Ignat Semyonovich Danilenko (1932—2019) was a Russian military theorist, a Major General, writer and philosopher. He was Doctor of Sciences, professor, educator and an honored worker of science of the Russian Federation. We are greatly honored to present this translation of an essay by the late Professor Danilenko.
The First World War began as a confrontation between the armed forces of two military-political coalitions—the Entente and the Central Powers, which initially included three states each: Great Britain, France, Russia and Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey. The war was planned to be short-term, without the involvement of civilians, who were not drafted into the armed forces.
But the war turned out to be long-lasting. Over time, it transformed into an all-encompassing inter-societal confrontation and subordinated to its interests not only the state and industrial-economic life, but also the system of everyday life of the population of the warring states, which is called civil society, socium, mankind.
The war steadily worsened the conditions and content of the everyday life of the masses in comparison with the established pre-war indicators of material and spiritual needs, including human communication and aspirations for development, and the conditions for their realization. The totality of these indicators represents the human dimension of war. Such a dimension of war is very difficult to realize, because in war the human and anti-human, the social and anti-social are monstrously intertwined. According to Andrei E. Snesarev war, “is a complex phenomenon, difficult to clarify, not easily amenable to both moral and scientific criteria.” At the same time, the human dimension of war is its main criterion, which makes it possible to reveal its essence as an anti-human and anti-social phenomenon.
The social and human dimension of war has two sides: internal and external. The external side is quantifiable—the number of people killed, maimed, starved, deprived of shelter, parents, etc. can be established. However, war changes not only the external indicators of human existence. It disfigures the inner world of people—their consciousness, feelings, aspirations and motives of behavior. These factors are difficult to quantify, but they play an important role in the overall content of human existence. Without analyzing these factors, a one-sided view of war, its results and consequences is obtained. The general development of science and research tools allow us to begin a quantitative analysis of the spiritual side of war.
By its very nature, war is an anti-social, anti-human phenomenon. These qualities are at the root of the origin of war and inevitably manifest themselves in the process of waging it. Even the most just war is based on anti-social, anti-human reasons, and in the process of waging it always inevitably kills people, destroys the fruits of their labor, including the unique and inimitable, causes damage to the environment, and so on. There is only one justification of war from the standpoint of human and social criteria—when it remains the only means of saving the people from the real threat of its destruction by a criminal clan that has seized power, or the need to organize defense against external military aggression.
It is impossible for both warring sides of the war to be just, just as they cannot both be defensive. And mutual injustice is not an uncommon phenomenon in the history of wars, but both sides usually claim to be fighting a defensive and just war. In all wars, the level and nature of manifestation of anti-humanity and anti-sociality by the opposing sides can be the same and different in terms of both the objectives of the war and the nature, means and methods of military combat.
The First World War was unjust, anti-human in its aims on the part of both coalitions. But the shameful primacy, according to the criterion of the manifestation of anti-humanity, belongs to Germany. It unleashed this war and was the first to use chemical weapons and other super-powerful killing and destructive means and merciless ways of their application. In this unjust war, unjust in purpose and character, anti-human and anti-social, there were undoubtedly acts of high humanity and sociality, but this does not make it human, socially justified on the part of its main participants.
Uncovering the impact of the First World War on the societies of the opposing coalitions is a very important, complex and relevant problem. Important, because without it, the unprecedented magnitude and scale of the inhumanity that the war inflicted on the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people for four years remains in the shadows. It also left the survivors of that war, hundreds of millions of people, with many intractable and difficult to remedy disasters and suffering for many post-war years.
The antisocial consequences of the First World War are still felt by many peoples a hundred years later. This problem is difficult because the theory is not developed and the history of the relationship between society and war in general is not fully disclosed. This problem science began to deal with relatively recently. Not even the conceptual apparatus of the study has not yet been formed. Long dogmatic interpretation of the theory and the study of the history of war as a process of armed struggle and its political consequences are evident.
The relevance of the human dimension of the First World War lies in the fact that the lessons taught to humanity by this war are not something to be forgotten, even in the twenty-first century. They remain instructive and allow us to visualize modern wars in the full scope of human life, in which social problems are not only important but also decisive. Analyzing these lessons allows us to distinguish between the socio-heroic manifestations of the human spirit, specifically in this war and war in general, and its criminal-antisocial embodiments in the military struggle.
