The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New”

Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club in the Post-

Communist Czechoslovak Book Market*
Petra Loučová

Abstract
LOUČOVÁ, Petra: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat
Club in the Post-Communist Czechoslovak Book Market.
In the final issue of the clandestine Lidové noviny from December 1989, Václav Havel bid farewell to
the newspaper’s samizdat era in his “Goodbye samizdat” editorial: “Goodbye samizdat Lidové noviny,
goodbye conspiracies, goodbye interrogations! Hello printer, hello new readers, hello freedom!” A few
months later the press began to report about an extraordinary project by the Liberated Samizdat Club
and its promise to literally “return to samizdat” by self-publishing the first editions of previously unpublis-
hed books. All the participants were to work for free, and the size of the print run was to be determined
by previous subscriptions. This “new” samizdat, as a revolt against the principles of market economics
in the era of liberalisation and transformation, is at once a specific chapter in the post-Communist history
of the Czechoslovak book market and a contribution to the history of samizdat and its continuities and
discontinuities.
Keywords: samizdat, Velvet Revolution, book market, post-Communism, Liberated Samizdat Club (Klub
osvobozeného samizdatu); František Kautman
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/forhist.2020.14.2.7

upposing it is at all possible to define, the phenomenon of samizdat can be

S described as “all independent literature that, for whatever reason, came to be
in contradiction to the mandatory cultural policies of a totalitarian state and was
thus disseminated privately by citizens despite threats of repression.”1 Although
there is evidence of samizdat efforts as early as during the Protectorate of Bo-
hemia and Moravia, samizdat did not truly flourish in Czechoslovakia until after
the Communist coup in February 1948, especially during the so-called norma-
lisation period in the 1970s and 1980s, when this parallel circulation offered
a viable alternative to scores of authors who were excluded from official literary
communication. The appearance of such a circulation was a typical consequen-
ce of the presence of authoritarian literary censorship.2 Probably the greatest

* This study is an output of the project Media of the Cultural Opposition in Czechoslovakia with the identifi-
cation code LTC18040; project implementation was supported by INTER-EXCELLENCE, a programme of
the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic. The publication also utilised sources
from the research infrastructure of the Czech Literary Bibliography (http://clb.ucl.cas.cz).
1 PŘIBÁŇ, Michal. I. K terminologii samizdatu. In PŘIBÁŇ, Michal et al.: Český literární samizdat 1949–1989:
Edice, časopisy, sborníky. Praha : Academia – Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2018, p. 16. All quotes in
this article have been translated from Czech.
2 ŠÁMAL, Petr. Část sedmá: 1949–1989: V zájmu pracujícího lidu: Literární cenzura v době centrálního
plánování a paralelních oběhů. In WÖGERBAUER, Michael et al. (eds.). V obecném zájmu: Cenzura a sociální
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 105

popularity was achieved by literary samizdat in the form of a plethora of more or

less organised imprints, workshops, magazines, or almanacs,3 but non-literary
samizdat was also highly diverse and widespread (in the fields of music, art, the-
atre, religion, spirituality, politics, philosophy, economics, ecology, etc.); of cour-
se, themes and genres intermingled. Samizdat output also often shared a specific
generational, subcultural, or group affiliation (surrealism, underground, punk,
Czech tramping, Scouting, sci-fi, programming, etc., but also students of secon-
dary schools or universities).
Insufficient technological support meant that Czechoslovak samizdat was ne-
ver developed to the extent of the Polish drugi obieg, which featured print runs
of thousands of copies and a high reach throughout the population. Czechoslo-
vak samizdat was mostly characterised by limited numbers of typewritten copies
(one typescript usually amounted to twelve copies) with a greater emphasis on
the aesthetic and overall visual appearance of the product compared to its Po-
lish counterpart.4 Improved equipment and financial backing from the West led
a number of major samizdat publishers to endeavour to refine – or professionali-
se, even legalise – their printing and publishing ventures (in both the quality and
quantity of “prints”) in the late 1980s. Over the course of 1989 and in response to
the new Housing, Consumer, and Producer Cooperatives Act (94/1988 Sb.), Brno
dissident circles and later the writing team of the samizdat magazine Obsah (Con-
tents) began to establish the publishing cooperative Atlantis, which obtained its
publisher’s licence as early as 30 November 1989. The extensive documentation
for this audacious plan includes correspondence by Václav Havel: “Independent
literature, both at home and in exile, is disseminated in quite copious amounts in
Czechoslovakia today both through samizdat, which long ago stopped relying solely
on typewriters but has limited options nonetheless, and through the importation
of what is published in exile. What these two paths have in common is that they
are – how to put it? – simply somewhat wild: being either borderline legal or in
some way or other open to persecution or at least complications. The time is ripe
for another step to be made. The way I – and most of the people around me – feel it,
this next step would be the founding of an independent yet fully legal (i.e., ‘registe-
red’) independent [sic] publishing cooperative in Czechoslovakia. It is the task of us
who live here to secure such a publishing cooperative,” Václav Havel informed his
friends beyond the borders of the country about the publishing venture he inten-
ded to back financially, among other ways, in June 1989.5
regulace literatury v moderní české kultuře 1749–2014: Svazek II/1938–2014. Praha : Academia – Ústav
pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2015, p. 1124.
3 An overview of Czech literary samizdat in the encyclopaedic form was created by a group of authors –
see PŘIBÁŇ, Michal et al. Český literární samizdat 1949–1989: Edice, časopisy, sborníky. Praha : Academia
– Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2018. For more on the topic of Czechoslovak samizdat, see the fol-
lowing sets of thematic studies: GLANC, Tomáš (ed.). Samizdat Past & Present. Praha : Institute of Czech
Literature – Karolinum Press, 2018; MACHOVEC, Martin. Writing Underground: Reflections on Samizdat
Literature in Totalitarian Czechoslovakia. Praha : Karolinum Press, 2019.
4 KANDZIORA, Jerzy. Druhý oběh a bibliografie mimocenzurních tisků: Polská zkušenost. In Česká litera-
tura, 2016, Vol. 64, No. 6, pp. 918–928; on the differences and similarities of samizdat in the former So-
viet bloc, see OLASZEK, Jan. Drugi obieg wydawniczy w PRL i samizdat w innych państwach bloku sow-
ieckiego: podobieństwa, róznice, wzajemne wpływy. In GASZTOLD-SEŃ, Przemysław – JARSKA, Natalia
– OLASZEK, Jan (eds.). Drugi obieg w PRL na tle samizdatu w państwach bloku sowieckiego po 1956 roku.
Warszawa : Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2016, pp. 15–57.
5 HAVEL, Václav. Nakladatelství Atlantis a “režie” Franfurktu. P16/1 Václav Havel Güntheru Christianse-
novi, Klausu Junckerovi, Jiřímu Grušovi, Pavlu Kohoutovi, Vilému Prečanovi. Praha, 22. června 1989.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 106

