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Ludvík Vaculík was a writer and columnist. During the Second World War he worked at the Baťa factory in Zlín, studied at a shoemaking school and a business school for foreign trade. After the war he graduated from the Political and Social College. Upon returning from military service, he became editor of Rudé právo (Red Law), and later also worked in Czechoslovak radio. During the 1960s, he attracted attention in the editorial office of the Literární noviny (Literary Newspapers), later renamed Literární listy (Literary Letters) and then Listy (Letters), the most important periodical of the reformed intelligence. He remained at Listy until its ban in 1969.

Ludvik Vaculík was a member of the Communist Party; he joined in 1945. At the first meeting he knew he had made a bad decision. He did not like kind of people he met there, but he did not want to quit because he hoped he would have an influence from within. He did not like the Communist regime abusing the idealism of its supporters. At IV. writers’ congress in 1967 he spoke about the post-war development of Czechoslovakia and he was particularly critical. He declared that "no human question has been resolved in our country in twenty years." After this performance, he was expelled from the party.

In 1968, he wrote he proclamation, "Two Thousand Words". He also became a signatory of Charter 77. After the Prague Spring was suppressed, he was banned from publishing for 20 years. Conservative communists called him a platform for counter-revolution.

Vaculík did not emigrate from Czechoslovakia, but took over the samizdat edition of forbidden literature, Edice Petlice (founded in 1972).  For the next two decades, Vaculík was one of the leading dissidents and writers who were officially banned, but their works and ideas spread through samizdat or in foreign editions. After 1989 he continued his creative work. His best-known works include, for example, Český snář (Czech Dream Book) (1981), which is a narrative about life in dissent, or a novel for young people, Morčata (The Guinea-Pigs) (1973), which explores human marginalization. This work has been translated into eleven foreign languages. Český snář deals with everyday experiences of the late '70s, but also increasing pressure from the State Security following the formation of Charter 77, of which Vaculík was a founding member. At the same time, Vaculík wrote highly-valued feuilleurs, one every month. Their readers were predominantly people from dissident circles. Separate editions were published only after 1989 in two collections, Spring is Here and August Year. Vaculík was one of the most persecuted writers in Czechoslovakia. He lost his job and was forbidden from publishing. However, he did not emigrate even after the occupation in 1968.

In 1996 he was awarded the Order of T. G. Masaryk III. class. In 2008, he was awarded the State Prize for Literature, “for his literary and publicist work so far, taking into account the prose piece ‘Hodiny klavíru’ (‘Piano Lessons’)”

Éva Vadas was a Salesian nun and Bokor member. She entered the Social Mission Society/ Szociális Missziótársulat in 1935. She visited and helped people in hospitals and jails, and she also helped other families and did administrative work. She learned about the aims and principles of Bokor in 1948, and after the dissolution of the convents in 1950, she found the ideas of social responsibility and charity which Bokor represented very close to her own vision. She had to work in a factory. During these years, she organized the communities and helped spread the samizdats of György Bulányi. She was imprisoned from 1952 to 1956. After her release, she remained a member of Bokor up to her death. The collection of the Bokor base community is based on Éva Vadas’ documents. She contributed to the work of the community as a typist. She typed the Bokor samizdats, for example, the issues of Christmas Present /Karácsonyi ajándék (KARAJ).

Lauri Vahtre (b. 1960) is an Estonian historian, writer and politician. He is active in popularising history.
As a student at the Tartu State University, he was an activist and one of the main members of the Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) student movement. In 1983, he was expelled from the university shortly before he would have defended his thesis. His exmatriculation was not directly connected with his activities in Noor-Tartu, as he had distanced himself from the movement for a long time before, with the aim of not causing it trouble. However, his intentions and exmatriculation did not spare the movement, and it was closed by its members in 1984.
Vahtre managed to complete his studies in 1984, however. Later, in 1988, he also gained a candidate degree from the Institute of History of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. From 1989 to 1992, he taught as a senior lecturer at the University of Tartu. He was a member of the Congress of Estonia, and from 1991 to 1992 was a member of the Constitutional Assembly.

Szabolcs Vajay (1921–2010) was a Hungarian historian, genealogist, heraldist, and diplomat. Vajay created an important scientific oeuvre. He dealt primarily with the medieval history of Hungarians, genealogy, and heraldry. Since 1943, his professional writings were published in 6 languages in 22 countries. He served as vice-president of the International Academy of Heraldry (1964–1976), and in 1980 he was made a professional heraldist of the Order of Malta. He was the president of the National Fellowship of Genealogist and Heraldist Associations, and he was then made an honorary president.

He was born to a Hungarian noble family in Budapest. He studied at the Szent Imre High School and then went on to study law at the university of Budapest (1939–1943). In 1942, he was made a member of the Knights Hospitallers. As a scholar, he continued his studies in Switzerland. After the putsch of the far-right Arrow Cross Party in Hungary (1944), he chose to live in exile. From 1943 until 1946, he studied at the International Affairs Department of the University of Geneva. He then became private secretary to ambassador György Barcza. In 1946, he took part in the peace negotiations as a junior diplomat. He worked for the International Red Cross and then moved to Argentina in 1948. Between 1949 and 1953, he was the managing main secretary at the Buenos Aires office of the Institute of Modern Art Foundation. He worked as a journalist in France from 1954 to 1958, and he became a cultural co-worker at Radio Free Europe in 1955. Vajay was a UNESCO official (1959–1983) responsible for the Latin American Department of the Class of Social Sciences. He took part in the organization of many higher educational institutions and contributed to the publication of Spanish and Portuguese encyclopedias and the development of scholarship networks. In 1986, he was made permanent commissioner of the International Council of Social Sciences, which operated next to the UN Center in Geneva. He led the Office of the Knights Hospitallers in Geneva. He taught at the Károli Gáspár Calvinist University and the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary.

