Life in the rear city of Kyiv in the war of 1914-1917 (according to archival materials and the press of that time)

Abstract

his article is about life in Kyiv during World War I. Concern to modern researches we decided to use stories of «simple» people and show how war changed their lives. Through the adaptation to new reality citizens of Kyiv became new social groups and developed new modern reality.

Author uses wide researches of the problem reached in Ukraine: O. Reient, G.Kasianov, O.Serdiuk also Wolfram Dornik, Petter Libb, Hannesse Lyaidinger, Alexander Miller.

We touched the problem of heroic behaviour of young people, mobilization and consequences of hunger strike during of the first months of WWI. We describe such part of citizenships life like alcohol consumption, reading books, physical training activities.

The most important theme of research is migration and refugees, captives. We told about attitude of citizens to them how their appearance affected everyday life of the city.

Continuation of hostilities has distorted the life of society and every inhabitant of the country. Attempts by the authorities to improve the way of life, to alleviate the problem of lack of basic necessities, and to prevent devastation and slipping into chaos did not yield the expected results. Against the background of continuous impoverishment of the majority of the population, crime and delinquency flourished. The general tension of the social situation, the uncertainty of the situation of everyone forced everyone to want change, to accelerate it. The presence of some parallels with the current military-political situation in eastern Ukraine suggests that this topic has both cognitive and scientific and practical significance of socio-political nature. In addition, exploring the life of the city’s inhabitants in 1914-1917, we can answer the question of how it happened that the city of Kyiv and its inhabitants were ready to accept the status of the capital of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and later to a neutral perception of the German imperial army streets in March 1918. In our study, we came to this conclusion. The war became more and more difficult with everyday life; the background of everyday hard life, a crisis was ripe in a tired society. The war and the crisis deepened the conflict between the state and the citizens. One of the options for improvement could be to weaken the tsar’s policy on the national question, especially for the residents of the city of Ukrainian and Jewish origin. Playing with Poles, Czechs and Slovaks (most of the latter fought in the Austro-Hungarian army and were prisoners of war), allowing them to create their own, national, military formations directly in the city, and meeting total resistance from the tsarist bureaucracy in their national question only intensified the contradiction. Desiring change and accelerating it, the inhabitants of Kyiv later, due to the lack of cohesion and general fatigue, turned out to be only extras in the scenes of 1917-1921.