Besides Atlantis, the first private publishing companies to launch in the post-No-
vember 1989 era was the erstwhile typewritten Česká expedice (Czech Distribu-
tion; from 1978) of Jaromír Hořec, whose registration was approved by the Mi-
nistry of Culture on 5 December 1989.6 The year 1989 does not offer a clear-cut
delineation, as some samizdat organisations continued to produce scheduled
titles in the early 1990s. Others, such as Pražská imaginace (Prague Imagination),
Sefer (formerly Alef), etc., decided to maintain continuity with their previous
work (with varying degrees of success). The same was true for samizdat maga-
zines – some have lasted until today: Host, Prostor, Revolver Revue, Střední Evro-
pa, Možnost (online); others lasted a number of years: Akord, Box, Hanťa press,
Kritický sborník, Lázeňský host, Teologické texty, or Vokno and Voknoviny, among
others; and some just briefly: Kvašňák or Sklepník. The publishers of Lidové novi-
ny (The People’s News) strove to “officialise” the monthly in the conditions of sta-
te-sanctioned socialism, and they also received preliminary approval for publica-
tion on 5 December 1989. It has functioned as a national daily newspaper since
April 1990. Some samizdat magazines continued to exist as alternative media
or as periodicals closely related to specific subcultures. Examples include the punk
fanzines Sračka, Šot, Mašurkovské podzemné, etc.7 In October 1990 Jiří Gruntorád
oversaw the launch of a private library of “forbidden books”, Libri prohibiti.8
It seemed at first that the post-1989 era provided an excellent opportunity to
publish and disseminate the samizdat (and exile) works of previously silenced
authors to readers. Samizdat as a method of self-publication would no longer be
needed and could be permanently abandoned, since the fall of the socialist dic-
tatorship meant that literature was no longer endangered by censorship, and its
creators or publishers did not have to fear repression or persecution. However,
this premise was not confirmed: just as quickly as the illusions about the functio-
ning of a free book market were lost, it soon became clear that this was not the end
of samizdat either. Besides the aforementioned magazine enterprises, which fun-
damentally diverged from the mainstream media, and numerous post-samizdat
occasional prints – practically collector’s editions of sorts9 – a unique case in this
context is the initiative later known as Klub osvobozeného samizdatu (the Libe-
rated Samizdat Club), whose representatives chose an unusual approach consi-
dering their advanced age: to establish a completely new entity, whose publishing
principles would not conform to the market conditions of the time, but which

In HAVEL, Václav – PREČAN, Vilém. Korespondence (1983–1989). Eds. Vojtěch Čelko and Vilém Prečan.
Praha : Československé dokumentační středisko, o.p.s., 2011, p. 746.
6 It is often claimed that the first private publishing house was Paseka. Although it was informally estab-
lished on 9 December 1989 at a congress of the Anti-Alcohol Society of Doctor Řimsa, official approval
was not provided to Ladislav Horáček until March 1990.
7 For more on these transformations, see JANÁČEK, Pavel. Část osmá: 1989–2014: V zájmu jednotlivce: Li-
terární cenzura v období neoliberalismu a postmoderny. In WÖGERBAUER, Michael et al. (eds.): V obec-
ném zájmu: Cenzura a sociální regulace literatury v moderní české kultuře 1749–2014: Svazek II/1938–
2014. Praha : Academia – Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2015, pp. 1380–1385; PŘIBÁŇ, Michal. II.
K dějinám českého literárního samizdatu. In PŘIBÁŇ, Michal et al. Český literární samizdat 1949–1989:
Edice, časopisy, sborníky. Praha : Academia – Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2018, pp. 42–43.
8 For more on this, see https://www.libpro.cz/en/establishment-of-library/.
9 For more on this, see MACHOVEC, Martin. The Types and Functions of Samizdat Publications in Czecho-
slovakia, 1948–1989. In MACHOVEC, Martin. Writing Underground: Reflections on Samizdat Literature in
Totalitarian Czechoslovakia. Praha : Karolinum Press, 2019, p. 154.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 107

would instead adopt and apply the ideas and experience gleaned from samizdat
during the period of oppression. Therefore, whereas the question of integrating
the three previous strands or communicational channels of Czech literature (of-
ficial, exile, samizdat)10 was being hotly debated on one hand, on the other, some
former samizdat participants again endeavoured to develop new, independent
operations with the aim of standing up to the lucrativeness of the book industry
and helping Czech books survive.
The present article builds on a study of archival documents and contemporary
journalism to map the story of the Liberated Samizdat Club and to reconstruct
and assess the success (or lack thereof) of its samizdat rhetoric and practice in
the post-Communist Czech culture of the first half of the 1990s.

A non-profit publisher
Literary history has paid little to no attention to the Liberated Samizdat Club to
date. Besides helping to complete our understanding of the history of Czechoslo-
vak samizdat and to shed light on its continuities and discontinuities, the club’s
concept also takes us back to the time of the “revolution” and subsequent trans-
formation of the Czech book market. The customary presentation of the post-
1989 book scene is replete with rich imagery of crises linked to the demise
of “Czech books”. The impacts of the Velvet Revolution and the developments
that followed in the book market were experienced as a literal “horror”.11 In re-
trospect, the first half of 1990 can be termed a liberalisation phase, which was
characterised by the repayment of debts, that is, the frantic publication of mostly
exile and samizdat texts and many other previously prohibited or unacceptable
titles in bookshops, with a sharp rise in the number of publishing companies.
This period quickly outgrew its means, and in the second half of the year the book
market moved into a transformation phase, which lasted roughly until the end
of 1991. This phase was characterised by privatisation, market over-saturation,
and the accumulation of unsellable books, especially newly published titles of
previously prohibited literature, caused by the unrealistically large print runs
with hundreds of thousands of copies and erroneous estimations of the short-
-lived interest of readers, while the market was also inundated with so-called
“paraliterature”.12
In these rather chaotic times, the literary historian and theoretician, author,
Charter 77 signatory, and samizdat participant František Kautman – previously
also editor-in-chief of Československý spisovatel (The Czechoslovak Writer)
from 1949–1952 – turned to his friend, the poet, translator, and erstwhile pub-
lisher of the samizdat imprint Kvart, Jan Vladislav in France in August 1990 with
a specific proposal:
10 For an assessment of the period, see the compendium Česká nezávislá literatura po pěti letech v referá-
tech. Praha : Primus, 1995.
11 ŠMEJKALOVÁ, Jiřina. Kniha: K teorii a praxi knižní kultury. Brno : Host, 2000, p. 137.
12 For more on this, see JANÁČEK 2015, pp. 1432–1433; ŠIMEČEK, Zdeněk – TRÁVNÍČEK, Jiří. Knihy kupo-
vati...: Dějiny knižního trhu v českých zemích. Praha : Academia, 2015, pp. 386–390; ŠMEJKALOVÁ 2000,
pp. 138–141; ŠMEJKALOVÁ, Jiřina. Cold War Books in the “Other” Europe and What Came After. Leiden :
Brill, 2011, pp. 285–293.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 108

