In 1914, the Pskov Governorate became a front-line territory, and martial law was declared in the city itself. From the first months of the war, a large number of hospitals and infirmaries were located in the city; many residents of Pskov went to the front, both as part of the three infantry regiments that had been stationed in the губернский center before the war and as part of military units from other regions of the country. From 1915, in Pskov, the headquarters of the Northern Front, with the highest-ranking officers, was housed in the building of the boys' gymnasium. They commanded an army of nearly one million soldiers defending the approaches to Petrograd. The combat zone came very close to the borders of the governorate.
For most of the governorate, the war ended on March 3, 1918, with the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but Pskov (from February 26 to November 25, 1918, our city was occupied by German troops), Pskov Uyezd, and parts of Ostrov and Opochka Uyezds remained under occupation by the German (Kaiser’s) army for another nine months and fought to drive it from their native land.