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Jerzy Onuch (1954) jest uznanym na świecie artystą, wykładowcą, kuratorem i dyplomatą. W 1976 roku wraz z Januszem Bałdygą i Łukaszem Szajną stworzył grupę Pracownia Dziekanka, w której działał przez następnych kilka lat. W 1979 roku objął stanowisko współkierownika Studenckiego Centrum Środowisk Artystycznych, następnie Pracowni Dziekanka, i pełnił je do 1986 roku, kiedy wyjechał do USA, a następnie do Kandy. W latach dziewięćdziesiątych oprócz prezentacji twórczości własnej zajął się badaniem i promowaniem młodej sztuki ukraińskiej. Od 1997 do 2004 roku był dyrektorem Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej w Kijowie, następnie – w latach 2005-2010 – dyrektorem Instytutu Polskiego w Kijowie, zaś od 2010 do 2015 roku – dyrektorem Instytutu Kultury Polskiej w Nowym Jorku.

W latach siedemdziesiątych Onuch studiował malarstwo i grafikę na warszawskiej Akademii Sztuk Pięknych. W 1976 roku wraz z Januszem Bałdygą i Łukaszem Szajną skorzystał z propozycji ówczesnego kierownika Dziekanki Wojciecha Krukowskiego, który zaoferował studentom uczelni artystycznych wykorzystanie kamery do realizacji własnych prac. Pokaz Onucha, Bałdygi i Szajny zaowocował zaproszeniem do stałej współpracy, złożonym przez Krukowskiego. W takich okolicznościach trzej młodzi twórcy założyli Pracownię Dziekanka, przedsięwzięcie skupione na otwartym procesie twórczym, eksperymentowaniu i pracy samokształceniowej. Od 1979, po odejściu Krukowskiego, Onuch wraz z Tomaszem Sikorskim przejął stery Studenckiego Centrum Środowisk Artystycznych Dziekanka, które w 1981 roku przeistoczyło się w Pracownię Dziekanka – autonomiczną jednostkę w strukturze ASP (wcześniej SCŚA funkcjonowało pod parasolem SZSP).

W twórczości własnej, podobnie jak w pracy organizacyjnej, Onuch zainteresowany był sztuką nowych mediów, instalacji i performansu. Prowadził również dociekania teoretyczne. W latach osiemdziesiątych zorganizował przeszło siedemdziesiąt wystaw i innych wydarzeń artystycznych. W 1986 roku został zaproszony na konferencję w Vancouver; z wyjazdu tego nie wrócił, wybierając pozostanie na emigracji, by po roku spędzonym w USA osiedlić się w Toronto. Kontynuował działalność artystyczną, edukacyjną i kuratorską.

W połowie lat dziewięćdziesiątych Onuch wrócił do Polski, gdzie już wcześniej regularnie przyjeżdżał z wykładami i brał udział w wystawach (na przykład w Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski w Warszawie). W tym samym czasie zaczął szerzej zajmować się młodą sztuką ukraińską, pełniąc funkcje kuratora wystaw i jurora w konkursach. W 1997 roku został dyrektorem Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej w Kijowie, ściągając do tego miasta prace światowej sławy artystów awangardowych oraz promując młodych ukraińskich artystów zaangażowanych politycznie. Następnie Onuch zajął stanowisko dyrektora Instytutu Polskiego w Kijowie (2005-2010), a wreszcie – od 2010 do 2015 roku – dyrektora Instytutu Kultury Polskiej w Nowym Jorku.

W czasach państwowego socjalizmu w Polsce Onuch tworzył i wystawiał sztukę progresywną, niezależną, eksperymentującą, która niewątpliwie wykraczała poza ramy określone w oficjalnych założeniach polityki kulturalnej. Jednakże niszowy charakter tej działalności nie ściągał na nią represji, choć wiązał się ze skromnymi i niepewnymi środkami.

Źródło:

Tymoteusz Onyszkiewicz, Fuck 89 Manifesto, 2014.

