New book: Podziemne dziennikarstwo (Underground Journalism)

Podziemne dziennikarstwo. Funkcjonowanie głównych pism informacyjnych podziemnej “Solidarności” w Warszawie w latach 1981-1989

Jan Olaszek’s book Underground journalism shows the history of seven underground information and publicist magazines which were published in Warsaw in the years 1981-1989 (“CDN – Głos Wolnego Robotnika”,”KOS”, “Przegląd Wiadomości Agencyjnych”, “Tygodnik Mazowsze”, “Tygodnik Wojenny”, “Wiadomości” and “Wola”). The author analyses their history from various perspectives. He describes the functioning of an underground editorial, systems of printing and dissemination, informational policy and activity of secret police against creators of underground magazines. We can also lean a lot from  Underground journalism about the everyday life of environment of underground journalists, printers, disseminators and their co-operators. Jan Olaszek refers to the scholarship of other humanists and social sciences (sociology and media studies, among others) and takes into account the categories used in them. In this book the history of independent publishing movement in communist Poland is placed in the context of the older Polish tradition of the underground press and the phenomenon of samizdat in other countries in the Soviet Bloc.

For more information please contact Jan Olaszek, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences / Historical Research Office, Institute of National Remembrance.

Samizdat, independent publishing movement, alternative culture, underground.