The Defence of Thought: Why Ukraine Must Support Her Intellectuals During War
By Matthew Parish
Thursday 5 November 2026
There is a natural tendency during wartime to regard intellectual activity as a luxury. When soldiers are dying in trenches, cities are being bombarded and the state is struggling to finance its military operations, the activities of philosophers, historians, literary critics and other intellectuals may appear of secondary importance. What is the value of a philosophical treatise when a brigade needs ammunition? Why should society support a novelist when an ambulance is required to evacuate wounded soldiers? These are understandable questions, particularly in Ukraine, where the demands of national survival have become so immediate that every expenditure of public resources invites scrutiny.
Yet this apparently sensible way of thinking conceals a profound misunderstanding about what a nation is and why it is worth defending. A country is not simply a collection of buildings, roads, agricultural fields and military installations. It is also a community of ideas, accumulated knowledge, historical memory and shared aspirations. Without these things, a country may retain its territory and its institutions while gradually losing the qualities that made it distinctive. Intellectuals are amongst the principal custodians and creators of these less tangible aspects of national existence, and their survival is therefore no less a matter of national importance than the preservation of physical infrastructure.
The argument is not that intellectuals are more important than soldiers, farmers, factory workers or the countless ordinary people whose labour sustains a country at war. Nor is it that intellectuals should automatically enjoy material privileges or exemption from the burdens imposed upon their fellow citizens. Rather, the argument is that intellectual work constitutes a particular kind of public good, the value of which may be difficult to measure immediately but whose absence can inflict damage upon a society that takes generations to repair. War is precisely the moment at which this distinction becomes most important, because the urgent demands of the present can so easily extinguish the intellectual resources upon which the future depends.
Ukraine has exceptionally powerful historical reasons to understand this danger. During the 1920s, a remarkable flowering of Ukrainian literature, theatre, philosophy and artistic experimentation took place, particularly in Kharkiv, then the capital of Soviet Ukraine. This generation of creative intellectuals sought to establish Ukrainian culture as a participant in the broader European intellectual world, rather than as a provincial appendage of Russian civilisation. Their achievements were extraordinary, but their opportunities were tragically brief. Under Stalin, the Soviet authorities systematically persecuted and murdered many of them, culminating in the mass executions of Ukrainian writers and artists at Sandarmokh in 1937.
The destruction of what became known as the Executed Renaissance was not simply the elimination of a group of politically inconvenient individuals. It was an assault upon the capacity of Ukrainian society to think independently, to develop its own intellectual traditions and to imagine a national future distinct from that prescribed in Moscow. When the playwright Mykola Kulish, the theatre director Les Kurbas and their contemporaries were murdered, Ukraine lost not merely the works they had already produced but all the books, plays, ideas and intellectual movements they might subsequently have created. The consequences of such losses cannot be calculated through ordinary economic analysis, because the most important intellectual achievements are often those that never materialise when the people capable of producing them are silenced.
The contemporary Russian invasion of Ukraine has revived this historical tragedy in a different form. Ukrainian writers, journalists, academics and cultural figures have been killed while serving in the Armed Forces, documenting Russian war crimes or simply carrying on with their ordinary lives under bombardment. PEN Ukraine and its partners have documented the deaths of more than 300 Ukrainian cultural figures during the full-scale invasion, while UNESCO has verified damage to hundreds of cultural sites and thousands of educational institutions. The physical destruction is staggering, but its deeper significance lies in the interruption of intellectual continuity. A destroyed university may eventually be rebuilt, whereas an entire generation of lost scholarship and creative work cannot necessarily be recovered.
Consider the fate of the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who died in July 2023 after being injured in a Russian missile attack upon a restaurant in Kramatorsk. She had been documenting Russian war crimes and had helped recover the wartime diary of another murdered Ukrainian writer, Volodymyr Vakulenko. Her work demonstrated something essential about the relationship between intellectual endeavour and national defence. The preservation of historical truth is itself a form of resistance, particularly against an aggressor whose political narrative depends upon denying the independent existence of Ukrainian history and identity. Amelina was not commanding a military formation, but she was defending something without which military victory would be intellectually incomplete.