Vilmos Vajta (1918–1998) was a Hungarian Lutheran theologist. He was born Vilmos Wagner, but after the Anschluss, in protest he chose the Hungarian name Vajta. He studied at the Faculty of Theology in Sopron (1936–1940) and became a Lutheran pastor in 1940. He was an assistant clergyman and teacher in Budapest, Soltvadkert, Pestszentlőrinc, and Újpest. In 1941, he travelled to Sweden with a state scholarship and studied at the Musical Academy in Stockholm. He then studied theology at the universities of Uppsala and Lund. In 1953, he became a docent at the University of Lund. Between 1953 and 1964, he served as the director of the Theological Section of the World Federation of Lutherans. From 1964 to 1981, he was the director of the Oecumenical Research Institute of the World Federation of Lutherans in Strasbourg. Vajta initiated the organization of the Luther Conferences. He was a regular participant in oecumenical dialogues and he delivered lectures at many conferences.

Milko Valent is a Croatian writer and cultural activist born in Zagreb in 1948. He graduated with a degree in philosophy and comparative literature and has worked as a professional writer since 1976. Being active in the field of culture, he is interested in cultural events in Zagreb and had followed Eurokaz program since its beginnings. He published his impressions on Eurokaz in the book Eurokaz-Burning Solstice.

Heiki Valk (b. 1959) is a senior research fellow and head of the Archaeology Centre for Research and Infrastructure at the Institute of History and Archaeology at the University of Tartu. He graduated from the Tartu State University (the name of the University of Tartu from 1940 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1989) as a historian in 1983, specialising in Late Iron Age and Medieval archaeology. He gained his PhD degree in 2001 from the same university. The title of his dissertation was ‘Rural Cemeteries in Southern Estonia 1225-1800 AD'.
He was a founding member and a core activist in the Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) student movement from 1979 to 1984. Today he is one of the owners of the collection of this movement.

Mari Vallikivi is an Estonian art historian, and the curator of exhibitions and a work coordinator at the Kondas Centre of Naive Art. She studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and graduated with a BA in 1998. After that, she worked for Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus (the Estonian Publisher of Encyclopedias). Since 2003, she has been a curator at the Kondas Centre. Her main research interest is amateur art during the Soviet period. As a curator, she has to study a large number of different fields, due to the numerous temporary exhibitions at the Kondas Centre. In her opinion, approximately 300 exhibitions have been held. She has worked at the Kondas Centre since its beginning, and has been engaged in its development. In 2008, she began to research Kondas' person and work more closely. By now, thanks to Kondas’ letters and diaries, she has decoded several of his works. Mari Vallikivi considers the study of cultural opposition important, because it is part of Estonian history. The paintings by Kondas are part of this, which becomes clearer and clearer the more information about him is collected. According to Vallikivi, all art should be cultural opposition, in the sense that an artwork without a message does not move forward, art must address and upset, if not directly, then between the lines and allegorically.

Prof. PaedDr. Mgr. Miroslav Vaněk, Ph.D. is a Czech historian who specializes in modern Czech history. From 2000-2017 he was the head of the Oral History Centre of the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Since 2017, he has been the director of this Institute.

Miroslav Vaněk received a first in history, Czech language, pedagogy and psychology when graduated from grammar school. Later he received a doctorate from the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc and is now a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague.

Prior to 1990, he worked as a primary school teacher. After 1989, he became interested in oral history largely due to his concentration in capturing the events of 17 November 1989 in Czechoslovakia. He then joined the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where he later participated in the foundation of the Oral History Centre. He focuses on the theory and methodology of oral history, political elites and dissent and independent musical genres. Since 2006, he has been working at the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University, where he also founded the Master’s Program of Oral History - Contemporary History in 2008.

Selected bibliography:

- VANĚK, Miroslav (ed.). Obyčejní lidé..?! Pohled do života tzv. mlčící většiny. Životopisná vyprávění příslušníků dělnických profesí a inteligence. Praha, Academia 2009. 3 volumes, 1306 p.

- VANĚK, Miroslav. O orální historii s jejími zakladateli a protagonisty. Praha, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny 2008, 135 p.

- VANĚK, Miroslav. Mocní a bezmocní? Politické elity a disent v období tzv. normalizace. Interpretační studie životopisných interview. Praha, Prostor 2006, 412 p.

- VANĚK, M., URBÁŠEK, P. Vítězové? Poražení? Politické elity a disent v období tzv. normalizace. Životopisná interview. Prostor, Praha 2005, 1970 p.

- VANĚK, Miroslav. Orální historie ve výzkumu soudobých dějin. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2004. 175 p.

- VANĚK, Miroslav – MÜCKE, Pavel. Velvet Revolutions: An Oral History of Czech Society. New York – Oxford, Oxford University Press 2016, 264 p.

- VANĚK, Miroslav. Those Who Prevailed And Those Were Replaced: Interview On Both Sides of A Conflict. In: Donald A. Richtie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook Of Oral History. Oxford University Press 2011, pp. 37–50.

... and others.