The impact of the First World War on the societies of the countries involved in it can be rightly divided into general and specific, in relation to each coalition and specifically to its member states. All belligerent countries during the war experienced social tension and destructive impact on their social systems, but to a different extent, depending on their material, moral-psychological, organizational and other resources. This war fundamentally changed the relationship between war and society, which had only been hinted at in Russia in the Russo-Japanese war, in 1904-1905.
In the Great War, there was a profound socialization of war and militarization of social life in all warring countries, which meant the involvement in the process of military struggle of the vital activity of their populations and the subordination of personal, family, group and all social life to the interests of its conduct. The main meaning and purpose of life, not only for the personnel of the armed forces, but also for the majority of the population of the warring countries, was reduced to the conduct of the military struggle, i.e., the struggle for the sake of damaging and destroying the enemy.
Before the First World War, the impact of war on the societies of its leading states was not all-encompassing. In most cases, only the armed forces, not the entire society, were directly involved in the process of military struggle. The influence of societies on the war, the processes of its preparation, its launching, and its conduct was also different. For a long time, war was considered unconnected to the functioning and development of societies. At first, because of the insignificance of this connection, and then because of inertia. War remained a “thing in itself” in the minds of people for a long time. Even Clausewitz’s indication of the connection between war and politics was a great scientific discovery, far from being recognized by everyone.
The analysis of war as a process of armed struggle, isolated from the life of society, was delayed and continued after the war began to develop into an all-encompassing state and social confrontation. The First World War was planned by all states of both coalitions by the method of short-term (six months to a year) campaigns of armed forces. Based on this vision, the war was planned and started. However, it soon reached a deadlock of long-term positional confrontation. Along with the front of armed struggle, other fronts of military struggle had to be created—economic, political, social, spiritual-ideological, scientific-technical, and so on; and the war had to be organized.
Nevertheless, traditionally the attention of theorists and practitioners during the First World War and for a long time after its end was focused on its analysis, mainly as a process of armed struggle and its political consequences. The life activity of the population of the warring states remained in the shadows; people were considered mainly as one of the elements of the process of military struggle, its consumable material along with weapons and other means. What was of interest, first of all, was the process of armed struggle and its results. It did not go so far as to clarify the impact of war on human life. The human dimension of war used to be limited to statistics of losses, determination of economic and other damage.
The First World War not only took under itself the social, family and personal life of people, but also complicated it to the point of unbearability in all respects—socio-economic, moral-psychological, socio-political and others. In the area of socio-economics, the war led to the reduction of family and personal consumption to the minimum and below the physiological level of survival in all states of the warring coalitions, with only a difference in the time of bringing to such a state. Acute shortages of food, fuel, clothing, and housing occurred in all countries. During the war, measures were taken to ration and distribute consumer goods. But this did not stop the growth of social inequality and stratification. The number of the poor increased; among the rich appeared the nouveau riche through speculation and the use of wartime difficulties in violation of moral and legal norms. On this basis, social stratification conflict increased.
Such conflicts took place in all warring countries, despite prohibitions, ideological exhortations and harsh repression by force. Never before had war caused such great damage to social life in the form of mass deaths, physical and moral-psychological disfigurement of people (over 10 million killed and 20 million maimed), disorganization of family life and deformation of the demographic structure of the population of the opposing coalitions.
All belligerent countries suffered particularly heavy losses of young men, i.e., the most productive force of societies. For example, half of French men between the ages of 19 and 32 did not live to see the end of the war. Germany’s losses in men between the ages of 20 and 22 amounted to 35 percent, i.e., one third. Youth losses in Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey were no less. England did not avoid large losses of young people.
In World War I, the whole set of anti-social events that had taken place in various previous wars on local and regional scales manifested themselves; but in this war they manifested themselves in the aggregate and on a global scale. Never before had a war on such a scale distorted the emotional and rational content of peoples’ spiritual life. Pictures of the destruction of the enemy, the disasters of its civilian population became not a cause of embarrassment and regret for what had been done, but a cause of triumph and joy. The vulgarization of relations between men and women, the spread of prostitution, cases of violence, and the degradation of morality in all spheres of life became a widespread norm. The war reduced the level of all that is moral and reasonable among men and nations and increased the proportion of immoral and unreasonable—everything that reduces man to the level of an animal.
