World War One Riots

A cartoon that highlights the situation regarding how Germany was viewed by many countries worldwide, including Russia.

As the Great War came to depend on Russia’s military input, riots again broke out in Red Square – this time caused by ‘an outpouring of nationalist sentiment at the start of the war’[1]. Rather than attacking the government, in this case, the people of Russia were rioting against the enemy: the Germans, and we see that Red Square provided them with an area to express their animosity towards the Germans.

A newspaper clipping from a British newspaper that features the anti-war riots of 1915, which shows how international media caught sight of the riots occurring in Red Square.

Where before we met Russians incensed by the injustices served to them by their Tsar, here we encounter Russians who join the riot ‘with flags, and portraits of the tsar, singing the national hymn, gathering workers from factories, and destroying German firms and apartments along the way’[2]. This suggests that these forms of riot were not solely based on subservience, but instead were motivated by whatever ideas appealed to the general population at the time.

Red Square serves as a commonplace for the people of Moscow, and more generally, the Russian people, to come together in order to riot together in order to showcase these ideas. In this case, we see that the existence of a square in the centre of Moscow, such as Red Square is located, allowed for the masses to congregate together in a demonstration of mass impact that managed to reach international news.