This article analyzes the evolution of propagandistic writings by the Russian academic community during World War I. Many leading university professors and college teachers contributed to wartime discourse: V. M. Bekhterev, E. D. Grimm, F. F. Zelinsky, N. I. Kareev, M. M. Kovalevsky, M. K. Liubavsky, M. I. Rostovtsev, E. N. Trubetskoy, and M. I. Tugan-Baranovky, among others. Their texts are analysed in the context of the changing relationship between society, state power, and higher education, particularly in terms of how the theme of war as a struggle for culture and science against barbarity was gradually replaced by the fight against «German domination» and the image of the national enemy. Ultimately, the emphasis on the «inner world» as a source of patriotic unity gave way to a more divisive search for internal enemies.

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