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Abstract. This paper focuses on the key moments of sesquicentennial preparations at Moscow University in 1903–1905, as well as on the actions of Russian state officials who tried to frustrate all celebrations. Special attention is given to a group of initiative students and professors who wanted to organize a public banquet after finding out that the official festival had been cancelled. The banquet was represented as part of campagne des banquets and should have been used as a place for public protest against government’s repressive policy towards universities. As the paper notes, despite the fact that even this plan was failed (because of notorious shooting on Bloody Sunday), the sesquicentennial was not forgotten. On 9 January 1905, Moscow University received hundreds of greetings and compliments from other educational institutions, unions and corporations expressing their solidarity with the high school in the struggle for independence and academic freedom. The paper concludes that even without festivities university anniversary works as a powerful consolidation mechanism, which allowed Moscow University to unite Russian liberal intelligentsia and to prepare for future confrontation at the start of the First Russian Revolution.
Keywords: university, anniversary, festival, Russian Empire, First Russian Revolution, 1905.