“What do you say we found a non-profit publishing house ‘Samizdat’ (I would not even
eschew the Russian name), which would employ a single paid worker […]. The rest
of the team would be volunteers – mainly the editorial staff, which I would like to
have you chair; I would acquire a few younger people (not too many, but hard-wor-
king and committed to the notion), who would assess incoming manuscripts global-
ly, the way it was done in samizdat; that is, the manuscripts would be unedited, un-
amended, etc.; there would just be the essential decision ‘do – don’t do’; the author
would then process the manuscript himself, and its production (using cheap and
quick equipment, computers – diskettes etc.) and distribution would be organised
by the said employee (who would also proofread it). There would be no royalties
(like in samizdat), but if some publishing firm were to show interest in another edi-
tion, no one would prevent the author from making that offer. The distribution base
would be the ‘Samizdat Readers’ Club’, whose members would generally subscribe
to individual books based on a pre-announced publishing schedule.”13
The idea was to self-publish previously unpublished books in first editions. All
the participants were to work for free; the size of each print run was to be de-
termined by previous subscriptions, and the enterprise was to be unprofitable.
Jan Vladislav agreed, and Kautman soon started approaching potential members
of the editorial board of the planned organisation. Their reactions varied. Some
considered it a good and plausible plan;14 others were unsure of the need for
a new samizdat.15 For example, Klement Lukeš angrily replied: “My first reaction
was quite unsavoury: ‘Bollocks! There are so many publishing firms, houses, and si-
milar as yet unnamed activities being launched at the moment, and you come at me
with samizdat?’”16 Conversely, the poet Zdeněk Rotrekl wrote enthusiastically to
Kautman that he himself, as an author of exclusively samizdat and exile publica-
tions, welcomed the notion wholeheartedly.17
The editorial board was made up of Jan Vladislav (chairman), František Kautman,
Iva Kotrlá, Klement Lukeš, Karel Pecka, Vilém Prečan, Sylvie Richterová, and Zde-
něk Rotrekl, and its members met for the first time on 18 October 1990. All of them
had participated in samizdat before 1989: “activists of the erstwhile samizdat” or
“old samizdat workers”, as František Kautman called them. The initial concept also
counted on maintaining ties with Prečan’s Czechoslovak Documentary Centre
of Independent Literature in Scheinfeld, to which it would provide samizdat ma-
terials that the latter did not yet have in its collection, and conversely, the centre
would help distribute the club’s books abroad. Kautman also wondered if it might
be possible for the centre to find some benefactor.18 Vilém Prečan later sugges-
ted specific forms of cooperation, namely that they could bilaterally provide each
13 Literary Archives of the Czech Museum of Literature (LA CML), fond Klub osvobozeného samizdatu
(Liberated Samizdat Club collection; LSC), box 2, letter from František Kautman to Jan Vladislav, 3 August
1990.
14 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Ludvík Vaculík to František Kautman, 22 September 1990.
15 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Jan Trefulka to František Kautman, 27 September 1990.
16 LUKEŠ, Klement. Náš host Klement Lukeš, člen ediční rady včerejšího samizdatu – i dnešního (prepared
by D. Hajná). In Zápisník, 1991, Vol. 35, No. 11, p. 2.
17 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Zdeněk Rotrekl to František Kautman, 24 October 1990.
18 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from František Kautman to Jan Vladislav, 3 August 1990.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 109

other with their publications and subscription base and that the centre would
also help print some of the materials19 – but without any actual results.
The newly developing project was first given the working title of Samizdat (along
with the parallel Samizdat Readers’ Club). Contemporary correspondence shows
that the exact form of the name was debated in autumn 1990, the hot issue be-
ing whether it was suitable to use a Russianism in these liberated conditions. For
example, that was precisely why “samizdat” was not accepted as a term in Poland
even before 1989. One of the future authors and representatives of the Liberated
Samizdat Club (LSC), Jan Kameníček, gave František Kautman the following ad-
vice: “Ad vocem of the imprint’s title: I see no reason why not to call it Samizdat. It
is a word with a great tradition – after all, khozraschyot, perestroika, or vodka are
also terms known throughout the world. And seeing that I reckon we are still living
in Communism to a certain extent, I do not know why we should suddenly choose
terms for a new era if that has not yet fully arrived.”20 The editorial board finally ag-
reed on the definitive names of both
the samizdat imprint and the subscri-
bers’ club: Osvobozený samizdat (Li-
berated Samizdat) and the Liberated
Samizdat Club.21
At the same time, Kautman formula-
ted the key document, Výzva (Appeal),
which summarised the premises and
message of Liberated Samizdat. Both
the text and the idea itself immedia-
tely enjoyed the widespread attention
of the press.22 The full text of the “Ap-
peal” is included as an appendix to
this article, and so it will suffice to
quote its concluding imperative here
to illustrate its tone of urgency: “And
so we call on all creators and readers
of good Czech books: help us overcome
the difficult situation of the current
Figure 1. Statutes of the Liberated Samizdat Club. book market by supporting this self-
(Source: Literary Archives of the Czech Museum
of Literature, Liberated Samizdat Club collection)
-sustaining initiative.”23 The founding
meeting of the Liberated Samizdat
19 LA CML, LSC, box 1, Zápis z ediční rady samizdatové edice (Minutes from the editorial board of the samiz-
dat imprint), 30 October 1990. Efforts to cooperate with the Institute of Czech and World Literature and
the Institute of Contemporary History (both of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences) were similarly
unsuccessful.
20 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Jan Kameníček to František Kautman, 20 September 1990.
21 LA CML, LSC, box 1, Zápis z ediční rady samizdatové edice (Minutes from the editorial board of the samiz-
dat imprint), 30 October 1990.
22 Besides Czech newspapers and magazines, mentions of the new club also appeared in foreign periodicals
(Der Standard) and the broadcasts of Radio Free Europe or the BBC, among others. Several thousand
printed flyers were distributed to advertise the club.
23 LA CML, LSC, box 1, Výzva (Appeal).
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 110

Club took place in Prague on 9 November 1991, where the organisation’s statu-
tes were approved and its managing board was appointed.

The “Old” and the “new” samizdat

It is remarkable that just shortly after the events of November 1989, both
Kautman’s interpretation and the contemporary press quickly associated pre-re-
volutionary samizdat with epithets like “classic”, “old”, or “yesterday’s”, whereas
Kautman’s proposed samizdat was “new”, “liberated”, or “samizdat in a new role”.
In this sense, the club enjoyed an almost fervid reception, as it was an act that
directly responded to the unfavourable economic conditions in the book market,
in which the organisers reckoned that certain books had no chance of finding
a publisher.24 The fact that this conduct defied contemporary expectations is inad-
vertently evidenced by journalistic descriptions such as “an extraordinary initia-
tive” or “an utterly peculiar cultural institution”.25 However, the public was in no
quandary about the benefits of the LSC, and so its activities were further charac-
terised as “noble” or “praiseworthy”; one writer even suggested that it was “a he-
roism almost comparable to the time when the illegal distribution of samizdats
was punishable by prison.”26 The first general meeting of the club in November
1991 is notable for a newspaper report that compared the members of the edi-
torial board to the Christian apostles: “In either case, they never gave up. They
have that in common. As well as their permanently defiant nature: when others are
silent (or blather), they get down to important work. With or without danger, but
always for free. Samizdat skirmishers who have come out of their holes and refused
to crawl in again and quietly whine about how our culture will be ruined without
subsidies. Thirteen apostolic lunatics with a profound sense of reality. I know that is
a contradiction. But it is not.”27