Oles Obertas was born in a family of Ukrainian dissidents Evhen and Nina Obertas. He is a philologist and the author of numerous publications on the Ukrainian dissident movement and Ukrainian samizdat, including the monograph Ukrains’kyi Samvydav: Literaturna crytyka ta publitsystyka (1960 – pochatok 1970 rokiv) (The Ukrainian Samizdat: Literary Criticism and Journalism, 1960s – early 1970s). He obtained his PhD in philology from the Shevchenko Institute of Literature, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Obertas was the first director of the Museum-Archive and Documentation Centre of Ukrainian Samvydav in Kyiv, taking the most active part in classifying and archiving Smoloskyp collections after their relocation in Ukraine. As the director of the Museum-Archive, he organized a series of international exhibitions and conferences, promoting Smoloskyp collections. In 2004, under his guidance, the Museum-Archive joined the International Samizdat Research Association (ISRA), an informal network of over twenty research institutions and archives, studying and preserving samizdat collections.

Born in 1911 to a Bulgarian family in the village of Tresonche in Macedonia (then Ottoman Empire, today Republic of Macedonia), Hristo Ognyanov grew up in a region with an ethnically mixed population. This region was contested by Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and the Ottoman Empire. After the Balkan Wars, the village was included in Serbia. Hristo Ognyanov graduated from the Serbian elementary school in Tresonche, but was forced to interrupt his education and worked as a servant in various places in Skopje. In 1926, he left for Stara Zagora in Bulgaria, where he graduated from the National State School in 1932, while working in the building sector. During this period, Ognyanov joined communist circles, at the same time becoming a member of the Macedonian Youth Organization "Gotse Delchev". This was the time when his interest in literature formed. He started writing poems, collaborated with Eho, Svetulka [Firefly] and other magazines.

In 1932, Ognyanov became a student of law and state economics at the State University in Sofia. Influenced by his brother, he joined the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) and became a member of the Secretariat of the Union of Macedonian Youth Cultural and Educational Organization. He also joined the Macedonian Student Society "Vardar". These organizations were banned after the May 1934 coup d'état. In 1936 Ognyanov became volunteer assistant of the journal Obzor, “a weekly for politics, literature and public life”. Under the pseudonym "Ognyan", he wrote feuilletons and pamphlets, mainly devoted to national issues, especially on the Macedonian question. He opposed the idea of an independent Macedonian nation and language. He also published poetry.

In 1937 Ognyanov graduated from higher education and started working as an attorney-at-law. At the same time, he became reporter for one of the most prestigious Bulgarian newspapers at the time, Zora. In 1939, he printed his first poetry collection Yuzhni vetrove [“Southern Winds”], which was well accepted by the critics. In the same year, Ognyanov was accepted as an auxiliary member of the Journalists' Society and won a Humboldt Scholarship for studying international law in Germany. This coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War. Ognyanov was sent as a correspondent of the Zora newspaper in Berlin. In Berlin in 1940, he married his long-time partner Margarita Hristakeva. In January 1944 Hristo and Margarita Ognyanov moved to Zagreb, where Ognyanov became the secretary of Ivan Mihaylov. I. Mihaylov, head of IMRO, was closely related to German and especially Italian intelligence, and supported the idea of creating an autonomous Macedonian state or a "Macedonia attached to Bulgaria". In Zagreb, Ognyanov compiled his second poem collection "Pateshestvia. Stihotvorenia [Journey. Poems]".

In the middle of September 1944, days after the establishment of the new power in Bulgaria, Hristo Ognyanov managed to reach Vienna. His wife Margarita, though, remained in Bulgaria. After several years of unsuccessful attempts by Ognyanov to withdraw her to Austria, they divorced. IMRO was declared by the new regime a "fascist organization" and its agents – "enemies of the people". Ognyanov was convicted by the People's Court because of his “active fascist and pro-German activity" in absentia. He was also excluded by the Society of Metropolitan Journalists.

In Austria Ognyanov enrolled at the Insbruck University and married the opera singer Inge Mueller. Led by his patriotic views, in 1951 Ognyanov went briefly to Rome for service for Ivan Mihaylov, making research in archives and libraries for the "Macedonian Bulgarians". He recorded the memories of Ivan Mihaylov and other figures of the pro-Bulgarian Macedonian nationalist movement. In 1952 he was invited by the head of the Bulgarian department of The Voice of America in Munich (Alexander Dimitrov) to work at this radio, becoming responsible for the Bulgarian issues. In 1956 Ognyanov was sent to a one-year specialization at the headquarters of The Voice of America in the United States. There he also worked for the Macedonian Tribune newspaper, an organ of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization (MPO) in the United States, and as a lecturer in Bulgarian language at the Syracuse University. In the United States, he joined the circles of Bulgarian political émigrés and developed broad publicist and cultural activities.

