- Email: [email protected]
Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World
SERREV-00988; No. of pages: 4; 4C: Serials Review xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Serials Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/serrev
The Balance Point
Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World Faye Leibowitz, Column Editor ⁎ University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online xxxx
a b s t r a c t Karen Rondestvedt, Phillip Wilkin and Haihui Zhang, collection development librarians, discuss the definitions, origins, and library issues relating to alternative and underground periodicals. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction The early 1990s were exciting years for catalogers who worked with Russian serials. Due to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the new Russian government was re-writing all of the federal laws and issuing them as serial publications. Naturally, the University of Pittsburgh, with an outstanding East European area studies program, needed to have all of these publications in its collection. And as the newly hired serials/microforms catalog librarian who also happened to have an undergraduate degree in Russian, I was chosen to catalog them. I have fond memories of perusing the Library of Congress Classification schedules, trying to figure out if the State Duma was the upper house of the new legislature or the lower house. I'm not really sure if even Boris Yeltsin could have provided much guidance during that very volatile period of Russian history. Not only were the early 1990s a period of political instability, they were also characterized by intense social upheaval in Russia. This period of radical social change had its roots in Mikhail Gorbachev's “glasnost” policy, and resulted in less censorship and increased free speech. Free speech goes hand-in-hand with a free press. Therefore, numerous new periodicals appeared that encompassed a full range of political and social ideologies from communist to fascist, from monarchist to anarchist. Many of these publications were extremely xenophobic. Karen Rondestvedt was the bibliographer at the University of Pittsburgh in charge of acquiring materials from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics. She acquired many of these “alternative press” publications, together with several samizdat underground publications from the Soviet era, for the University's collections, and I cataloged them. These unique publications constitute a valuable resource for scholars, as they document the multitude of ideologies struggling for recognition in a burgeoning society.
⁎ Tel.: +1 412-648-8113; fax: +1 412-648-5956. E-mail address: [email protected].
Libraries have been collecting underground newspapers for many years. One well-known collection is the Bell & Howell microfilm Underground Newspaper Collection (WorldCat). This collection focuses on periodicals published in the United States and Canada from the 1960s through the 1980s. More recently, Reveal Digital announced its intent to publish a digital edition, titled Independent Voices, of American alternative press publications dating from the 1960s through the 1970s (Independent Voices, 2013). In this Balance Point column, three collection development librarians share their expertise about the challenges related to underground and alternative periodicals from various regions of the world. Karen Rondestvedt (curator for Slavic & East European Collections, International & Area Studies Group, Stanford University), Phillip Wilkin (bibliographer for West European Studies, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh) and Haihui Zhang (Chinese studies librarian, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh) generously agreed to answer questions relating to these unique publications.
2. Interview with Karen Rondestvedt Faye Leibowitz (FL): Which countries in your region have a significant underground press presence? Karen Rondestvedt (KR): I suspect they all do. The ones I know about for sure are Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Poland. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland since 1989 have not had as much. I suspect the more repressive successor states to the Soviet Union do still have them. I think that Russia is getting more of an underground press again, as things get more repressive there. FL: How many of these publications still exist and have new ones appeared? KR: I think that in terms of publications continuing under the same title, most of them continued being published above ground, if they continued at all. I know that's true of Mitin zhurnal. FL: What kind of publication was that? KR: It was literary. It started in 1985. It included unapproved Soviet authors, translations of unapproved Western authors, and there was a
0098-7913/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
2
F. Leibowitz / Serials Review xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