A similarly revealing event occurred in Kharkiv in May 2024, when a Russian missile strike destroyed part of the Factor-Druk printing facility, killing seven employees and destroying thousands of books. The immediate human tragedy was the loss of those workers, whose deaths deserve remembrance independently of any larger cultural argument. Yet the destruction of printing machinery and books also represented an attack upon the means by which Ukrainian ideas are reproduced and transmitted. A bookshop or printing press may appear an unlikely instrument of national security, but a society deprived of the ability to produce its own literature gradually becomes dependent upon the intellectual products of others.
These examples suggest that intellectual life is not an ornamental addition to the Ukrainian national project. It is one of the things the Ukrainian national project exists to preserve. Russia's historical efforts to subordinate Ukrainian culture demonstrate why an independent intellectual tradition matters, because political domination becomes substantially easier when a population is persuaded that it possesses no legitimate history, philosophy or literature distinct from that of its imperial neighbour. The philosopher who examines the foundations of political sovereignty, the historian who reconstructs suppressed national experiences and the novelist who gives expression to contemporary Ukrainian life are all contributing to a collective understanding of what it means to be Ukrainian.
Nevertheless, the importance of intellectuals extends well beyond questions of national identity. Every successful modern state depends upon a sophisticated body of knowledge that cannot be improvised at the moment it becomes urgently necessary. Engineers, mathematicians, medical researchers, economists, legal scholars and scientists contribute to the systems that sustain contemporary societies, often through work whose practical applications emerge only years after the original research was undertaken. The boundary between abstract and practical thought is much less distinct than political rhetoric sometimes suggests. Ideas that initially appear obscure can eventually transform military logistics, communications, medical treatment, agricultural productivity or the organisation of public institutions.
The history of technological development is full of discoveries whose eventual importance could scarcely have been anticipated by those responsible for their initial formulation. Mathematical theories that once appeared to possess little practical relevance subsequently became indispensable to modern cryptography and digital communications. Research into the foundations of computing laid the groundwork for technologies that now influence almost every dimension of warfare. Philosophical debates about rationality, language and decision-making have acquired renewed significance with the development of artificial intelligence. A government that supports only research with an immediately identifiable application risks destroying the intellectual foundations of innovations it will desperately need in the future.
For Ukraine, this problem has immediate economic implications. The country cannot reasonably expect to finance its post-war reconstruction indefinitely through foreign donations, concessional loans and humanitarian assistance. It will eventually need a highly productive economy capable of generating sophisticated goods and services, attracting investment and retaining skilled workers. Universities and research institutions are essential to that process, not merely because they provide professional qualifications but because they create environments in which new ideas, technologies and economic activities can develop. A country that loses its most talented researchers and teachers during a prolonged conflict may find that rebuilding its intellectual capacity is considerably more difficult than rebuilding its physical infrastructure.
There is also the problem of intellectual emigration. Ukraine has already experienced substantial movements of academics, scientists and other highly educated professionals abroad, some of whom have found opportunities that may be unavailable in their homeland during wartime. International academic institutions have an important role to play in offering temporary support, but such generosity can have unintended consequences if it facilitates the permanent departure of Ukraine's intellectual elite. The objective should not be to prevent talented Ukrainians from developing international careers, but to ensure that meaningful opportunities remain available within Ukraine itself. A country whose brightest minds can flourish only in Berlin, London or Cambridge risks becoming intellectually dependent upon the very foreign institutions that initially sought to assist it.
The answer cannot simply be to demand patriotism from intellectuals. Intellectual work depends upon conditions that are not always easily reconciled with the practical and psychological demands of wartime life. Serious scholarship often requires extended periods of concentration, access to books and research facilities, conversations with intellectual equals and a degree of material security. A philosopher cannot necessarily produce worthwhile work while constantly worrying about the next month's rent, any more than a laboratory scientist can conduct advanced experiments without functioning equipment. The intellectual contribution of an individual may be substantial even when its immediate economic value is difficult to establish, and this is one of the reasons universities, foundations and scholarly institutions exist in the first place.