People became more susceptible to the ideas of right-wing and left-wing radicalism. All the warring states cultivated the growth of animosity and hatred towards the people of the opposing coalition, nationalism, separatism and social radicalism. The social feeling of the masses of the people changed dramatically—there was much less good feeling and joyful mood, while bitterness, discontent and gloomy moods increased with each year of the war.
For four years of war the citizens of the warring countries were in a state of social stress. Millions of people were deprived of family comfort and personal happiness. Everywhere the percentage of people with deviant behavior, violation of moral and legal norms increased. With the decline in the production of consumer goods, the war sharply increased the production of military goods, weapons and military equipment, increasing their killing and destructive properties. Military production in the period of war preparation was already a means of fabulous enrichment and growth of influence on the course of state and public affairs of the monopolies engaged in it and the banks providing them with loans.
The antisocial nature of the First World War was manifested not only in the fact that it destroyed and maimed so many people, deprived even more people of a normal human life, destroyed a mass of social values they needed, but also in the fact that it created the organizational and technical basis for a new, even more destructive war. In preparing for the war, the states of both coalitions tried to put the achievements of the developing industry at the service of the production of more powerful weapons and military equipment. The war spurred this process. During the years of war in all the warring countries there formed a powerful military-industrial complex, which became the motor, the stimulus for the preparation of new wars. It was an important stage in the history of the development of war as a social phenomenon. The First World War expanded and concretized peoples’ perception of war as a social evil, created by the elites for their narrow selfish purposes, passed off as national interests.
This war was prepared and unleashed by the elites of the states of both military coalitions—the Central Powers and the Entente—under the slogans of defending them from the threats and aggression of the societies of the other coalition. And the masses supported the outbreak of war with noisy demonstrations in capitals and big cities and silent humility in small towns and rural settlements. But the anti-social purpose of the war and the brutal means and methods of military struggle became one of the reasons for the unfolding of the anti-war movement, which took place in all the warring states. In different countries it occurred in different ways and did not coincide in time and nature of manifestation. But in general, the anti-war movement seriously affected the course and overall results of the First World War. As the war progressed, more and more people in all countries realized that they had been cruelly deceived by the leadership of the states of both coalitions with statements about the defensive, therefore just, nature of the war on each side.
Even today mankind has no right to forget how insignificant the causes and reasons for the outbreak of the First World War were in comparison with the evil it caused. It showed the increase of the anti-humanity of war, in spite of well-meaning pre-war appeals and decisions of special international conferences to humanize the process of military struggle. Only the exclusion of war from the historical process is a reliable means and method of humanizing the life of peoples and relations between them.
The First World War inflicted a hard-to-assess damage on the sociality of all countries that participated in this war for a long time and on a large scale, first of all, on the participants of the initial coalitions. But its antisocial character was also manifested in the fact that it became a means of unprecedentedly rapid enrichment of certain countries at the expense of other countries that had suffered from the war. In this way, war, as it were, reserved a place for itself in the arsenal of adventurous politicians and policies. Such politicians, unable to achieve success and public recognition in peace, instead of recognizing their failure, turn to the policy of preparing and launching wars.
The United States not only enriched itself in the course of the First World War, but the victors and the vanquished were indebted to it. Enrichment at the expense of war by individuals and groups, as well as individual states and nations, should be recognized as anti-social, immoral and criminal. The establishment of appropriate legally binding norms would reduce the desire to profit at the expense of war. The war in all belligerent countries aggravated relations between the elite and the people, the elite and the masses, as well as between different layers of the elite. The degree of aggravation and the nature of manifestation were different and affected the conduct of the war and public life in different ways. The pre-war and wartime elites were retained only in the victorious countries. In the defeated countries the elites were swept away by their own people.
The war years saw the development of separatism, aspirations to secede or divide, using the weaknesses of the central government, using the help and support of the enemy, especially in the territories occupied by it, in spite of the objective unifying tendency.
As a result, the post-war world turned out to be more conflictual than the pre-war world. While the overall cost of the First World War to humanity was enormous, it was significantly different for the states and peoples involved. Therefore, it is important not only to evaluate this war from the standpoint of social, truly human criteria, but also specifically in relation to each of the main participants in both coalitions.
For the references, please see the original:
Featured: Russian World War One poster (1917). Top caption: “A World Conflagration.” Bottom caption: “Second Patriotic War.”