Polish author, too. Most Soviet/Russian samizdat publications ceased by 1993 after the end of the Soviet Union. FL: Have new publications appeared? KR: I suspect they have. You could ask my colleague at the Hoover institution, Anatol Shmelev, who has all sorts of personal contacts there. They collect that sort of thing pretty intensively, and they have in the past. FL: What are the political, social, and other conditions that give rise to underground publications? KR: I would say enforcement or perceived enforcement of uniformity. There can be various reasons for that. Oppressive government is the big reason in the area that I deal with. But there could also be enforcement of religious uniformity. FL: We mentioned that the Mitin zhurnal is a literary publication. Are you familiar with any in the field of law, or in other specialized areas? KR: There were some in human rights. I'm not familiar enough with the content of those to be sure if they were really in the field of law. There were some literary ones for sure. And political ones also. I think that in the Soviet Union, literature was a big category because the literary authors, at least some of them, felt the need to go beyond art for art's sake in their writings. FL: What are the challenges of acquiring these publications for libraries? KR: You need personal connections! Either the librarian or the vendor needs to have connections. To my great surprise, just yesterday, I was able to find a shipping list in a folder that I brought with me when I moved from the University of Pittsburgh to Stanford. It shows that I had a contact in New Jersey who had contact with Igor Dashkevich at the independent Rubicon library in the Soviet Union. Dashkevich and his colleagues were collecting these things. I'm not sure how I established the contact with the woman in New Jersey. It may have been through a professor. FL: So you had contact with someone in New Jersey who had contact with someone in the Soviet Union who had contact with various publishers? KR: Publishers or writers for these underground publications. FL: So networking is how you collect those materials? KR: Yes, yes! FL: How did the publications get out of the Soviet Union undetected? KR: Well, glasnost had started about 1986, and the University of Pittsburgh acquired the publications in February 1992. Things were much looser by the time we got them. I suspect that earlier, these would leave the country by networking, hiding them in the suitcase, things like that! FL: Have Web sites replaced underground newspapers? KR: Not title by title that I know of. I wouldn't say that they've been replaced by Web sites, but I know that Web sites can fulfill the same function unless they get taken down. FL: I think it's surprising that any of them can exist for any length of time. KR: Mostly or entirely they have disappeared and new ones have come. Rather than electronic journals, Web sites, blogs and that sort of thing are coming along including social media. 3. Interview with Phillip Wilkin FL: Which countries in your region have historically had an underground press presence? Phillip Wilkin (PW): If I could delay that question to bring up another question that's critical—and that is the definition of an alternative or an underground press. I have my own opinions that are formed over the years. I've looked at some definitions, and it's very difficult to determine in some cases what is an alternative publication versus a mainstream one and also the difference between alternative and underground publications. It seems to me that there are a lot of
definitions that apply to both alternative and underground publications. With our political, social, economic, and personal freedoms of various types, there's a constant claim that the mainstream press is biased—hence the reasons for alternative and underground publishing. Often, both will address minorities and subjects not given adequate treatment in the mainstream. Another common description is that these types of presses are normally noncommercial in orientation. I don't think there are clear distinctions between alternative and underground. The best that I can come up with is if it's in a more democratic or free society they are more likely to call it alternative, and if it's in a situation where publication is more likely to be considered illegal or in a more autocratic society, they are more likely to use the term underground. But again that is not completely true in all sources. I found widely varying definitions. Now back to your question. My areas have been North America and Europe. Nearly all countries have some underground press. I'll just call it alternative rather than using both terms. There's a long history of it in American literature. In Europe, most countries have it. I don't know of many countries that don't. Any of the countries involved in major social or political upheavals with dramatic change are going to have some level of these types of publications. In the United States there was a fairly rapid growth of alternative and underground press during the 1960s counter-culture movement. It represented political, economic and social dissidence from many viewpoints. FL: How many of these publications still exist and have new ones been appearing in recent years? PW: It depends upon the country and the political and economic situations. One of the problems here is that when they cease to exist, they're very difficult to find. That creates a problem in terms of how you collect them. New ones are appearing all the time on various topics. The environmental movement, groups who disagree with environmental policy in France, for example, or in the Netherlands, a lot of antiimmigration feeling—these kinds of publications