There is a further dimension to this argument that is particularly uncomfortable during wartime. Intellectuals have an obligation not merely to support the societies in which they live, but sometimes to criticise them. A functioning intellectual culture cannot be reduced to the production of patriotic affirmations, however understandable the temptation may be to demand national unity in the face of external aggression. Independent thinkers must retain the freedom to examine military strategy, political corruption, economic policy, administrative failures and the ethical implications of decisions taken by their own governments. Such criticism should be responsible, attentive to operational security and conscious of the sacrifices being made by soldiers and civilians. But an intellectual class that feels obliged to agree with every official position has abandoned much of its essential purpose.
This is particularly important in Ukraine because the country is fighting not merely for independence but for the opportunity to develop as a free and democratic European society. If the demands of wartime mobilisation were to suppress intellectual independence indefinitely, Ukraine would risk reproducing some of the authoritarian habits she seeks to escape. The ability to distinguish between legitimate criticism and deliberate collaboration with an enemy is therefore central to the preservation of democratic institutions. A confident society does not regard every awkward question as an act of disloyalty, and a confident government recognises that intellectual disagreement can strengthen rather than weaken national resilience.
Intellectuals themselves must accept corresponding responsibilities. There is nothing particularly admirable about possessing an advanced degree, publishing obscure articles or cultivating an air of intellectual superiority. Academic titles do not confer moral authority, and intellectuals who seek public support must be prepared to explain why their activities contribute to a broader social good. They should participate in public debate, educate younger generations, communicate their research beyond narrow professional communities and engage with the practical difficulties confronting the country in which they live.
Intellectual distinction should not become an excuse for withdrawing into an insulated world of professional conferences and institutional privileges while others carry the burdens of war.
Nor should we imagine that all intellectuals are university professors or members of established academic institutions. A thoughtful journalist investigating corruption, a self-educated historian preserving local records, an independent writer documenting life near the front and a schoolteacher encouraging children to develop critical faculties may all contribute substantially to the intellectual life of their society. Ukraine has a particularly rich tradition of intellectual engagement outside formal academic structures, reflecting periods in its history when universities and state institutions were subject to ideological control. Some of the most important Ukrainian thinkers have been dissidents, prisoners, poets and independent scholars whose work was undertaken in defiance of official authority rather than under its protection.
This broader understanding of intellectual life matters because it prevents the defence of intellectuals from becoming a defence of a privileged professional caste. The object of public support should be the cultivation of knowledge and independent thought, not the preservation of particular institutions for their own sake. Universities that do little meaningful teaching or research should not be immune from scrutiny, and academic appointments should be based upon intellectual merit rather than political influence or personal relationships. Public funding must carry reasonable expectations of institutional transparency, intellectual seriousness and educational value. The independence of scholarship does not require the abandonment of accountability.
Practical support during wartime need not involve vast additional expenditures from an already strained Ukrainian state budget. International universities could establish collaborative research programmes with Ukrainian institutions, providing access to libraries, digital resources, laboratory facilities and international scholarly networks. Philanthropic foundations could support modest fellowships that permit Ukrainian researchers and writers to continue their work without being compelled to leave the country permanently. Publishers could assist in translating Ukrainian scholarship and literature into foreign languages, while foreign academic societies could organise visiting lectureships, conferences and joint publications. These forms of assistance would often require relatively modest resources compared with the enormous sums necessarily devoted to military equipment and reconstruction.
Within Ukraine itself, there is a strong argument for maintaining a limited but reliable system of intellectual support, with particular attention to early-career scholars and those whose professional institutions have been destroyed or displaced. Small research grants, functioning university libraries, support for independent publishers and affordable spaces for intellectual exchange can make a disproportionate difference to the vitality of a national intellectual culture. Such programmes should be administered through independent and transparent procedures, avoiding both political patronage and the assumption that intellectual merit can be measured exclusively through bureaucratic indicators. The point is to preserve a living intellectual community, not merely to maintain the outward appearance of academic administration.
Lviv has a special role to play in this process. Its universities, libraries, publishing traditions and historically cosmopolitan intellectual culture provide an environment in which serious reflection can continue even under the conditions imposed by war. The city has become a place of refuge and encounter for people displaced from other parts of Ukraine, and this creates opportunities for intellectual collaboration that might not otherwise have arisen. A scholar arriving from Kharkiv, a writer displaced from the Donbas and a researcher working in Lviv may discover common interests that cross regional and disciplinary boundaries. Such encounters are amongst the less visible ways in which Ukraine's national intellectual life can renew itself during a period of extraordinary adversity.