Figure 2. Infor-
mation about
the founding of
the Liberated
Samizdat Club
also reached
the internation-
al press – an
article from the
Austrian daily
Der Standard
from 2–3 Feb-
ruary 1991.
(Source: Liter-
ary Archives of
the Czech Mu-
seum of Litera-
ture, Liberated
Samizdat Club
collection)

24 For more on the growing sense of so-called economic censorship, see JANÁČEK 2015, pp. 1435–1436.
25 GRYM, Pavel. Osvobozený samizdat. In Tvar, 1990, Vol. 1, No. 39, p. 3.
26 GOSMAN, Svatoslav. Osvobozený samizdat. In Labyrint, 1991, Vol. 1, No. 8, p. 2.
27 FILIPOVÁ, Miroslava. Pod korouhví bláznů. In Práce, Vol. 47, No. 274, 23 November 1991, supplement
No. 47, p. 4.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 111

The aforementioned František Kautman was especially active in promoting

the new organisation in the media. His participation in pre-1989 samizdat en-
deavours gave him credibility, and he was also the bearer and disseminator
of the ethos of samizdat revival that was then taken up by others. The LSC regar-
ded itself as the direct successor to the samizdat tradition of the “normalisation”
period: “It seemed that old samizdat – the self-sustained copying of manuscripts
of forbidden authors on typewriters and their dissemination to at least a small cir-
cle of readers – had died after November 1989. But something else soon appea-
red instead…”28 In fact, the final months of 1990 gave rise to other projects born
of the dissatisfaction with cultural developments and the general post-revolutio-
nary disillusionment in this area (the Parliament of Independent Culture, the Pant
Club for literature and art, the alternative culture centre Artforum, which also ran
a bookshop specialising in the sale of short-run publications and non-commercial
literature, and many others).
Kautman and his colleagues had actually merely refreshed samizdat as a cer-
tain type of independent production and distribution process, which was devoid
of the threat of persecution. However, at the same time their efforts still included
an element of disavowal, though in this case it was unfettered resistance to mar-
ket mechanisms, which could result in mere economic failure instead of state op-
pression. Kautman himself noted somewhat paradoxically: “I realised at the time
that the idea of samizdat could be implemented much better in a state of freedom
than under totalitarian conditions. Without State Security pressure, using modern
computer technology. This new samizdat is linked to the samizdat of the past in that
the authors receive no fees, the reviewers also work for free, so the earnings from
the book merely cover the production costs.”29 He simply claimed that “samizdat
can still play a useful part” if its old virtues are revived at a new and higher tech-
nical level.30 There could be much discussion about the use of the term samizdat
in a free society, but that is not in the scope of this article. Let it just be said that
some literary historians refuse this usage because they consider samizdat to be
meaningful “only under specific socio-political conditions, in which the publication
and dissemination of documents is restricted and usually also ‘penalisable’ or punis-
hable by law.”31
The Liberated Samizdat Club appears rather to have been a certain form of in-
stitutionalised samizdat. For example, although Kautman repeatedly emphasised
that the LSC was an “author-reader subscription society” and that their ambi-
tion was not to participate in market economics,32 he and other members of the
editorial board also published in standard publishing houses at the time. Purely
samizdat methods and do-it-yourself (DIY) procedures of publication in the early

28 KAUTMAN, František. Samizdat žije… In Nové knihy, 1991, No. 48, p. 1.

29 KAUTMAN, František. Samizdat v nové úloze (prepared by M. Fronková). In Lidová demokracie, Vol. 48,
No. 57, 7 March 1992, p. 4.
30 KAUTMAN 1991, Samizdat žije..., p. 1.
31 MACHOVEC, Martin. Obecně přijímaná definice samizdatu neexistuje. In Česká literatura, 2016, Vol. 64,
No. 6, p. 943.
32 KAUTMAN, František. Zpíval KOS kosici fistulí... (prepared by M. Nyklová). In Svobodné slovo, Vol. 48,
No. 9, 11 January 1992, supplement Slovo na sobotu, p. 3.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 112

1990s were generally used only by subcultures and various (anarchist, feminist,
ecological, religious, etc.) movements. The DIY strategies used in these environ-
ments are an expression of efforts to achieve cultural and social autonomy, while
fanzine production represents an alternative means of communication in opposi-
tion to mass media and the mainstream environment, creating a sense of affinity
within the given community.33 The “boom” of diversely focused magazines/zines
(10:15 Fakezine, A-kontra, Filtré, Konserva/Na hudbu, Plivník, Rock 88, Spark, Sce-
ne Report, ROK, UNI, and others) is typical for the early 1990s.34
Either way, the LSC was highly successful at evoking its legitimacy as a post-revo-
lutionary continuation of samizdat.35 This was most notably manifested in Franti-
šek Kautman’s text “Návrat k samizdatu” (“Return to samizdat”), published in Lis-
ty (Pages), in which he gave an exposition of the history of Czechoslovak samizdat
before 1989, outlined the effects of market economics on the book market, and
presented the new samizdat programme offered by the LSC, concluding his text
with a message about the invincibility of Czech books and the experience and
ethics of samizdat, which could help maintain book culture in post-Communist
countries and beyond.36 The article – and other media depictions and reactions to
the club – aptly capture a characteristic feature of the early 1990s: “One of the de-
fining principles of the representation of the book transformation was the mecha-
nical conversion of the material and economic aspects of text production (from de-
caying bookbindings to indebted distributors) to the ideological level in the sense of
‘the fall of national culture’. In other words, technical production issues of the book
market were placed in direct relation to questions of ethics and nationality.”37
As time passed, the need to unambiguously define the LSC’s essence caused the
original references to “old” samizdat to weaken, although this was still maintai-
ned in the name of the club, and it came to refer to itself more as an “author-re-
ader society/citizens’ association”, “voluntary free-time organisation of readers
and authors”, “non-professional voluntary organisation”, or “voluntary non-profit
organisation”. However, Kautman himself continued to publicly defend samizdat
and its qualities both in the past and in the present.38

