We present optical photopolarimetric observations of the BL Lac object S4 0954+658 obtained with the 70-cm telescope in Crimea , 40-cm telescope in St.Petersburg , and 1.8-m Perkins telescope at Lowell Observatory ( Flagstaff , Az ) .
After a faint state with a brightness level R \sim 17.6 mag registered in the first half of January 2011 , the optical brightness of the source started to rise and reached \sim 14.8 mag during the middle of March , showing flare-like behavior .
The most spectacular case of intranight variability was observed during the night of 2011 March 9 , when the blazar brightened by \sim 0.7 mag within  7 hours .
During the rise of the flux the position angle of optical polarization rotated smoothly over more than 200 degrees .
S4 0954+658 is a gamma-ray blazar with gamma-ray flux of ( 5 \pm 3 ) x10 ^ { -10 } phot cm ^ { -2 } s ^ { -1 } according to the Fermi 11-month Catalog Extragalactic Sources .
Our analysis of contemporaneous Fermi LAT data does not show any sign of increased gamma-ray activity above the detection threshold except for an elevated flux on 2011 March 5 , JD 2455626 , coincident with the local optical maximum .