. ABOUT MEDIA
Underground press in '70 s and '80s in Poland
Freedom disease
It was one room efficiency in eleven stores apartment house, on fifth or seventh floor. We came there every Thursday, about 5 p.m., one by one, never together. If the door was closed, the key was hidden in gas box on corridor on the left side. There was one rule: never allow the black cat to sneak out, because the owner, a lonely nurse in her 50s would be mad. It was the office where "CDN" weekly, the underground paper in general Jaruzelski's Poland of the '80s, was prepared by four-five journalists, We were editing texts written by us and other authors, discussing them and planning the next issues. After couple of hours we were leaving the place, again separately, one of us carrying all texts for the printer. Next week one densely, double side printed A4 page was available "on the market", which meant trusted people, in one, two sometimes - three thousands copies.
"CDN" (Polish abbreviation for "to be continued") was one of hundreds of such underground publications, part of the free press movement which has had long traditions here. They were going back to XIX-th century of Poland's partitions, when our great-grandfathers had to cope with tsar's censorship and out national hero, Jozef Pilsudski was printing his illegal paper "Robotnik" (The Worker). It was a tradition of underground press produced under Nazi occupation and finally - rebirth of free word in Poland of '70s, when communist grip was not so tight anymore. For illegal printing you may be arrested for 48 hours or spend few months in jail, but not shot on the spot or sent to Auschwitz, as Nazis did.
Unquestionable leader of underground printing in communist Poland, Miros³aw Chojecki recalls that before birth of Solidarity in August 1980 he was arrested 44 times. His activity originated in fall of 1976, when Committee to Protect Workers (KOR) was established in Warsaw by a group of intellectuals to protest against brutal treatment of workers from factories in Radom and Ursus, who organized strike in June 1976 against price-hikes.
"The very first problem for us was to buy a paper" recalls Chojecki. "It was not easy in the country of permanent shortages and we needed more than anybody would sell us in a paper shop". Chojecki was a scout though, and he got somewhere a stamp of Polish Scouts Union. With the help of it they bought paper wholesale; deliver it in private truck to a secret magazine - usually private garage - and left for two-three months to check whether police was not tracing them. Then the paper was transported again to a house with garden because of the noise of printing. The machines were delivered there and 3 printers were working non-stop, until the work was completed.
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