How to find a book from Poland's underground press

In brief

• The quickest start is the online bibliography of underground books from 1976–1989 kept by the Museum of Free Speech (Muzeum Wolnego Słowa): entries are arranged alphabetically by author¹.
• The National Library of Poland catalogue also describes underground prints; its data is available through an open API as well^2,3.
• Full printed bibliographies were published by the National Library in 1994–1995; earlier ones were produced underground, under pseudonyms^4,5,6.
• W lochach socjalizmu (1988) can be found in all three places, and in the worldwide WorldCat catalogue too^1,3,7.

The underground press did not leave tidy records: books appeared without ISBNs, often with no place or year of publication. This guide shows where these books have been described and how to read the descriptions. The example is Bogumił Studziński's memoir, published in 1988 by the underground Kurs publishing house. All the sources below are in Polish.

Step 1. The Museum of Free Speech bibliography

The Museum of Free Speech publishes online a bibliography of underground books from 1976–1989, split into pages by the first letters of the authors' surnames¹. An entry gives the format, the number of pages, the printing technique and the price, and often lists variants of the same edition.

An example: W lochach socjalizmu has two entries there — copies with a printed price of 600 złoty and copies without one. The abbreviation “off. z masz.” means the book was printed by offset from typescript¹. When the publisher is given in square brackets, it was established by the bibliographers because the print does not name it — as with Studziński's study Wieś polska w latach 1944–1978, published by ROPCiO¹.

Step 2. The National Library catalogue

The National Library of Poland describes underground prints in its holdings in its catalogue². The same catalogue is available as open data: a query by title returns records with the description that this website, among others, relies on³.

Catalogue descriptions have their own conventions. A place and publisher in square brackets were established by the cataloguer: Wieś polska w latach 1944–1978 appears in the catalogue as “[Warszawa: Ruch Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela, 1979]”⁸.

Step 3. Printed bibliographies

Before online catalogues, underground prints were listed in books. Some of these bibliographies themselves appeared underground or in exile, under pseudonyms:

• „Materiały do bibliografii druków zwartych i wybranych czasopism wydanych w Polsce poza zasięgiem cenzury w okresie 13.12.1981–31.12.1983”, compiled by Józef Gajewski — a carbon-copy typescript, Warsaw 1985. According to the National Library catalogue, the pseudonym was used by Marek Jastrzębski⁶.
• „Materiały do bibliografii druków zwartych wydanych poza zasięgiem cenzury 1982–1986”, Józef Gajewski — Kraków: Oficyna Literacka, 1988⁹.
• „Bibliografia publikacji podziemnych w Polsce. 13 XII 1981 – VI 1986” (Bibliography of underground publications in Poland), Józefa Kamińska (a collective pseudonym) — Paris: Editions Spotkania, 1988; volume 2, for 1986–1987, was compiled by Wojciech Chojnacki and Marek Jastrzębski (Warsaw 1993)^10,11.

After 1989 the National Library published bibliographies:

• Marek Jastrzębski, „Materiały do bibliografii druków zwartych wydanych poza zasięgiem cenzury. 13 XII 1981 – 31 XII 1988” — Warsaw: Biblioteka Narodowa, 1994, 488 pages⁵.
• „Bibliografia podziemnych druków zwartych z lat 1976–1989”, compiled by Grażyna Federowicz, Krystyna Gromadzińska and Maria Kaczyńska — Warsaw: Biblioteka Narodowa, Instytut Bibliograficzny, 1995, 498 pages⁴.

Step 4. WorldCat — where a copy is held

The worldwide library catalogue WorldCat shows which libraries hold a book, including outside Poland. W lochach socjalizmu has the number OCLC 830217100 there⁷. We list the libraries where the 1988 edition can be read on the book's page.

Why it matters

Bibliographies and catalogues make it possible to establish what appeared, when and in what form — even when the print itself gives none of this. We used them to describe the 1988 edition of W lochach socjalizmu — more in “Poland's underground press and the Kurs publishing house”.