exist, so yes, these publications are always popping up. There's a constant reiteration of these types of things, sometimes under different names. FL: Too often when people think about these types of publications they only think about them in the context of totalitarian governments. But there are so many of them in free societies. PW: That is a key point! Freedom allows more of them to exist. FL: What are the political, social, or other conditions that give rise to alternative publications? PW: A key theme is the economic and political structure of the society. Whether it's capitalism, socialism or communism, whichever economic structure you have, it's going to cause dissidence. It's going to favor certain people over others; it's going to leave some people out. So I think that is probably as key a theme as I am aware of. The economic and political structure is key in oppressive societies and free societies. That is one of the largest determinants. But there are so many other things. As I said, the environmental movement has caused, as you might be aware, very, shall we say, strident publications. Immigration in our society has brought some also; there's also some of this in the mainstream press. But in terms of the alternative press you can still find groups popping up with views on virtually everything. The key to me is the economic and social structure of society, and the effect that it has on different people in different groups. FL: Are there any specialty publications in the fields of law, literature or others? PW: Well, in terms of literature and law, those are not my fields. I really don't know. I'm certain there are. In law probably more than literature perhaps, you're not going to have as much suppression in literature. You probably find the more strident ones in law, but I'm not aware of any specific ones. FL: What are the challenges of acquiring these publications for libraries? PW: There's a pretty long list. The first thing is locating them. By their very nature being alternative, you don't find them in the mainstream, so
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
F. Leibowitz / Serials Review xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
you usually can't go into indexes, you can't go to GOBI [YBP Library Services' acquisition and collection development interface], you can't go to the normal places that you would go to collect and find them. So just locating them in the first place is a problem. After that the problem is trying to make and sustain consistent contact with the publishers. They may or may not be easily locatable. They may or may not want to sell you their publications on a regular basis. If these kinds of places normally have a noncommercial orientation anyway, they're not trying to make money, so they're often not pushing their publications towards people. Another consideration is whether or not they are worth collecting if you have scarce resources. In a perfect world with money not a concern, you would want to collect these things on a regular basis. I find them less desirable than mainstream material because they're more narrowly focused. They are in most cases less objective in their treatment of subjects. They usually have an ax to grind and an agenda to push. So locating them, making contact with them, and the question of whether they're worth collecting when you have scarce resources are the major challenges. FL: Have Web sites replaced underground newspapers? PW: Since I don't do a lot of collecting in this area, I'm not certain. I've tried to find an answer to this in a couple of sources and I couldn't find it. Obviously they have not replaced them but my guess is they've put a real dent in them. Everyone knows the advantages of the Web. To be honest with you, I hate to quantify this. My guess is that the Web has taken the place of a significant percentage of them. This probably wouldn't be true locally. In local areas, if you're a local publisher, the Web would be less important if you're just trying to get your views out to a wider audience. This is probably one of the determining factors. FL: Are you aware of any major influential publications? PW: There were some during the World War II era after the Nazis took over a good part of Europe. There were a lot of underground press titles that sprung up. The Dutch underground press was very important. The French resistance published a very large underground press. One of the titles was called Combat. There was one called Libération, and one of them was La Défense de la France. Those are some of the more famous ones that were so important. FL: I would imagine that in a time of war the underground press takes on more importance for getting out the opposition viewpoint. PW: And they're really the underground press! 