What is patriotism: emotion or ideology? If it is a feeling, what forms its basis: love or hate, pride or shame? If ideology, then what is it - conservative or revolutionary; to support whom or what is it focused on: power, nation, class, state or society? In his book, Vladislav Aksenov, using extensive material from the 19th - early 20th centuries, analyzes ideological discussions and emotional registers of various social groups that unleashed a "war of patriotism" in attempts to appropriate the Fatherland. In this war, aggressive patriotic propaganda constructed images of external and internal enemies and subordinated politics to emotions, as a result of which such abstract categories as "national honor and dignity" became factors in international relations and pushed countries towards a world war. The author shows all the contradictory nature of this historical phenomenon, the cyclical nature of patriotic debates and the crises to which they lead. Vladislav Aksenov - Doctor of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, author of many works on the history of Russia at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries.