The Russian Empire entered what became known as the First World War in the summer of 1914 as a Great Power on the Eurasian continent. During the first months of the war, the eastern front formed north-south from the East Prussian marshes to the Carpathian Mountains. The army's admission that 500,000 soldiers had deserted during the first year of war, most of them into German and Austrian prisoner-of-war camps, effectively surrendering to the enemy, raised alarm among the military and political elite. The wartime propaganda was one factor in the polarisation of large parts of the imperial population along ethnic or national lines. The war shaped a dramatic transformation of political life in the Russian Empire. Under the cover of the Russian occupation, several politically engaged hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, notably Archbishop Evlogii, launched a new campaign for the reconversion of the Galician population to its traditional Orthodox faith from its Greek-Catholic apostasy.