By the 90 anniversary of the First World War 1914-1918
 

June 28, 1914 in downtown Sarajevo, a Serb student Gavrilo Princip killed with a pistol Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. These shots marked the beginning of one of the bloodiest wars in human history-the First World War.
Entire areas (especially in the North of France) have been transformed into desert. 9,5 million people. were killed or died of wounds, injuring 20 million people., of whom 3.5 million were injured. The greatest losses in Germany, Russia, France and Austria-Hungary (66,6%of all losses). The share of the U.S. accounted for only 1,2%of total losses. From the impact of different types of agents killed many innocent civilians (generalized data not). Hunger and other disasters caused by war, led to increased mortality and lower fertility. The loss of population for these reasons only the 12 warring states accounted for more than 20 million people., Including in Russia, 5 million people., Austria-Hungary, 4.4 million people. In Germany, 4,2 million people. Unemployment, inflation, rising taxes, higher prices - all exacerbated poverty, poverty, extreme insecurity of the vast majority of the population of the warring countries.

Many artists and writers have sensed impending catastrophe, and their work reflected the growing sense of alarm. Paintings of Nicholas Roerich 1912-1913 period reflect the apprehension of the artist and the alarming state of Russian society on the eve of the First World War and the Revolution. Ideas of the Apocalypse have been distributed in the Russian literature of the century. Like his contemporaries, Nikolai Roerich envisioned social upheavals. In the years immediately preceding the First World War, Roerich had a premonition of impending disaster, and his paintings symbolically expressed horrific scale of the conflict, which he knew was approaching the world. In these works Roerich first acts as a "prophet."

1. Fairest degrees - the enemies of anger, 1912
2. Herald, 1914
3. Grad doomed, 1914