Vasyl Ovsienko

Vasyl Vasyliovych Ovsienko was born into a peasant family on 8 April 1949 in the village of Lenino (now Stavky [uk]) in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union.^[1] He was the ninth and youngest surviving child in his family. His father had received two years of education, while his mother had received no formal education and was illiterate. His maternal family was descended from members of the Polish szlachta.^[2] At an early age, Ovsienko became captivated by literature, writing poetry. Some of his works were published in the local Star of Polesia newspaper.^[1]

Ovsienko first came into contact with ethnographer Vasyl Skurativskyi [uk] in the mid-1960s, and was introduced to the Sixtiers political movement from him. He was further introduced to the samizdat of Vasyl Symonenko in 1965, while studying at philology at Kyiv State University. He helped to propagate samizdat as a student and afterwards as a teacher in the village of Tashan [uk].^[1]

With the beginning of the 1972–1973 Ukrainian purge, the leaders of the Sixtier were arrested and reform-minded Petro Shelest was removed as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Ovsienko continued to publish samizdat alongside Vasyl Lisovyi [uk] and Yevhen Proniuk. Proniuk and Lisovyi were both arrested in summer 1972, while Ovsienko was arrested on 5 March 1973. Threatened with punitive psychiatry, Ovsienko gave up the names of individuals he had given samizdat. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment.^[1]

During his first sentence (spent in Mordovia) Ovsienko became acclimated with other political prisoners, and had begun participating in hunger strikes and prison strikes within a year of his term.^[1] He left prison on 9 February 1977, met with Lisovyi in Zhytomyr, and returned to Lenino a month later. Following his return to Lenino Ovsienko created a makeshift radio antenna and used it to obtain broadcasts from the Ukrainian-language service of Radio Liberty. After hearing about the founding of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in a Radio Liberty broadcast, Ovsienko spread the news to close friends. He also again began publishing samizdat, this time publishing the poetry of Vasyl Stus.^[2]

Ovsienko was again arrested in November of that year. Ovsienko was charged with resisting arrest, including insulting an officer and ripping two buttons from his jacket, and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. The 1977 arrest occurred after he had met with Ukrainian Helsinki Group activists Oksana Meshko and Olha Babych (sister of imprisoned activist Serhii Babych [uk]), and both Meshko and Babych were also arrested shortly after the meeting.^[1] Amnesty International later argued in 1982 that the charges against Ovsienko were false.^[3] Ovsienko spent his second sentence in prisons in Ukraine's Zhytomyr and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. While imprisoned, he joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in 1978.^[3]