Greetings from the rector on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of UzhNU
Dear colleagues, friends, dear university family!
Our alma mater, whose foundation day we are celebrating today, opened its doors to students for the first time in the year the Second World War ended. Newly demobilized front-line soldiers and young patriots were among the first students who crossed its threshold. They dreamed and sincerely believed that they saved Europe from new wars by defeating Nazism, and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be able to study, develop science, and form their worldview exclusively for the sake of strengthening peace, mutual understanding, fraternal relations between peoples and progressive development of human civilization.
However, no post-war generation of Ukrainians has ever experienced long-lasting peace, societal tranquility and guarantee of human rights. Political repressions began immediately after the Second World War, when the Soviet repressive authorities arrested nationally conscious students right in the lecture halls and imprisoned them in the camps of Siberia, persecuted them for supporting the national liberation struggle, their native language or faith, and forced them to learn the falsified history of their own country. The Soviet empire regularly suppressed democratic liberation revolutions in the neighboring countries, unleashed armed conflicts in different parts of the world, and then forced our fathers to participate in those conflicts. The names of the countries where Moscow marked its presence with blood are known to the whole world: Korea-1950, Hungary-1956, Czechoslovakia-1968, Afghanistan-1979, Azerbaijan-1990, Georgia and Lithuania-1991, Moldova-1992, Caribbean and Middle East crises, wars in Vietnam, the countries of Indochina, Africa...
After a series of unsuccessful attempts to establish a pro-Russian puppet government in independent Ukraine, in 2014 Russia openly unleashed a military conflict against us, which turned into a full-scale war of aggression and brutal occupation of Ukrainian territories. Today, a fierce national liberation struggle against our eternal enemy, the occupier, is going on in Ukraine. This is the struggle for the state independence of Ukraine, for the right to be called and be Ukrainians, for the preservation of our ethnicity.
Graduates and teachers of Uzhhorod National University are among the brave defenders of our Motherland. Our students and alumni skillfully and bravely fight on the front lines, protect the state border, the Ukrainian sky and the sea, they keep guarding our critical infrastructure and maintaining public order in the country. They train future officers and specialists in military and peaceful professions, treat wounded soldiers and civilians in hospitals, clinics and medical centers, strongly support the national volunteer movement with their financial contributions and personal participation, take care of refugees and displaced persons, strengthen our faith in Victory on the information front.
These are the realities of celebrating the 77th anniversary of the foundation of Uzhhorod National University. Our generation is taking the most important exam in its life - the exam of the delayed war for the Independence of our native Ukraine. And none of us has the slightest doubt that we will pass it perfectly, because God is with us, Truth is on our side, Freedom is with us and the support of the Free World is with us!
Dear colleagues, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you good health, strength of spirit, creative inspiration, well-being and comfort in your families, wisdom and foresight, new achievements and unshakable faith in our Victory!
Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Heroes!
Rector of UzhNU, Volodymyr SMOLANKA
