'Other Playgrounds, Other Games…': Czech Samizdat and Exile Media and Their Audience during the 1980s

• In Event: Steps to Liberation: Poland and Czechoslovakia

Abstract

The Prague dissident Petr Uhl sent a short polemic letter to the newly established samizdat newspaper Lidové noviny (People’s News) in May 1988 in which he rejected the idea that the future of the country was taking place only on a playground whose picture had been drawn up by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He argued that there were “larger numbers of other playgrounds and other games” in the country, which were formulating different visions and programs than those dictated by Communist bureaucrats. Tens of samizdat titles came into existence in the second half of the 1980s, some of which successfully transcended the limited opposition ghetto and managed to address many more representatives of the mainstream society than had been the case earlier. This paper will examine how the financial and technical support of exile figures from the West provided important assistance in creating these “new playgrounds”, which disseminated independent information to a continually growing wider circle of recipients.

Author

• Petr Orság, Palacký U Olomouc (Czech Republic)