Russian Futurism at the Outbreak of the First World War: Re-Adjustment, Adaptation and a Search for Ideological Coherence

This essay examines the complex relationship between Russian Futurism and the First World War, focussing on the year 1914 as a decisive rupture in the movement’s trajectory. While often interpreted through the lens of Italian Futurism, Russian Futurism’s early engagement with war was marked by ideological ambiguity and internal fragmentation. This study investigates how Russian Futurists navigated the cultural milieu during the war and highlights how external pressures, public disillusionment and the need for cultural legitimacy shaped the movement in that period. It offers an in-depth analysis of the failed “War and Art” soirée in October 1914, the diverse authorial responses in the Futurist newspaper column “Mourning Hooray”, and Mayakovsky’s polemical essay Budetliane (1914). Ultimately, it argues that the evolution of Russian Futurism in the wartime context reflects a contested negotiation between artistic autonomy, ideological coherence and historical circumstance.