4. Interview with Haihui Zhang FL: Which countries in your region have historically had an underground press presence? Haihui Zhang (HZ): I'm thinking about the definitions of alternative press and underground press. Are they the same or similar or are there some differences? How would you define these terms in the Western world, in the United States? FL: I think there are many ways to define those terms. The definition may be determined by the political system in the country. HZ: I will define these terms based on my understanding, my impressions. In Chinese history, there have been banned non-governmental, revolutionary publications, and others, but these may not be considered underground publications in the Western sense. Actually, there are differing opinions about China's underground publications. Maybe we have different understandings about what could be considered underground publications. There is a history of underground publications in China. The end of the Qing Dynasty was a critical period in the transformation of modern China. China's royalists, reformists, and revolutionaries founded various newspapers and magazines. The Qing Dynasty was from 1644 to 1912. A large number of newspapers and magazines were banned during that period. During the Republican Era from 1912 to 1949, the Guomindang government also banned a large number of publications including many periodicals and books. Some of them were underground. For
3
example, there is a periodical, Tingjinbao (Advance Report). This is a well-known underground newspaper. It is a publication of the underground Communist Party of the Chongqing Municipal. At that time, the dissemination of underground publications was likely to get someone arrested and killed. It was dangerous to read underground publications. But the Chongqing people as well as people from other areas read the Advance Report and circulated it. This underground newspaper is a typical one. It was founded in 1947 and was betrayed by a traitor in 1948. The person who was in charge of this newspaper was arrested by the Guomindang government and was killed a year later. This historical event was later adapted into a famous novel and a movie titled Hong Yan (Red Rock). Both the novel and the movie are still very popular. There were actually many publications blacklisted by the Communist Party at that time. After 1949, the People's Republic of China was established. For this time period, there is some disagreement. Some people think that there have been no underground publications since strict censorship has been implemented. But recently some research has been done. They have found out that underground publications exist even under strict censorship in different formats, including handwritten copies, tabloids, and mimeographed copies. Actually Advance Report was issued the same way in small runs. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a very famous underground newspaper titled Zhongxuesheng Wengebao (Middle School Students' Cultural Revolution Newspaper). Yu Luoke, who wrote articles for this newspaper, was arrested and killed. This newspaper is now an important source for research on the Cultural Revolution. So there is a history of underground publications in China during different time periods. FL: How many of these underground publications still exist? HZ: Strict censorship has been implemented. Some titles originally started in China have moved overseas. FL: What are the political, social, and other conditions that give rise to underground publications? HZ: As I said before, I believe the main reason for underground publications is the political factor. This is the main motivation. FL: Are there any specialty publications in the fields of literature, law, etc.? HZ: During the Republican Era, actually from the end of the Qing Dynasty until now, there have been underground publications in the field of literature. For example, one journal, Jintian (Today), is a literary one. This journal started in 1978 in Beijing was later banned. In 1990, it resumed publication in Norway. I'm not familiar with any publications in the field of law. But I do know that across many regimes there have been official lists of books banned by the government. These lists began before 1949. They've existed since the Qing Dynasty and even earlier. FL: What are the challenges of acquiring these publications for libraries? HZ: I think that libraries have a responsibility to collect these publications for research. Actually, I have been trying very hard to collect them. It's not that difficult to collect these types of publications from the Republican Era because recently reprints have been published in China. And some of them have been digitized. These are publications that began before 1949. For the Cultural Revolution period, officially, these publications are very hard to get. It's still something that we can't touch in mainland China. But there have been some electronic resources produced overseas. Our library recently purchased a few on CD-ROM. FL: Have Web sites replaced underground newspapers? HZ: Yes. One example that I just mentioned was Today. It moved to Norway and it's available in an online version. 5. Conclusion Each bibliographer pointed out the difficulty of acquiring current alternative or underground publications for libraries. This is as true
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
4
F. Leibowitz / Serials Review xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
in “free” countries as it is in autocratic ones. These publications serve an important function in their countries of origin: they can serve as the voice of the downtrodden in Western democracies; they can serve as the voice of the opposition in times of war; and they can give voice to dissent in the presence of autocratic regimes. Although they generally have a narrow focus, they can present scholars with unique documentary evidence of diverse opinions in a society.
