Technique and its phobic images in the everyday consciousness of ordinary Russian people in 1914–1916

Abstract

The formed phobic images of military equipment in the psychological state of Russian society during the First World War is considered in article. It is emphasized that the war led to the neuroticization of the society, in which the number of mentally ill people increased. The general anxiety contributed to the interpretation of the war as a sign of the impending apocalypse, in accordance with which monstrous images of weapons – guns, aircraft, tanks – were created. At the same time, the attitude towards technical inventions that had long entered the everyday life of the inhabitants – binoculars, cameras, cars – changed. In the conditions of growing spy mania they turned into spy attributes. Despite the fact that a number of images borrowed from art and fantasy works were not known to the peasants, many villagers also developed fears, mainly before airplanes, which the townsfolk often used to settle accounts with their neighbourhood: the German colonists and landlords.