World War 1914-1919 was the first global shock in the 20th century. Dozens of countries, numbering hundreds of millions of inhabitants, came together in a long-term, exhausting struggle not for life, but for death. For the sake of victory, the principles of humanism, international law and the customs of war were rejected and forgotten. And when peace came, it turned out that everyone had lost. The book provides the reader with the opportunity to look at the events of those years through the eyes of Russian contemporaries who became participants in these grandiose events. Excerpts from diaries, personal letters and newspaper articles collected in the book, supplemented by the author's chronology of events, create a mosaic canvas of Russia's participation in the First World War.