In the 1960s Ognyanov began working for Radio Free Europe. There he led numerous programs on the history of Bulgarian literature and culture, in which he presented authors and their work that were banned by the communist authorities. In parallel, Ognyanov began the series "Bulgarian Literature under Communism", in which he critically assessed current developments and events in Bulgaria. He tried to reveal the lies of party propaganda. Among his wide activities were reviewing books and critically presenting articles from the Bulgarian press and broadcasts from Radio Sofia. Ognyanov’s program "Eleven Centuries of Christianity in Bulgaria" received an award by The Catholic Broadcasters Association of America. Under the name "Religion and Atheism in Bulgaria under Communism," he delivered a series of lectures in 1974. In Bulgaria, Ognyanov's activities, including those on religious subjects, were considered by the authorities as "subversive propaganda".

In 1965, the "Petar Beron" Bulgarian Academic Society (BAS "Petar Beron") was established in his home in Munich, with the purpose of uniting Bulgarian scholars working in the West. The society launched the book series "Schriftenreihe zur Bulgarienforschung" and organized numerous conferences. In 1981, in connection with the 1300th anniversary of the Bulgarian state, the society organized cultural events also in the US and Canada. Ognyanov was also a member of EXIL-P.E.N. Zentrum der Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller im Exil in den deutschsprachigen Länden (Centre of Writers in Exile in the German-Speaking Countries). Ognyanov, thus, played an important role in unifying Bulgarian political emigrés, working closely with people from different generations, such as Petar Uvaliev (pseudonym Pierre Rouve, who worked for the BBC in London) as well as the younger émigrés of the 1970s, such as Dimitar Bochev, Dimitar Statkov, and Georgi Markov.

After the political changes of 1989 Ognyanov returned to Bulgaria many times; he was awarded the Madara Rider order, the third most important decoration awarded by the Republic of Bulgaria. His poems and essays were now finally also published in Bulgaria.

Ognyanov passed away in Salzburg, Austria, in 1997.

Petko Georgiev Mihaylov-Ogoyski was born in Ogoya village on 1 November 1929. He studied in his native village, started a high school education in the town of Svoge, moved to Sofia and graduated from the 5th Sofia Male High School in 1948. In 1949-1950 he was on compulsory military service, but in March 1950 he was arrested for the dissemination of political appeals. Ogoyski was sentenced to five years in prison for "enemy poems and conspiracy", and served the sentence in conditions of extreme in various prisons and in the First and Second Object of the Belene Forced Labor Camp on Persin Island. After his release in 1953, due to serving the sentence, considered in working days, he served his soldier service. As a former political prisoner, Ogoyski was allowed to work only in manual industrial jobs. He worked in agriculture, as a drilling worker at state enterprises, and construction painter.

In 1955 Petko G. Mihaylov-Ogoyski married Yagoda Petkova Danova-Yusova from the village of Chepintsi, in 1956 was born their first son Petko; in 1959 – their daughter Maria.

In this period Ogoyski began a history study at the Faculty of History and Philosophy at the Sofia State University, but his graduation was thwarted by his repeated condemnation of "enemy verses" and imprisonment in 1962. After the discharge from prison in 1963, he became a member and chairman of the literary club at the house-museum “Yavorov” in Sofia, which was purged in 1970 after two of its members, Ogoyski’s friends, escaped to the West.

In 1966, the third child of Petko and Yagoda Ogoyski – a son, Hristo, was born. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ogoyski was a painter and worked in a storehouse in which he became a “chief warehouse of paints and tools”. In his free time, he conducted local ethnographical research. Ogoyksi became a member of the Sofia regional literary society and of the Union of the Regional Ethnographers (kraevedi). Some of his texts critical of the regime were published in newspapers and magazines under pseudonyms such as Mitso Gitsin, Petko Murgashki, Dragoslav Bratski, Yaroslav Persinski.