Alternative and underground publications can have a valuable role in presenting a more complete picture of history to the research community. Reference Reveal Digital (2013). Independent voices beta: An open-access collection of an alternative press. Retrieved from. http://www.revealdigital.com/voices
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Serials Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/serrev
The Balance Point
Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World Faye Leibowitz, Column Editor ⁎ University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online xxxx
a b s t r a c t Karen Rondestvedt, Phillip Wilkin and Haihui Zhang, collection development librarians, discuss the definitions, origins, and library issues relating to alternative and underground periodicals. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction The early 1990s were exciting years for catalogers who worked with Russian serials. Due to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the new Russian government was re-writing all of the federal laws and issuing them as serial publications. Naturally, the University of Pittsburgh, with an outstanding East European area studies program, needed to have all of these publications in its collection. And as the newly hired serials/microforms catalog librarian who also happened to have an undergraduate degree in Russian, I was chosen to catalog them. I have fond memories of perusing the Library of Congress Classification schedules, trying to figure out if the State Duma was the upper house of the new legislature or the lower house. I'm not really sure if even Boris Yeltsin could have provided much guidance during that very volatile period of Russian history. Not only were the early 1990s a period of political instability, they were also characterized by intense social upheaval in Russia. This period of radical social change had its roots in Mikhail Gorbachev's “glasnost” policy, and resulted in less censorship and increased free speech. Free speech goes hand-in-hand with a free press. Therefore, numerous new periodicals appeared that encompassed a full range of political and social ideologies from communist to fascist, from monarchist to anarchist. Many of these publications were extremely xenophobic. Karen Rondestvedt was the bibliographer at the University of Pittsburgh in charge of acquiring materials from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics. She acquired many of these “alternative press” publications, together with several samizdat underground publications from the Soviet era, for the University's collections, and I cataloged them. These unique publications constitute a valuable resource for scholars, as they document the multitude of ideologies struggling for recognition in a burgeoning society.
⁎ Tel.: +1 412-648-8113; fax: +1 412-648-5956. E-mail address: [email protected].
Libraries have been collecting underground newspapers for many years. One well-known collection is the Bell & Howell microfilm Underground Newspaper Collection (WorldCat). This collection focuses on periodicals published in the United States and Canada from the 1960s through the 1980s. More recently, Reveal Digital announced its intent to publish a digital edition, titled Independent Voices, of American alternative press publications dating from the 1960s through the 1970s (Independent Voices, 2013). In this Balance Point column, three collection development librarians share their expertise about the challenges related to underground and alternative periodicals from various regions of the world. Karen Rondestvedt (curator for Slavic & East European Collections, International & Area Studies Group, Stanford University), Phillip Wilkin (bibliographer for West European Studies, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh) and Haihui Zhang (Chinese studies librarian, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh) generously agreed to answer questions relating to these unique publications.
2. Interview with Karen Rondestvedt Faye Leibowitz (FL): Which countries in your region have a significant underground press presence? Karen Rondestvedt (KR): I suspect they all do. The ones I know about for sure are Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Poland. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland since 1989 have not had as much. I suspect the more repressive successor states to the Soviet Union do still have them. I think that Russia is getting more of an underground press again, as things get more repressive there. FL: How many of these publications still exist and have new ones appeared? KR: I think that in terms of publications continuing under the same title, most of them continued being published above ground, if they continued at all. I know that's true of Mitin zhurnal. FL: What kind of publication was that? KR: It was literary. It started in 1985. It included unapproved Soviet authors, translations of unapproved Western authors, and there was a
0098-7913/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
2
F. Leibowitz / Serials Review xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