33 For more on this, see DANIEL, Ondřej et al. Kultura svépomocí: Ekonomické a politické rozměry v českém
subkulturním prostředí pozdního státního socialismus a postsocialismu. Praha : Univerzita Karlova, 2016;
HROCH, Miloš. Křičím: “To jsem já.”: Příběhy českého fanzinu od 80. let po současnost. Praha : PageFive,
2017; MICHELA, Miroslav – LOMÍČEK, Jan. Fanziny: Subkulturní symbol. In Milan HLAVAČKA – Jakub
RAŠKA et al. Symboly doby: Historické eseje. Praha : Historický ústav, 2019, pp. 159–169.
34 Other fanzines can be found, for example, in the Czech and Slovak Archives of Subcultures (ziny.info) or
in the archives of BigMag, http://bigmag.cz/?lang=cs.
35 In a meeting in November 1991, the managing board decided, among others, that one copy of each LSC
publication was to be sent to the Libri prohibiti library of Jiří Gruntorád. LA CML, LSC, box 5, Záznam
ze schůze představenstva Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu (Minutes from the meeting of the managing
board of the LSC), 9 November 1991.
36 KAUTMAN, František. Návrat k samizdatu. In Listy, 1991, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 89–92.
37 ŠMEJKALOVÁ 2000, p. 162.
38 See KAUTMAN, František. Odkaz samizdatu. In KOS: Bulletin Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu, 1994,
Nos. 2–3, pp. 1–3; KAUTMAN, František. Je exilová a samizdatová literatura úspěšná? In Česká nezávislá
literatura po pěti letech v referátech. Praha : Primus, 1995, pp. 20–25.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 113

Friends of Czech books

The numerous newspaper and magazine articles reporting about the LSC led to
large numbers of people applying to join it from all over Czechoslovakia and from
various generations – ranging from university students to pensioners. The “Ap-
peal” written by the editorial board was highly suggestive both in its description
of the book market crisis and in its solicitation of the broader readership (see Ap-
pendix). Some readers responded ardently to this call to action, as exemplified by
one of the letters that the club received: “If it really is so tragic and if it helps Czech
books, you can count on our family.”39 A number of readers shared this worried out-
look on the future and quality of “our” books, and so they expressed their gratitude
that the club had taken up “such a thankless task in this day and age”.40 They looked
with sympathy at the “attempt to get good book products to the readers despite
the tough conditions for books” and regarded this as an invaluable service. One re-
ader joyfully welcomed the fact that “I will receive delightful book morsels through
your efforts”.41 It seems that the club managed to respond well to contempora-
ry moods and concerns about the situation in the book market, both on the side
of publishers and booksellers42 and among readers themselves. Future members
then expressed the hope that, conversely, the club’s books would be interesting
and “mainly also for a manageable price”(!), and they thanked them for “this service
to us lovers of good books, who do not need books that are finely dressed, but ones
that tell something, and that is what counts.”43 We can assume that, especially for
regional applicants, their future membership in the club was seen as a guarantee
of access to something “better” and “exalted”. Combined with the offer of exclusivi-
ty,44 this must have undoubtedly appealed especially to older readers.
From the beginning, the LSC counted on acquiring members from among the old
samizdat subscribers,45 and this intention was also reflected in the aforementio-
ned “Appeal” (see Appendix). Some readers still had very clear memories of sa-
mizdat, and many of the letters sent to the club evince echoes of the reception
of samizdat before 1989. These include the brief allusions of former regular re-
cipients of samizdat: Mr Jan H. wrote to the club as a “long-standing samizdat
reader”,46 Mr Stanislav K. welcomed the idea of a club as he had previously only
borrowed the books for one or two feverish nights, and so he would be grateful
for the option to buy an interesting book.47 Mr Martin S. confessed to having very
much enjoyed reading samizdat literature, noted that he would like to continue
doing so, and wished the club much success and as large a response from readers
“as back then”.48 Applications were also sent in by recent samizdat participants,
39 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Helena B., undated.
40 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Jindra T., 4 March 1991.
41 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Zdeněk T., undated.
42 Some regional booksellers also offered to help promote the club’s activities.
43 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Jiří Š., 27 March 1991.
44 The club’s advertising materials used this strategy intentionally: “Would you be interested in one of these
books? They cannot be bought or ordered at bookshops, but you can get them if you become a member of
the Liberated Samizdat Club (LSC for short).” LA CML, LSC, box 1, advertising flyer.
45 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from F. Kautman to J. Vladislav, 3 August 1990.
46 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Jan H., 12 February 1991.
47 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Stanislav K., 18 February 1991.
48 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Martin S., 23 February 1991.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 114

including regional figures – Pavel Frait from Hořice (the magazine Sklepník),
Erwin Kukuczka (the imprint Louč), Vladimír Liberda from Ostrava, Petr Náhlík
from Pilsen, Petr Pavlovský (the magazine Acta incognitorum), Mojmír Trávníček
from Nový Hrozenkov, Julius Augustin Varga from Šumperk, and others. Member-
ship was requested by well-known former dissidents, such as Rudolf Battěk, Ivan
M. Havel, Olga Havlová, Eva Kantůrková, Radim Palouš, Vilém Prečan, Jan Ruml,
experts on Czech studies from both at home (Miroslav Červenka, Milan Jankovič,
Lubomír Machala, etc.) and abroad (Ivo Bock from Bremen), and even some insti-
tutions (the Museum of Czech Literature, the Josef Škvorecký Society, the library
of the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, etc.).

Figure 3. Member-
ship application and
pre-order by Olga
Havlová, a former
samizdat participant
and the husband of
then Czechoslovak
President Václav Ha-
vel. (Source: Literary
Archives of the Czech
Museum of Literature,
Liberated Samizdat
Club collection)

Thanks to its declared strategy of samizdat revival, the membership base

of the LSC in the early 1990s did in fact “absorb” some of the core figures of pre-
1989 samizdat. By November 1991, 274 members had been accepted; in April
1992, there were 365 members; in 1994, 410 members were listed; and finally, as
of 1 March 1995, memberships amounted to 315 entries.49

Samizdat utopia
The idea of a supportive community of friends of new Czech books soon began
to collapse, however. LSC volumes were published50 in paperback and, bar some
exceptions, with a unified graphic style, which was created together with the
club’s logo by the artist Klára Rasochová pro bono, in the LSC spirit, and which
was deemed tasteful51 but, honestly, not especially attractive. The print runs were
planned to consist of 200 to 400 copies (although initial estimates gave a range
49 In each year, there were always some members who did not pay their membership fee, which begs the
question as to how actively they then subscribed to the pre-order of books.
50 The actual publication of books was initially arranged in cooperation with the European Culture Club,
later primarily with the publisher Pavel Primus and his eponymous publishing company.
51 Potential readers were enticed with the literal promise of a “modestly produced, yet charming collector’s
edition”. LA CML, LSC, box 1, advertising flyer.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 115

