The Solidarity Collection of Polish Clandestine Publications at the British Library
The Solidarity Collection of Polish Clandestine Publications at the British Library

Summary/Abstract: This article describes the history and content of the British Library’s Solidarity Collection of Polish clandestine publications. Over the past forty years, the British Library’s curators have collected Polish samizdat publications as valuable documents attesting to the struggle for freedom of speech faced with prevalent censorship. Although named after the Solidarity movement, the collection encompasses clandestine publications and ephemera from the 1970s until the end of the communist rule in Poland. A big part of the repository are donations of items smuggled to the West during the Cold War period. As of today, the collection includes 1759 books, 831 periodical titles and 548 ephemeral publications, encompassing various materials, from political posters and pamphlets to flying university lectures and postcards.

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