Polish author, too. Most Soviet/Russian samizdat publications ceased by 1993 after the end of the Soviet Union. FL: Have new publications appeared? KR: I suspect they have. You could ask my colleague at the Hoover institution, Anatol Shmelev, who has all sorts of personal contacts there. They collect that sort of thing pretty intensively, and they have in the past. FL: What are the political, social, and other conditions that give rise to underground publications? KR: I would say enforcement or perceived enforcement of uniformity. There can be various reasons for that. Oppressive government is the big reason in the area that I deal with. But there could also be enforcement of religious uniformity. FL: We mentioned that the Mitin zhurnal is a literary publication. Are you familiar with any in the field of law, or in other specialized areas? KR: There were some in human rights. I'm not familiar enough with the content of those to be sure if they were really in the field of law. There were some literary ones for sure. And political ones also. I think that in the Soviet Union, literature was a big category because the literary authors, at least some of them, felt the need to go beyond art for art's sake in their writings. FL: What are the challenges of acquiring these publications for libraries? KR: You need personal connections! Either the librarian or the vendor needs to have connections. To my great surprise, just yesterday, I was able to find a shipping list in a folder that I brought with me when I moved from the University of Pittsburgh to Stanford. It shows that I had a contact in New Jersey who had contact with Igor Dashkevich at the independent Rubicon library in the Soviet Union. Dashkevich and his colleagues were collecting these things. I'm not sure how I established the contact with the woman in New Jersey. It may have been through a professor. FL: So you had contact with someone in New Jersey who had contact with someone in the Soviet Union who had contact with various publishers? KR: Publishers or writers for these underground publications. FL: So networking is how you collect those materials? KR: Yes, yes! FL: How did the publications get out of the Soviet Union undetected? KR: Well, glasnost had started about 1986, and the University of Pittsburgh acquired the publications in February 1992. Things were much looser by the time we got them. I suspect that earlier, these would leave the country by networking, hiding them in the suitcase, things like that! FL: Have Web sites replaced underground newspapers? KR: Not title by title that I know of. I wouldn't say that they've been replaced by Web sites, but I know that Web sites can fulfill the same function unless they get taken down. FL: I think it's surprising that any of them can exist for any length of time. KR: Mostly or entirely they have disappeared and new ones have come. Rather than electronic journals, Web sites, blogs and that sort of thing are coming along including social media. 3. Interview with Phillip Wilkin FL: Which countries in your region have historically had an underground press presence? Phillip Wilkin (PW): If I could delay that question to bring up another question that's critical—and that is the definition of an alternative or an underground press. I have my own opinions that are formed over the years. I've looked at some definitions, and it's very difficult to determine in some cases what is an alternative publication versus a mainstream one and also the difference between alternative and underground publications. It seems to me that there are a lot of
definitions that apply to both alternative and underground publications. With our political, social, economic, and personal freedoms of various types, there's a constant claim that the mainstream press is biased—hence the reasons for alternative and underground publishing. Often, both will address minorities and subjects not given adequate treatment in the mainstream. Another common description is that these types of presses are normally noncommercial in orientation. I don't think there are clear distinctions between alternative and underground. The best that I can come up with is if it's in a more democratic or free society they are more likely to call it alternative, and if it's in a situation where publication is more likely to be considered illegal or in a more autocratic society, they are more likely to use the term underground. But again that is not completely true in all sources. I found widely varying definitions. Now back to your question. My areas have been North America and Europe. Nearly all countries have some underground press. I'll just call it alternative rather than using both terms. There's a long history of it in American literature. In Europe, most countries have it. I don't know of many countries that don't. Any of the countries involved in major social or political upheavals with dramatic change are going to have some level of these types of publications. In the United States there was a fairly rapid growth of alternative and underground press during the 1960s counter-culture movement. It represented political, economic and social dissidence from many viewpoints. FL: How many of these publications still exist and have new ones been appearing in recent years? PW: It depends upon the country and the political and economic situations. One of the problems here is that when they cease to exist, they're very difficult to find. That creates a problem in terms of how you collect them. New ones are appearing all the time on various topics. The environmental movement, groups who disagree with environmental policy in France, for example, or in the Netherlands, a lot of antiimmigration feeling—these kinds of publications exist, so yes, these publications are always popping up. There's a constant reiteration of these types of things, sometimes under different names. FL: Too often when people think