of 600 to 2,000 copies), but the actual numbers were determined by the subscri-
bers. Their professed interest then also designated the order in which the indi-
vidual titles would be published. People initially ordered publications in appa-
rent euphoria, with the main goal of supporting the club’s existence. This was no
doubt aided by the project’s publicity, which was copious in 1990–1991 but then
gradually abated, causing the LSC to struggle to promote its operations and its
books. Another problem was that the club’s publishing scope was so broad that
members were often interested in just a single title and not the whole catalogue;
there was no need to own a complete series, despite the publications’ unified
visuals. The given method of financing the “self-sustaining unremunerated pu-
blishing house” via membership fees – which were initially set to CSK 20, then
CSK 30, but then rose to CSK 50 per year in 1992 – and the payment of production
costs from book sales proved to be insufficient. This was something of a paradox
because, economically, the club endeavoured to make its publications as cheap
and accessible as possible, especially seeing that no one was going to profit from
them.52 Members were thus repeatedly called on to promote the LSC principles
among their acquaintances and help acquire new members, as larger print runs
would help reduce the cost of each copy. The subscription system can theoreti-
cally be seen as building on the approach of publishing ventures such as the er-
stwhile Evropský literární klub (European Literary Club) or Družstevní práce
(Cooperative Works) or the later Čtenářský klub (Readers’ Club; administered
by the State Publisher of Fine Literature, Music, and Art, later the State Publisher
of Fine Literature and Art, finally Odeon). Book clubs had become popular espe-
cially after World War II, and practically ever larger publishing house maintained
its own club or participated in one. Club publications generally featured solid
editing, high-quality typography and art, affordable prices, and large print runs.
These attributes, easily appreciated by customers of the large official publishing
houses of the past, were largely missing in the LSC series. However, if one was
to look for some similarity with pre-1989 alternative culture, it could be likened
to the book subscription of Jazzová sekce (Jazz Section), with all the difficulties
inherent to this kind of interest-based production and distribution of books for
members (longer waits, higher prices, etc.).53
Sky-rocketing prices in the printing industry and rising postage costs led the LSC to
approach myriad institutions with requests for grants as early as late 1992, as it did
not want to burden its members by increasing membership fees, instead wishing to
enable them to pre-order books for more reasonable prices. All the same, the club
found itself in a crisis in 1993,54 one which had long been anticipated, as evidenced
by one recollection of the author Jan Kameníček: “Only there arose problems that

52 See LUKEŠ 1991, p. 3; KAUTMAN, František – SOBOTKOVÁ, Alena. Jedeme dál! Samizdatové nakladatel-
ství bude pokračovat ve své práci i v nových podmínkách (prepared by M. Kolomacká). In Práce, Vol. 47,
No. 46, 23 February 1991, supplement No. 8, p. 5.
53 The subscription format was used to a much lesser degree by some larger samizdat imprints as well,
and by some samizdat magazines (e.g., Spektrum); in those cases, the publishers could be more certain
of covering their considerable production costs.
54 It is worth noting that, from 1992, the book market had to contend with the peculiar privatisation
of Knižní velkoobchod (the Book Wholesaler) and with the liquidation of the state enterprise Kniha
(Book) and its stock.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 116

we had not accounted for. We could not have

imagined that it was the end of idealism and
that the ‘ruthless hand of the market’, as it was
often called, was beginning to take effect. Pa-
per costs were rising steeply each half year.
The printer refused to cooperate altruistically.
And the distribution, which was conceived as
a subscription for members and was sent COD,
was no longer affordable.”55
The club’s operations were resurrected in
1994 with several successful subsidy appli-
cations (the Ministry of Culture, the Czech Li-
terary Fund), which allowed the LSC, among
others, to organise literary events for newly
published titles, which secured them at least
a certain degree of advertising, and to begin
publishing its Bulletin Klubu osvobozeného
samizdatu (Liberated Samizdat Club Bulle-
Figure 4. Example of the unified and muted tin). In its first issue from 1994, Kautman
graphic design of the club’s books – Miroslav
Petrusek: Alternativní sociologie (Alternative again defended the purpose of the club, but
Sociology; 1992). The bird logo was a refer-
ence to the club’s Czech acronym, KOS, which added: “Perhaps our initial plans were too ge-
is also the Czech word for “blackbird”. (Source: nerous, especially with regard to the number
Literary Archives of the Czech Museum of Lit-
erature, Liberated Samizdat Club collection) and speed of books to be published. Practice
has shown that we must be more modest.”56
Even so, the LSC was unable to effectively respond to the changing conditions
of the book market in the first half of the 1990s, which included the overall
transformation of the lifestyle of the Czech population and the redefining
of free-time activities after 1989, decreasing purchasing power, and shifting
reading behaviour. It was becoming increasingly difficult to reach prospective
readers. The strategy of “the reader will always find the book” had to be abando-
ned in favour of “the book must get to the reader”.57 This went in hand with the
collapse of the 1990s image of a persistent readers’ community, which – while
limited in numbers – used to buy books, bought books, would buy books “even
if there was nothing to eat”, and would continue to show their love for Czech
books by permanently subscribing to them.58 Members were repeatedly warned
that their pre-orders were binding, and the publishing process was also delayed
by members’ hesitations – it was thus necessary to order books as quickly as
possible. Members were also supposed to pay their membership fees on time.
However, it seems that members soon began to question what sense there was in

55 KAMENÍČEK, Jan. O počátcích Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu. In BUBENÍKOVÁ, Miluša – HŘÍBKOVÁ,

Radka (eds.). Na trnitých cestách života a tvorby: Sborník příspěvků ze sympozia pořádaného u příležitosti
životního jubilea Františka Kautmana. Praha : Národní knihovna ČR – Slovanská knihovna, 2015, p. 144.
56 KAUTMAN, František. Vážení členové. In KOS: Bulletin Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu, 1994, No. 1, p. 1.
57 ŠIMEČEK – TRÁVNÍČEK 2015, pp. 391–392; see also HALADA, Jan. Člověk a kniha: Úvod do nakladatelské
specializace. Praha : Univerzita Karlova, 1993, p. 63; ŠMEJKALOVÁ 2000, p. 155.
58 See KAUTMAN, František: Nakladatelé, autoři, knižní trh a čtenáři. In Labyrint, 1991, Vol. 1, No. 7, p. 2.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 117

paying membership fees to await the mercurial arrival of a modest catalogue that
might not contain anything of interest to them. Other offers appeared to be much
more attractive, notwithstanding that readers were becoming ever more accusto-
med to sales and special discounts, as with other types of goods. Various classic
novels could be bought on sale at the time, mainly from the clearance of stock of
disbanded publishing firms, for prices in the single digits of Czech crowns, where-
as the final costs of LSC books were often higher than estimated in the subscrip-
tion catalogue and reached as high as CZK 100.
The club’s situation was aptly summarised by one regular member, Evžen Sláma
from Brno, who ruminated in one of the bulletins from late 1994 that the LSC had
mainly come to be preferred by authors, who saw in it the chance to get their ma-
nuscripts published, rather than the people who would then actually buy those
books: “Especially now, when a vast miscellany of books is being published, their
price continues to rise, and those interested in good books are not known for having
funds to spare. Especially in cases when the author might be of fine quality but little
or no renown, there will probably not be many people willing to purchase his book
for a relatively high price.”59 He recommended that the club should stop focusing
on beginning or unknown authors and that it would be good if the LSC strove to
publish at least one book that would “be remarkable and cause a sensation”, which
could then attract the much-desired attention.60
All the same, the membership base of the club continued to deteriorate along-
side persistent issues with the existing system of pre-orders. Collaborative ties
with the publishing house Primus were relinquished with the comment that
“the path of co-production with commercial publishers is unfeasible for the LSC”.61
The club continued to be plagued by rising production costs and the price of pa-
per. In spring 1995 the organisation’s general meeting debated whether to call
an end to the project. Members voted to keep the operation running, but with
a changed approach. The subscribers were to send the money ahead of time, so
that the pre-ordered books would not be refused; it was also necessary to ensure
there would be shorter waiting times between the making of the subscription
offer and the publishing of the book – with a maximum period of three months.
It was also deemed essential to grow the membership and activist base so that
the brunt of the work would not be borne by just a few individuals, and a new
managing board was appointed. Nonetheless, in the second half of the year, finan-
cial difficulties and a lack of public interest caused the Liberated Samizdat Club to
close down for good.
The literary historian and journalist Vladimír Novotný commented on the event
in an article titled “Literární úbytě” (Literary losses), in which he juxtaposed the
dissolution of “the samizdat grandstand of the Czech underground”, the magazine