After the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, Ogoyski was among the founding members of the restored Bulgarian Agrarian National Union “Nikola Petkov”, which became part of the Union of Democratic Forces, the main anti-communist coalition consisting of several political organizations. In 1990 Ogoyski was elected member of the Seventh Grand National Assembly of Bulgaria (from 10 July 1990 to 2 October 1991), which adopted the new Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria. He also became a member of the Union of Bulgarian Writers and of the Bulgarian Historical Society. He was appointed as editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Zemedelsko zname" ["Agrarian Banner'], the daily newspaper of the re-established Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) "Nikola Petkov" (1991-1993). Texts of Petko Ogoyski are included in the School Reader "Zabranenite pisateli" ["Banned Writers"], a joint publication of the Hannah Arendt Center, the Centre for European Studies and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Sofia in 2013. In 2015 Petko Ogoyski, together with Bulgarian politicians (mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova; Bulgarian Ombudsman Konstantin Penchev), journalists (Georgi Koritarov), historians (Ivaylo Znepolski, Antonina Zhelyazkova, Valeri Todorov), the writer Georgi Gospodinov, and other public figures was honoured by the magazine “Zaman Bulgaria” for his “contribution to public peace and ethnic understanding in Bulgaria” - http://zaman.bg/bg/vzamanv-vratchi-edinstvenite-nagradi-za-prinos-kam-obshtestveniya-mir/

A biographical study is dedicated to Petko Ogoyski (Ivanova 2012); with a film about him in 2014, the documentary series of the Bulgarian National Television "Open Files" by the investigative journalist Hristo Hristov started.

Valdur Ohakas was an Estonian artist. He studied at the State School of Industrial and Pictorial Arts in 1942–1943, but was called up into the German army in 1943. After that, in 1944–1948, he studied at Tartu State Art Institute, but he did not complete his studies there either. He and others were arrested in 1948 for being members of the Tartu Circle, and sent to a prison camp in Karaganda in Kazakhstan. He was released in 1956. Afterwards, he returned to Tartu and worked as a freelance artist. As a member of the Tartu Circle, he turned to abstract art. In 1959, he became a member of the Estonian Artists' Union.

Attila Olasz, son of Sándor Olasz, painter

Sándor Olasz was born in Hódmezővásárhely on 19 July 1949. He graduated in 1967 from Gábor Bethlen High School in his birthplace. After high school, he graduated in 1973 from the University of Szeged as a Literature and French teacher. In 1973, he was made a member of the permanent editorial staff of the periodical Tiszatáj, and he served as the main editor between 1996 and 2011. Tiszatáj is a literary, artistic, social, and academic periodical which publishes a diverse range of writings and articles.

Oleskandr Oles (Kandyba) was a Ukrainian symbolist, dramatist, poet, and essayist, born in 1878 in the town of Bilopillya, in the Kharkiv guberniia of the Russian Empire (now located in the Sumy region of Ukraine). The Kandyba family were descendants of a well-known Cossack lineage, which meant Oles’ viewed the Bolshevik Revolution with considerable scepticism. In 1917 he had published a volume of poetry in which he had articulated his desire for the restoration of Ukrainian statehood. After the coup, Oles’ remained in exile from 1919 onward, living in Budapest, Vienna, Berlin and Prague. He published many volumes over the course of his lifetime, most of which focused on his longing for Ukraine. His son Oleh Olzhych (Kandyba), born in 1907, became a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1929, staying loyal to the Melnyk faction (OUN-M) after the split in 1938. Olzhych returned to Ukraine in 1941 to help form the Ukrainian National Council. The later years of Oles’ life were difficult. Not only did Hitler divide Czechoslovakia, Oles’ own son Olzhych was captured by the Nazis and tortured to death in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen in June 1944. Oles’ himself died shortly after learning of his son’s death, succumbing to his battle with cirrhosis.

Aleš Opekar is a Czech musicologist, journalist and director of the Popmuseum in Prague. During his graduate and postgraduate studies, he focused on, among other things, the lyrics of Czech pop music. As a musicologist and music journalist, he published in Gramorevue, Melodie and Mladá fronta in the 1980s. He worked as a journalist in magazine Rock&Pop in the 1990s. He gives lectures on pop music at universities and he worked in Institute for Musicology on the Czech Academy of Sciences until 1998. He is active in Czech Radio, where he was the head of the Department of Jazz and Pop Music between 1999 and 2012; he has been a music editor since 2013. He collaborated on the filming of the documentary TV series Bigbít (1998, Czech Television). He initiated the founding of the museum and archive of pop music (the Popmuseum), where the archive materials were originally stored after they were collected for the filming of the TV series.