Family, Masculinity, and Heroism in Russian War Posters of the First World War *

If middle-class Europe seemed to be suffering from a “crisis of masculinity “in the first decade of the twentieth century, ¹ both Russia's elite and peasantry experienced instead a crisis of “patriarchal authority.” After 1905, the patriarchal authority of the Tsar and his government was undermined by revolution, and the authority of fathers in peasant households was increasingly challenged by their sons. When Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary in August of 1914, the tsarist government faced significant challenges on numerous domestic fronts: demands for political participation among elites, the strains caused by the multi-ethnic nature of the Empire, and rising social unrest, especially among urban workers. ² To counteract this threat of fragmentation, the Russian mobilization for war emphasized the unity of the peoples of the Russian Empire as one nation. Despite the cracks that had already begun to appear in this image, the dominant metaphor of the Russian army—and by extension the Russian Empire—at the beginning of the war, was still that of a family united in battle for Tsar and Fatherland.