TO THE ORIGINS OF "RUSSIAN WORLD" OR SOME ASPECTS OF SOCIOCULTURAL PROPAGANDA OF RUSSIAN EMPIRE ON PAGES POLTAVA PROVINCE PRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD WAR І

Abstract

The author defines the main directions of the sociocultural propaganda deployed by the Russian Empire on the press pages at the beginning of the World War I. With the outbreak of the World War I the periodical publications of the Russian Empire, which was still in difficult conditions of severe political censorship in order to keep steadily declining popularity of the monarchy, were in the new conditions of the wartime. While understanding of the importance of the press on formation of the public opinion and conduction of parallel media war, the official imperial propaganda focused on multiple vectors of the socio-cultural space.

Since the declaration of war in the press of different levels, beginning from capital and ending with provincial, the ideological machine of tsarism began distributing and sinking of numerous social, cultural, religious, military and political myths in the minds of the empire subjects.

One of the most dedicated and passionate promoters of the official military doctrine of the empire became the local legal press, which enjoyed the confidence and respect of the electorate and was a skilful tool in achieving their goals. In Poltava province, the newspapers were the most popular publications at the beginning of the war: "Poltavskie eparhialnye vedomosti", "Poltavskie gubernskie vedomosti", "Poltavskiy den", "Kolokol", magazine "Hutoryanyn" and etc.

The intellectual genesis of the components of historiosophy of the Slavophile doctrine can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. The ideas of "Russian World" and "Slavism" messianism were well represented in the works of M. Danylevskyi, I. Aksakov, C. Leontiev, V. Ern, V. Rosanov, V. Ivanov and widely discussed in the press during the interwar period [9, 27].

Summing up the above stated, it can be said that the emphasis of socio-cultural propaganda in the provincial press were concentrated in a few key areas. Among them are reporting of carefully reviewed "operational" information from the front lines about the "victorious progress of the Slavic liberators army", propaganda of the "Russian World" association as restoration of the necessary historical patterns and justice, scientific substantiation of Pan-Slavism and levelling of the Western culture, spreading myths about dedicated service and sacrifice in war of the empire subjects and vandalism of the Germans "opponents", stirring religious strives and negative attitudes towards the Ukrainian intellectuals on the occupied territories. Numerous authors of the articles, conducting historical parallels of the Slavs and Teutons' fighting with that time opposition of Slavs with Germanism, by general consent concluded that the association of oppressed people was only possible because of war.

Thus, more pragmatic problems of post-war society did not go unnoticed by the press. Much attention was paid to the fight against alcoholism. Authors of articles associated benefits of a sober lifestyle primarily with the economic benefits for the state and the citizens. The economic component was also present in the appeal publications of the food aid to the front lines from the rear agronomists, as a contribution to the fight against the adversary. So, the periodicals publications of Poltava province, as the main means of mass communication in the province, were successfully used by ideological machine of tsarism for infusion and sinking in the minds of empire subjects of all kinds of military cultural myths.