ІЛЮЗІЯ ПРОТИ РЕАЛЬНОСТІ: УКРАЇНСЬКИЙ ДОСВІД ПЕРШОЇ СВІТОВОЇ ВІЙНИ.

The purpose of the research paper is to analyze the public attitudes of the inhabitants of Right-bank Ukraine cities during World War I from the perspective of such abstract categories as 'illusion' and 'reality'. The scientific novelty is in applying a multidisciplinary approach to the study of personal and collective perception of the wartime period of 1914-1917 by the Ukrainian rear area population through the prism of history, philosophy, and social psychology. Conclusions. During 1914-1917, in the cities of Right-bank Ukraine, a fierce confrontation between the illusory and realistic perception of the events of World War I took place. In the conditions of extreme everyday life, illusions performed various functions, the essence of which reduced itself to attempts to find psychological comfort. The natural human tendency to believe in what one wants to believe, with which the military propaganda of the Russian Empire flirted with varying degrees of success, mitigated the objectively depressing impact of the fact of the outbreak of war on the minds of the population in the summer of 1914. However, typical at the time 'illusion of a quick solution', on which the pro-government sentiments were based, was replaced within a year by the 'illusion of occupation', causing an unprecedented panic among the urban population. In the competition between the two controlled and chaotic constructors of illusion -- propaganda and rumors -- the latter won. The heavy burden of the war inevitably led to disillusionment with the power and the expediency of government policy, and, ultimately, to an ontological crisis in the form of social apathy and 'erosion of reality', which testified to its complete capitulation to illusion on the eve of the 1917 revolutionary events. Undermined by the war, critical thinking did not give the general public the ability to distinguish truth from lies. That could not but had a negative impact on society's ability to perceive reality adequately in the following historical era, when various kinds of social populists effectively used the so-called 'fictional reality' to spread their ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]