Spiritual crisis as a threat to the security of society: lessons from history

The purpose of the study is to analyze the crisis phenomena in the field of spiritual culture, acting as factors of the destruction of the established system of social relations, based on specific historical material. The article discusses the basic concepts of research: social security, spiritual security, spiritual crisis, spiritual degradation, nihilism. The scientific novelty of the work is to study the impact of destructive changes in the field of spiritual culture on the destruction of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. As a result, it is argued that the spiritual degradation of society carries potential risks of social cataclysms and fundamental social transformations. Russian history convincingly testifies that it is impossible to build a new just society on the ruins of the former spiritual culture.