about these types of publications they only think about them in the context of totalitarian governments. But there are so many of them in free societies. PW: That is a key point! Freedom allows more of them to exist. FL: What are the political, social, or other conditions that give rise to alternative publications? PW: A key theme is the economic and political structure of the society. Whether it's capitalism, socialism or communism, whichever economic structure you have, it's going to cause dissidence. It's going to favor certain people over others; it's going to leave some people out. So I think that is probably as key a theme as I am aware of. The economic and political structure is key in oppressive societies and free societies. That is one of the largest determinants. But there are so many other things. As I said, the environmental movement has caused, as you might be aware, very, shall we say, strident publications. Immigration in our society has brought some also; there's also some of this in the mainstream press. But in terms of the alternative press you can still find groups popping up with views on virtually everything. The key to me is the economic and social structure of society, and the effect that it has on different people in different groups. FL: Are there any specialty publications in the fields of law, literature or others? PW: Well, in terms of literature and law, those are not my fields. I really don't know. I'm certain there are. In law probably more than literature perhaps, you're not going to have as much suppression in literature. You probably find the more strident ones in law, but I'm not aware of any specific ones. FL: What are the challenges of acquiring these publications for libraries? PW: There's a pretty long list. The first thing is locating them. By their very nature being alternative, you don't find them in the mainstream, so
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
F. Leibowitz / Serials Review xxx (2013) xxx–xxx
you usually can't go into indexes, you can't go to GOBI [YBP Library Services' acquisition and collection development interface], you can't go to the normal places that you would go to collect and find them. So just locating them in the first place is a problem. After that the problem is trying to make and sustain consistent contact with the publishers. They may or may not be easily locatable. They may or may not want to sell you their publications on a regular basis. If these kinds of places normally have a noncommercial orientation anyway, they're not trying to make money, so they're often not pushing their publications towards people. Another consideration is whether or not they are worth collecting if you have scarce resources. In a perfect world with money not a concern, you would want to collect these things on a regular basis. I find them less desirable than mainstream material because they're more narrowly focused. They are in most cases less objective in their treatment of subjects. They usually have an ax to grind and an agenda to push. So locating them, making contact with them, and the question of whether they're worth collecting when you have scarce resources are the major challenges. FL: Have Web sites replaced underground newspapers? PW: Since I don't do a lot of collecting in this area, I'm not certain. I've tried to find an answer to this in a couple of sources and I couldn't find it. Obviously they have not replaced them but my guess is they've put a real dent in them. Everyone knows the advantages of the Web. To be honest with you, I hate to quantify this. My guess is that the Web has taken the place of a significant percentage of them. This probably wouldn't be true locally. In local areas, if you're a local publisher, the Web would be less important if you're just trying to get your views out to a wider audience. This is probably one of the determining factors. FL: Are you aware of any major influential publications? PW: There were some during the World War II era after the Nazis took over a good part of Europe. There were a lot of underground press titles that sprung up. The Dutch underground press was very important. The French resistance published a very large underground press. One of the titles was called Combat. There was one called Libération, and one of them was La Défense de la France. Those are some of the more famous ones that were so important. FL: I would imagine that in a time of war the underground press takes on more importance for getting out the opposition viewpoint. PW: And they're really the underground press! 4. Interview with Haihui Zhang FL: Which countries in your region have historically had an underground press presence? Haihui Zhang (HZ): I'm thinking about the definitions of alternative press and underground press. Are they the same or similar or are there some differences? How would you define these terms in the Western world, in the United States? FL: I think there are many ways to define those terms. The definition may be determined by the political system in the country. HZ: I will define these terms based on my understanding, my impressions. In Chinese history, there have been banned non-governmental, revolutionary publications, and others, but these may not be considered underground publications in the Western sense. Actually, there are differing opinions about China's underground publications. Maybe we have different understandings about what could be considered underground publications. There is a history of underground publications in China. The end of the Qing Dynasty was a critical period in the transformation of modern China. China's royalists, reformists, and revolutionaries founded various newspapers and magazines. The Qing Dynasty was from 1644 to 1912. A large number of newspapers and magazines were banned during that period. During the Republican Era from 1912 to 1949, the Guomindang government also banned a large number of publications including many periodicals and books. Some of them were underground. For
