First-year students majoring in Journalism came to the Baikove Cemetery to pay tribute to Ukrainian writer and poet, dissident, and human rights activist Vasyl Stus. The anniversary of his death in soviet camps is marked on September 4. On the Day of Remembrance of Vasyl Stus, students recited poetry, discussed the life of the prominent Ukrainian and his contribution to the struggle for the national revival of Ukraine.
Along with Vasyl Stus, other political prisoners who were condemned to death in camps by the soviet authorities found eternal rest: poet, journalist, human rights activist Yurii Lytvyn and linguist, teacher, defender of the Ukrainian language, and founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group Oleksa Tykhyi. The future journalists laid flowers on the graves of the three dissidents and observed a minute of silence.
“All three of them understood very well that Ukrainians need their own state, because only in their own state can they be protected. The state is a value,” said Natalia Malynovska, a lecturer at the Department of Journalism and Language Communication and a practicing journalist.
The journalism students also visited the graves of other Ukrainian statesmen and dissidents, such as Kyrylo Osmak, Yaroslava Stetsko, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, and Ivan Svitlychnyi.
A photo report of the event was made by student Mykyta Kondratov.