Price: 5.00 euro
Size: 30x21cm./11.8×8.2inch.
Pages: 2
Published:1983
Polish underground bulletin „Committee of Social Resistance KOS” (Komitet Oporu Społecznego KOS) no. 27 from 14th March 1983.
Topics in the bulletin: Anna’a Walentynowicz one of the leader and co-creator of Solidarity trail began, Lech Walesa arrived at Walentynowicz trial, Communist started to prepare political trial against former members Social Self-Defense Committee “KOR” an Opposition movement against The Polish United Workers’ Party. The bulletin ends with the poem “Traitor”.
The KOS (underground bulletin of the Committee for Social Resistance) was the first periodical published after the introduction of martial law in 1981. It was an alternative for government censored newspapers. It was published in the years 1981-1989, initially as a weekly, then as a biweekly. A total of 165 issues were published.
Underground publications (tissue paper, second circulation) was published in countries where censorship was in force (PRL, USSR, etc.). In Poland publications were published by the opposition such as The Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) and Solidarity. These were non-debit publications, i.e. without being allowed to be distributed by the appropriate office (in Poland until 1989, it was the Publications and Performances Control Office), often ignoring copyright, and was confidentially distributed. They were published in circulation from a dozen or so copies to several or even tens of thousands of copies by illegal (“underground”) publishing houses or by private persons. The circulations of press and books, for example in the “NOWA”, rarely exceeded 4-5 thousand copies.
Due to militia persecution, espionage infiltration and the system of controlling the trade in paper, ink and printing presses was in force in totalitarian countries. Independent publishing houses never managed to achieve a large coverage, except for the Polish People’s Republic in the second half of the 1980s.