59 SLÁMA, Evžen: Vážení Kosové. In KOS: Bulletin Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu, 1994, Nos. 2–3, p. 4.
60 SLÁMA 1994, p. 4.
61 LA CML, LSC, box 1, letter from František Kautman to František Hrdlička, 21 March 1995.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 118

Vokno (Window),62 which – somewhat curiously, considering the non-conformist

and non-commercial nature of modern underground – was paid for by state funds
in the post-1989 period, with the ceased operation of the club, which was star-
ted without state subsidies and intended to publish books in line with samizdat
tradition: “Times change, there is no money, and mainly, surprisingly (or inevi-
tably?) interest has been lost in those circles which the Liberated Samizdat Club ap-
pealed to primarily. Maybe it really is outdated: non-commercial prose and poetry is
now published by prestigious publishers (Atlantis, Paseka, TORST, Argo, etc.), which
have now jointly established the Literary Club.”63 It was no longer possible to rely
on enthusiasm and DIY methods in 1995. The transition period, in which the LSC
wished to fill a gap in the book market, had passed.64

A failed experiment
During discussions about the composition of the club’s editorial board in autumn
1990, the prosaist and theoretician of exile literature Sylvie Richterová declared
that “the publishing plan should be highly representative, the point is not to pub-
lish some kind of ‘leftovers’, but good things. After all, that is the samizdat tradi-
tion.”65 The initial intentions of František Kautman as the founder of the club were
also quite ambitious. The DIY venture was to provide opportunities to authors
who could not break into the book market and to “serious”66 works of literature.
However, the authors were expected to show solidarity: “It is certainly not easy
to convince authors, especially those who have not received any remuneration for
their books for twenty years, to again offer their books to readers for free. But they
have a choice: they can either accommodate themselves to the market or to the de-
manding reader and the laws of their own self-realisation. (As has always been
the case in the history of literature, in our country certainly since the days of the na-
tional revival.)”67
At the same time, the club also counted on the threat of its newly established
independent publishing operation to be inundated by all kinds of scribblers.
In a private letter to Jan Vladislav, František Kautman anticipated the situation:
“The unpleasant thing is that we will probably get flooded by a large amount of less
valuable or utterly valueless manuscripts, which we will have to reject and thus
generate ill will – but there is no getting round that.”68 The express formulation
of the “Appeal” shows that they attempted to avoid this problem at least partially
and in advance. With no success, of course. Numerous people hoped to publish

62 A year earlier, another alternative samizdat magazine, the Hořice-based Sklepník (Cellarite), terminated
its operation. The first two post-1989 issues were printed in runs of 2,000 copies, but the publishers only
sold half of them, resulting in a net loss. The print-run later stabilised at 150 copies. The magazine was
not dissolved for financial reasons, but due to a lack of contributors and readers. Likewise in the case
of Vokno, its demise was not caused by financial problems but by a dearth of editorial staff.
63 NOVOTNÝ, Vladimír. Literární úbytě. In Práce, Vol. 51, No. 178, 2 August 1995, p. 13.
64 A kind of swan song of the LSC was the compendium Návrat Egona Hostovského (The Return of Egon Hos-
tovský; 1996), compiled from the proceedings of the international scientific symposium on the life and
works of Egon Hostovský (Hronov, 21–23 May 1993).
65 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Sylvie Richterová to František Kautman, 14 November 1990.
66 This was no doubt partly in defiance to the contemporary boom of popular literature.
67 KAUTMAN 1991, Návrat k samizdatu, p. 91.
68 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from František Kautman to Jan Vladislav, 11 September 1990.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 119

their writings and so sent the club their “humble first work”. Already in April 1991
the club’s secretary Alena Sobotková reported the situation to Jan Vladislav thus:
“There is a large offer of manuscripts as well, but a lot of slush.”69 In an interview in
early 1992, Kautman admitted they were bombarded with manuscripts, especially
poetry, where the assessment had to be all the more strict to ensure that the LSC
maintained a stable, balanced catalogue.70 Reviewers’ reports were thus given con-
siderable weight, and this was seen as one of the differences between old and new
samizdat, namely, that in the pre-1989 period it was not possible to maintain a corps
of reviewers and to convene meetings and editorial boards; there was no opportu-
nity to rely on second opinions, all of which was permissible in the new era.71 Some
people reckoned that the review process and the quality of the editorial board mem-
bers would allow for a certain “rehabilitation” of old samizdat, as far as professio-
nalism was concerned.72 However, this was not completely true (cf. the “admiralty”
editorial board of the samizdat Edice Expedice or the mode of operation for the Brno
imprint Prameny). In fact, the club actually retained some of the shortcomings of old
samizdat – for example, when they gave up on doing any editing work on the texts.
The constant struggles to secure print runs, as the low quantities were of little inte-
rest to printers, caused books to be released with numerous delays – for example, the
manuscript of the prison poems of the Slovak doctor Vojtech Belák, Zápočet z poní-
ženia (A Course in Humiliation), was received by the LSC in February 1991 and ap-
proved for publication in May of that year, but it was not published until mid-1994.
The club dubbed this case a “lengthily protracted odyssey”.73 Regular operations also
evinced a considerable lack of flexibility, which was caused, among other reasons,
by the unexpectedly demanding administrative responsibilities, further complica-
ted by the initial lack of equipment (computers), and especially by the club’s insuf-
ficient workforce and the overburdening of all participants – namely the reviewers
and proofreaders and those copied the texts on to diskettes – who worked comple-
tely for free in accordance with club principles, with the sole exception of the secre-
tary. The authors of submitted manuscripts were frequently asked for lenience with
regard to the assessment stage, as the editorial board was flooded with manuscripts
to such an extent that it was only able to function with the greatest of efforts.74 These
delays then caused some of the authors to request their manuscript to be returned so
they could offer it to a different publisher. Another significant feature can be observed
here – just as members of the LSC were recruited from among the supporters of pre-
1989 samizdat, the club was also approached with publication requests by the less
known samizdat authors of the Communist period. The club gained their sympathies
and concurred with their convictions, yet often turned down their submissions. Vla-
dimír Liberda, a former samizdat publisher and normalisation-era political priso-
ner from Ostrava, wrote to the LSC in August 1993 with palpable frustration: “Dear
friends, some two years ago I submitted to you a typescript of my prison memoirs from

