The article reveals the actual significance of V.V. Rozanov’s thoughts, recorded in his archive heritage. Those thoughts are relevant to determine the objective assessment of the events that took place in the theater of ope­rations of the First World War and their impact on the future of Russia. It is noted that the attitude of the thinker was changing while moving to the final of the combat campaign. These facts are reflected in his famous “Apocalypse of our Time”. In the process of increasing the number of military defeats at the front, V.V. Rozanov in his texts less and less believed in a successful outcome of the war. His first thoughts about what had happened did not see the light during the life of the writer and survived only in his literary-epistolary archive, part of which is stored in the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library. For the first time, a significant fragment of V.V. Rozanov’s letter to his eldest daughter Tatyana is published, telling about the imminent tragedy that threatened the country after the army’s defeat. V.V. Rozanov saw that a significant role in Russia’s military failures was played by the corrupting liberal and revolutionary press, its influence on the public consciousness. It was not only he who foresaw the catastrophic finale. In this regard, the article gives an analogy with the ideas of his newspaper colleague, journalist M.O. Menshikov, who entrusted his thoughts in the last months of the war only to his Diary. The studies reveal much in common not only in their individual lives, but also in the attitudes and views on the historical process in the last literary creations of the thinkers.