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Poland POLITICS AND THE MEDIA
Prior to the return of democracy in 1989, Poland's
independent press defied state censorship and flourished
to an
extent unknown in other East European communist states.
Active
publication by opposition groups in the 1970s formed a
tradition
for the well-organized distribution of censored materials
that
flowered in the contentious decade that followed.
The Early Opposition Press
As early as 1970, underground groups had begun issuing
opposition literature that included short-lived
periodicals,
strike announcements, and brochures. By 1976 opposition
groups
were better organized and began issuing influential
carbon-copied
and mimeographed serials. In the autumn of that year, KOR
began
producing its Biuletyn Informacyjny (Information
Bulletin).
During the period between 1976 and 1980, about 500
uncensored
serial titles were recorded, some with circulations of
more than
20,000 copies. At the same time, underground book
publishing
flourished as over thirty-five independent presses issued
hundreds of uncensored monographs.
Following the Gdansk Agreement of August 1980, Poland
saw a
new explosion of independent publishing. In addition to
Tygodnik Solidarnosc (Solidarity Weekly), whose
circulation was limited to 500,000 copies supplemented by
ten
regional weeklies, Solidarity and its rural affiliate
published
hundreds of new periodicals. Assisted by donations of
printing
equipment from the West, about 200 publishing houses had
emerged
by December 1981, when martial law abruptly curtailed
independent
publishing.
During Solidarity's first period of legal activity,
reprints
of opposition literature from abroad, particularly the
influential émigré journals Kultura (Culture) and
Zeszyty Historyczne (Historical Notebooks), were
especially popular.
Data as of October 1992
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