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example, there is a periodical, Tingjinbao (Advance Report). This is a well-known underground newspaper. It is a publication of the underground Communist Party of the Chongqing Municipal. At that time, the dissemination of underground publications was likely to get someone arrested and killed. It was dangerous to read underground publications. But the Chongqing people as well as people from other areas read the Advance Report and circulated it. This underground newspaper is a typical one. It was founded in 1947 and was betrayed by a traitor in 1948. The person who was in charge of this newspaper was arrested by the Guomindang government and was killed a year later. This historical event was later adapted into a famous novel and a movie titled Hong Yan (Red Rock). Both the novel and the movie are still very popular. There were actually many publications blacklisted by the Communist Party at that time. After 1949, the People's Republic of China was established. For this time period, there is some disagreement. Some people think that there have been no underground publications since strict censorship has been implemented. But recently some research has been done. They have found out that underground publications exist even under strict censorship in different formats, including handwritten copies, tabloids, and mimeographed copies. Actually Advance Report was issued the same way in small runs. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a very famous underground newspaper titled Zhongxuesheng Wengebao (Middle School Students' Cultural Revolution Newspaper). Yu Luoke, who wrote articles for this newspaper, was arrested and killed. This newspaper is now an important source for research on the Cultural Revolution. So there is a history of underground publications in China during different time periods. FL: How many of these underground publications still exist? HZ: Strict censorship has been implemented. Some titles originally started in China have moved overseas. FL: What are the political, social, and other conditions that give rise to underground publications? HZ: As I said before, I believe the main reason for underground publications is the political factor. This is the main motivation. FL: Are there any specialty publications in the fields of literature, law, etc.? HZ: During the Republican Era, actually from the end of the Qing Dynasty until now, there have been underground publications in the field of literature. For example, one journal, Jintian (Today), is a literary one. This journal started in 1978 in Beijing was later banned. In 1990, it resumed publication in Norway. I'm not familiar with any publications in the field of law. But I do know that across many regimes there have been official lists of books banned by the government. These lists began before 1949. They've existed since the Qing Dynasty and even earlier. FL: What are the challenges of acquiring these publications for libraries? HZ: I think that libraries have a responsibility to collect these publications for research. Actually, I have been trying very hard to collect them. It's not that difficult to collect these types of publications from the Republican Era because recently reprints have been published in China. And some of them have been digitized. These are publications that began before 1949. For the Cultural Revolution period, officially, these publications are very hard to get. It's still something that we can't touch in mainland China. But there have been some electronic resources produced overseas. Our library recently purchased a few on CD-ROM. FL: Have Web sites replaced underground newspapers? HZ: Yes. One example that I just mentioned was Today. It moved to Norway and it's available in an online version. 5. Conclusion Each bibliographer pointed out the difficulty of acquiring current alternative or underground publications for libraries. This is as true
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004
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in “free” countries as it is in autocratic ones. These publications serve an important function in their countries of origin: they can serve as the voice of the downtrodden in Western democracies; they can serve as the voice of the opposition in times of war; and they can give voice to dissent in the presence of autocratic regimes. Although they generally have a narrow focus, they can present scholars with unique documentary evidence of diverse opinions in a society.
Alternative and underground publications can have a valuable role in presenting a more complete picture of history to the research community. Reference Reveal Digital (2013). Independent voices beta: An open-access collection of an alternative press. Retrieved from. http://www.revealdigital.com/voices
Please cite this article as: Leibowitz, F., Documenting Dissent: Underground and Alternative Periodicals in China, Eastern Europe, and the Western World, Serials Review (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2013.04.004