Instytuty Polskie > Instytut Polski w Pradze > Daily Courage. Polish, Czech and Slovak Women in Anti-Communist Dissent 1968-1989 / 3 – EDITORS

The free dissemination of uncensored information became an important weapon for the anti-communist dissent, with the Polish „Second Circulation“ and the Czech and Slovak samizdat playing a key role. The publication of independent magazines, leaflets, and books by banned authors, and their distribution, opened up space for free social and cultural life. Women were active as authors, publishers, editors, and translators, and they also retyped hundreds of thousands of pages on typewriters.

The most influential underground newspaper in Poland was Tygodnik Mazowsze, which had a circulation of several thousand copies. Its editorial staff included (from left, top) Wojciech Kamiński, Tomasz Burski, Joanna Szczęsna, Helena Łuczywo, Piotr Pacewicz, Anna Bikont; (from left, seated) Krzysztof Lesk, Marta Woydt, Zofia Bydlińska, Olga Iwaniak.
 Source: Archive of Ośrodek KARTA, photo by Anna Pietuszko
aňa Horáková, together with Václav Havel, ran one of the most important samizdat publishing houses, Edition Expedition. It published poetry, prose, political, and philosophical-theological texts. Many women transcribed texts for the Expedition and other samizdat publishing houses, risking interrogation, and persecution.  In the photo, Daňa Horáková in her apartment after a house search.
Source and photo: Bohdan Holomíček
1981, Warszawa, Polska.ona Rajpert, who worked as a graphic designer creating book covers for the independent publishing house Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza NOWA, at the Solidarity printing center in Warsaw in 1981.
Source: Ośrodek KARTA archive/Independent Polish Agency
Ľudmila Pastierová was involved in the Bratislava samizdat movement. The secret police regularly interrogated her and searched her apartment. Pictured on the left, at the opening of an exhibition by independent artist Jaro Štuller in 1983.
Source: Private archive of Ľ. Pastierová, photo by J. Štuller
Weekly Mazowsze, Source: Digital Libraries Federation, Europeana 1989, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL
Translating the banned authors was dangerous. As a translator, Marta Ličková and her husband helped the world in discovery of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a critic of the Soviet system. Pavol Lička was one of the first Slovak prisoners of normalization, and his wife had to endure frequent interrogations and house searches. She struggled to support her family and had to translate under a pseudonym until 1989. Dissident Eva Šimečková translated George Orwell’s cult novel 1984 while her husband Milan Šimečka was in prison. It was published in samizdat and by the exile publishing house Index. Source: Private archive of the Lička family
At the end of the 1980s, Jarmila Johnová organized the distribution of photocopiers for reproducing illegal materials and Charter 77 documents. She had been involved in samizdat since her university studies.
Source: Private archive of J. Johnová, photo by Jiří Dienstbier