Vasyl Ovsiienko

Public figure, member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, political prisoner, cellmate of Vasyl Stus, publicist, historian of the dissident movement, and staff member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. For producing and distributing samizdat literature during his student years, he was imprisoned in March 1973 for four years in the Mordovian labor camps. In 1979, he was again imprisoned for three years on fabricated charges of resisting the police; in 1981, he was sentenced to ten years in special-regime labor camps and five years of exile on charges of conducting “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” He was declared a particularly dangerous repeat offender. He served his sentence in camps in the Perm region and was released in August 1988. He took part in the Ural expedition that in the autumn of 1989 transported to Ukraine the remains of Vasyl Stus, Yurii Lytvyn, and Oleksa Tykhyi, as well as in annual civic expeditions to the Days of Remembrance at the Sandarmokh tract (Karelia) and the Solovetsky Islands. Together with Yevhen Zakharov, he prepared a four-volume collection of materials and documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, several books by former political prisoners, and three volumes of the International Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents (2006, 2011). He recorded two hundred autobiographical interviews with political prisoners and dissidents and compiled reference profiles on them. Laureate of the Vasyl Stus Prize (2000), the Ivan Ohienko Prize (2006), and the International Literary Prize of the Voskobiinyk Family Foundation (2006). Awarded the Order of Merit, 3rd Class (2005), the Order for Courage, 1st Class (2006), and the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 5th Class (2009).