Rumors and Mythologems of the Russian Revolution

This article examines rumors on the eve of and during the revolutions of 1917 that expressed the mood of various categories of the population and which, under conditions of an information crisis, often became a stimulus to action. Special attention is paid to the intertextual nature of rumors, which attached to themselves political, religious-eschatological, and folkloric subjects. With the aim of reconstructing social consciousness, the author examines the psychological condition of society and visual satire as expressions of the emotional atmosphere of the Revolutionary era. The author concludes that the epoch of troubles was furthered by the spread of mass phobias that coalesced into collective psychoses as stimuli to collective protest and other forms of sometimes violent action including pogroms and collective justice.