neurotic diseases among urban residents in the pre-war years, and testified to the opposite in the initial period of the First World War. According to the authors, this effect occurred due to the specific property of neurasthenia to instantly concentrate the early senselessly wasted human energy with lightning speed and direct it into the mainstream of the extreme historical moment that is being experienced – the declaration of war. It was the finding of neurasthenics in the process of internal emotional rebirth that contributed to their pro-war moods. Copyright © 2021 by Cherkas Global University.