Page 168 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

MUSICAL CHAIRS? 157

Polish people, and in many cases offering an outlet for former
establishment journalists. For example, during the period of martial
law, some 1,200 journalists from the official media who had been active
Solidarity members, were purged in a political vetting process
conducted in 1982. Some left journalism altogether, but many others
moved to Church, underground or fringe periodicals. Also, some
journalists from the alternative public sphere later made their mark in
the Solidarity press.
Since 1976, Poland has also had an opposition public sphere,
consisting, as far as its media are concerned, of underground periodicals
and books. This public sphere came into the open during the Solidarity
period in 1980–1, in the form of about 1,000 Solidarity periodicals
(ranging from mass-circulation national and regional weeklies to factory
and college bulletins). They
sought to undermine the foundation of the government’s claims to
legitimacy, and to spread the view that the existing social and
political system did not serve the attainment of goals and values
[of the socialist system—K.J.] internalized and accepted by
society. The blame for this was laid at the door of the political
system and of the power elite, busy pursuing its own interests and
feathering its own nest.
(Łcabędź 1988:43)

Before the emergence of Solidarity and especially after its dissolution in
1982 (during the period of martial law), thousands of clandestine,
underground periodicals (some ephemeral, others with great staying
power) have appeared all over the country. It is estimated (cf.
Szarzyński 1989) that since the introduction of martial law in December
1981, a total of 2,077 titles of underground periodicals of various
description (from national and regional periodicals with a circulation of
up to 50–80,000, to factory or even secondary school newspapers) have
appeared in the country. At the beginning of 1989, a total of nearly 600
such periodicals were published in forty-six out of Poland’s forty-nine
provinces, by Solidarity or one or another underground organization
active in the country (for a detailed examination of the Solidarity press,
cf. Jakubowicz, forthcoming a).
As for books, it is estimated that since 1977 clandestine publishers
have brought out some 4,500 books and pamphlets with a circulation of
between 1,000 and 7,000 copies (or up to 10,000 copies in exceptional
cases) each, which works out at one copy for every two adult Poles (cf.