The Desacralization of the Monarchy: Rumors and ‘Political Pornography’ during World War I

The February Revolution of 1917 is impossible to imagine without a whole range of rumors. The mixture of fact and fantasy-myths of betrayal and conspiracy cast in xenophobic tones, fused with hearsay about religious, medical and erotic experiments performed by the élites-became an important part of the pre-revolutionary milieu. As A.I. Spiridovich, a well-informed general of the gendarmes, recalled: ‘what was “said” in the capital, and what was passed on to the provinces, together with other rumors and gossip, created, in the end, an atmosphere conducive to revolution… Here everything was simplified, made more comprehensible, vulgar and vile.’1