The preservation of intellectual life is also important for the psychological survival of a society. War imposes an exhausting insistence upon the immediate present, reducing human attention to questions of danger, survival, loss and uncertainty. Literature, philosophy, history and art provide opportunities to think beyond these constraints, to place contemporary suffering within a broader human perspective and to imagine futures that are not exclusively defined by violence. These activities are sometimes dismissed as escapism, but the capacity to imagine a different future is one of the psychological prerequisites of enduring a difficult present. A society that loses the ability to think beyond war may find that the war continues to dominate its collective imagination long after the fighting has ended.
There is a danger in defining the value of intellectual activity entirely by reference to its usefulness to the war effort. Some forms of scholarship have obvious military applications, while others appear to possess none whatsoever. A philosopher investigating the nature of consciousness, a mathematician studying abstract structures or a historian researching medieval religious institutions may seem remote from the immediate requirements of Ukrainian national defence. Yet the freedom to pursue knowledge for its own sake is one of the defining characteristics of an open civilisation. If every intellectual activity must justify itself through immediate military utility, the nation may survive the war while impoverishing the intellectual freedoms that its citizens fought to protect.
This brings us to the deeper philosophical question underlying the entire debate. What is the purpose of a state? If its only objective were physical survival, then perhaps every resource should be directed towards military defence until the last enemy soldier had been expelled. But states are not ends in themselves. They are political arrangements intended to make possible forms of human flourishing that individuals cannot achieve alone. Education, culture, scientific discovery, intellectual exploration and the free exchange of ideas are amongst the activities through which human beings give meaning to collective existence. National defence is essential because these possibilities require protection, not because the perpetual mobilisation of society is itself the ultimate purpose of political life.
There is therefore a profound irony in any suggestion that Ukraine should suspend her intellectual ambitions until victory has been achieved. Such a policy would postpone the very purposes for which victory is being sought, while simultaneously weakening the intellectual institutions required to sustain independence after the war. It would also underestimate the extraordinary resilience of Ukrainian society, whose citizens have continued to publish books, perform music, attend university lectures and engage in serious public debate despite the persistent threat of Russian attacks. These activities are not evidence that Ukrainians have forgotten the war. They are evidence that Ukrainian civilisation possesses aspirations that extend beyond it.
The sacrifices made by Ukrainian soldiers deserve the highest recognition, and no serious discussion of intellectual support should disregard the urgent material requirements of those defending the country. Nevertheless, the obligations of a society at war cannot be confined to the immediate needs of the battlefield. It must also protect its children, preserve its institutions, sustain its collective memory and cultivate the intellectual capacities that will allow future generations to inhabit a country worth living in. There is no contradiction between maintaining a military defence and maintaining a vigorous intellectual culture, provided the different requirements of each are approached with seriousness and a proper understanding of their respective importance.
A nation can lose its buildings and rebuild them. It can lose its factories and reconstruct them with new equipment. It can even lose territory temporarily and hope to recover it through military force or political settlement. But when a society loses its intellectual traditions, its most creative thinkers and the institutions through which knowledge passes between generations, the consequences may remain invisible until it is too late to reverse them. The history of Ukraine's Executed Renaissance should serve as a permanent warning of this danger.
Ukraine must defend its intellectuals not because they deserve special treatment, but because independent thought is one of the foundations of the free society Ukrainians are struggling to preserve. The philosopher in a university office, the teacher in a damaged school, the historian examining suppressed archives and the writer recording the experiences of ordinary people are engaged in different dimensions of the same national undertaking. They are helping to ensure that Ukraine possesses not merely an independent state, but an independent civilisation capable of understanding its past, examining its present and choosing its own future.
The ultimate justification for supporting intellectuals during war is therefore surprisingly simple. A country must not become so consumed by the struggle to survive that it forgets what makes survival worthwhile. Ukraine's soldiers are defending the possibility of a free Ukrainian future, and its intellectuals are amongst those entrusted with imagining what that future might contain. Both tasks deserve the respect of a society determined not merely to endure, but to flourish.
