#language & literature
Drugi obieg wydawniczy w PRL
During the communist regime era in Poland, what exactly was 'Drugi Obieg' publishing? Today, in the epoch of the Internet, laptops and smartphones, it's a little hard to understand. In the 1970s and 1980s, you could be thrown in jail for owning a duplicator and printing equipment, during the martial law period of the early 1980s in particular – simply owning a typewriter could land you a severe punishment.
In answer to the government's repression of striking workers in Radom and Ursus (June 1976), the Workers' Defence Committee, or KOR, was founded on 23rd September 1976. In 1977, a group associated with KOR started giving out newspapers independent from every state agency. It contained facts hard to find in official media, and was completely free of censorship.
It began modestly – simply typing out dispatches, then making a handful of prints by pressing them against carbon paper. These were given out then duplicated by the next group of transcribers. But their methods evolved, and they even began copying using egg whites and grain alcohol. The Warsaw chemist Witold Łuczywo worked out a screenprinting method that really changed things. The blackmarket printing paint it needed ended up being watered-down laundry paste, although occasionally they did use custard powder.
'It was one of the weapons that brought down communism,' explains Henryk Wujec, one of our interviewees. The other, Jan Strękowski, believes the way the communist regime targeted the Drugi Obieg publishers proves that theory exquisitely.