Rebellion at Kyiv University Faculty of Journalism in 1965 as a Students Reaction to the Beginning of Khrushchev's Thaw Drawdown

The author, as a participant of those events, seeks to document to the information circulation the students challenge to ideological dogmatism of communist rule during the period of the Sixtiers. This process is still not covered, or rather, almost unknown. And it took place at T. Shevchenko National University Faculty of Journalism. These events must not only be replicated, but also comprehended in Ukrainian journalism. Only one way is possible to replicate and comprehend these events: to touch the primary sources that are scattered in archival repositories; in still living souls of the participants, who keep in their memory dates, names, situations. This is not easy in the prism of time dimension. We rightly evaluate the era of party dictatorship when human dignity and honor were not of fundamental importance. Because everyone should be like all the others. But there were also such as Matvii Shestopal, not like «all the others». A thoughtful teacher, honest Ukrainian patriot, principled communist who dared to rebel against the Communist regime, when he had spoken publicly at Vasyl Ellan-Blakitnyi anniversary evening about Ukrainians, whose «national consciousness is at the bug’s level». Or when he publicly «excoriated» popular in the Soviet-era Moscow bilingual theory as a «stillbirth thing». And these sparks of «great fire» were passed on to students. And they believed him unconditionally, because they saw in him the true figure of a fighter for the fate of the native Ukrainian people. And they unequivocally rose up to defend him when they rebelled that «they would leave the university» if Shestopal would be fired from the university and expelled from the party. Students-journalists did not defeat, but declared themselves as the creative spirit strength that was being born in their young souls. The communist «machine» habitually ruined those protest germs, but did not overwhelm many of them, and this is an invaluable lesson of “Shestopal case”