69 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Alena Sobotková to Jan Vladislav, 17 April 1991.
70 KAUTMAN 1992, Zpíval KOS kosici fistulí..., p. 3.
71 LUKEŠ 1991, p. 4.
72 GOSMAN, Svatoslav, quoted in FILIPOVÁ 1991, p. 4.
73 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from František Kautman to Vojtech Belák, 10 May 1994.
74 LA CML, LSC, box 1, Vážení přátelé… (Dear Friends…).
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 120

the years 1982–84, titled ‘Příběh orwellovských let’ [A Story from the Orwellian
Years], which was ‘published’ in my Ostrava samizdat, in Edice Petlice and Česká
expedice. I just received a larger sum of money from the Min. of Justice as compen-
sation for that and my previous incarceration in Bory. I therefore ask you to please
inform me how much it would cost for you publish this title at my own expense with
a run of one thousand copies.”75 In response, the club merely returned the ma-
nuscript and suggested that he should contact a publisher in his neighbourhood
or attempt to self-publish the work, as the LSC required the necessary number of
subscribers to apply, which was out of the question in the near future.76
Many authors were rejected for various reasons – some almost immediately,
others on the basis of negative reviews. Some positively reviewed manuscripts
were merely kept in reserve, while others were entered into the subscription
programme but ended up not being published all the same, probably due to in-
sufficient interest from subscribers. The number of cancelled titles in the catalo-
gue offer could be interpreted in several ways. The offered works featured a di-
versity of genres but lacked attractiveness compared to the competition in the
book market. The unfocused scope of the LSC’s publishing programme, ranging
from fiction to scholarly works, may have caused anxiety among the readers, who
simply could not know what to expect next and whether it was worth the mem-
bership. In the case of “samizdat classics”, there was a certain chance to succeed
and gain support from erudite readers and from participants in “old” samizdat.
However, the club’s selection of less known authors yielded far worse results.
Last but not least, it appears that the LSC’s production appealed only to a limited
group of readers and certainly not to the youngest generation. The older gene-
ration of reviewers were not always favourably inclined towards the poetics of
beginning authors. The publishing schedule was thus largely filled by “tried and
tested” authors – be it veterans of “old samizdat” with direct links to the LSC,77
or works known from clandestine pre-1989 editions, or both. Although the club
proclaimed its openness to young authors and debutants, this was only partly
implemented in practice, as in this sense the people within the LSC had a more
retrospective tendency (generationally, poetically, ideologically).
An overall view shows that from October 1990 to March 1995, members of the ma-
naging board reviewed a total of 126 manuscripts, of which nine were published
and another 16 were approved and recommended for publication. The remaining
101 manuscripts were returned to their authors.78 Over the course of 1991–1996,
only eleven books were actually published.79
75 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter from Vladimír Liberda to the LSC, 15 August 1993.
76 LA CML, LSC, box 2, letter to Vladimír Liberda, unsigned, 4 October 1993.
77 The LSC understandably featured a “mesh” of personal ties and a system of friendships and motives that
may have been decisive in the selection and approval of works.
78 LA CML, LSC, box 1, Zpráva o činnosti Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu (KOS) v době od ustavující valné
hromady z r. 1991 do 20. března 1995 (Report on the operations of the Liberated Samizdat Club [LSC] in
the period from the founding meeting in 1991 to 20 March 1995).
79 Jan Vladislav: Kniha poezie (1991, 350 copies); Jan Kameníček: Vznik románu v sonátové formě (1992, 260
copies); Bedřich Placák: Partyzáni bez legend: Život a boje partyzánské brigády na západním Slovensku
(1992, 260 copies); Miroslav Petrusek: Alternativní sociologie: Úvahy o smyslu sociologie v nealternativní
společnosti (1992, 320 copies); Zdeněk Rotrekl: Němé holubice dálek (1994, 250 copies); Vojtech Belák:
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 121

Conclusion
The bold idea of “liberated sa-
mizdat” was conceived at a time
which the organisers themselves
characterised as “an economic si-
tuation temporarily adverse to
the muses”,80 although this was
a relatively natural adaptation to
free market conditions in the pub-
lishing industry after decades of re-
gulated existence. “However, what
is most unsustainable is not the old
order as such, but precisely the idea
of the very existence of immutable
orders”,81 Jiřina Šmejkalová wrote
in connection to the period; and
LSC representatives surely reali-
sed that. Even so, they – as many
others – saw the consequences of
publishing freedom after 1989 as
catastrophic. This led to the con-
cept of the Liberated Samizdat
Club – a self-defence response to Figure 5. First page of the original advertising flyer of
the Liberated Samizdat Club. (Source: Literary Archives
the “laws of the market” as a result of the Czech Museum of Literature, Liberated Samizdat
Club collection)
of failed expectations of the outco-
me of the “book revolution”.
The club wanted to maintain continuity, and it founded its premises and argumenta-
tion firmly on the social function and heritage of Czech books. Its evocation of the tra-
dition of voluntary service to Czech books and the recent history of typewritten cul-
ture, heroism, sacrifice, altruism, and related ethical aspects basically represented
the one extreme of the contemporary conflict of “enthusiasm and liberalism, that is,
of an almost revivalist-Krameriesque determination and the cold rationality of eco-
nomic principles”.82 This dramatic interpretation, the call to “save good books throu-
gh self-sustaining action”,83 resonated in certain parts of society, and the founding
of the club was regarded as a praiseworthy endeavour that was “no doubt highly me-
ritorious, it is a certain type of self-help in a difficult economic situation”.84

Zápočet z poníženia: Básne (1994, 250 copies); Erik Kolár: Vila Humbold: Kronika zašlé generace (1994, 300
copies), Šimona Löwensteinová: Filosof a moralista Emanuel Rádl 1873–1942 (1994); Zdena Bratršovská –
František Hrdlička: Cesta k močálu a jiné prózy (1994), Marek Hofman: Hra na divergenci (1995); František
Kautman (ed.): Návrat Egona Hostovského (compendium; 1996).
80 KAUTMAN – SOBOTKOVÁ 1991, p. 5.
81 ŠMEJKALOVÁ 2000, p. 150.
82 ŠIMEČEK – TRÁVNÍČEK 2015, p. 443.
83 KAUTMAN 1991, Návrat k samizdatu, p. 91.
84 NYKLOVÁ, Milena. Staňte se členy KOS! In Lidová demokracie, Vol. 47, No. 268, 16 November 1991, p. 4.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 122

Activists of the club were members of the samizdat “elite” before 1989, and by self-
-publishing based on volunteering and good intentions free of political or commer-
cial aspirations they wanted to conduct a new resistance after 1989. They worked
on the assumption that there was a certain number of authors who were unable to
publish due to the situation in the book market, and the LSC was basically meant
to be the institutionalised mediator between these authors and the “deprived” rea-
ders. References to “old” samizdat mainly hoped to activate the attribute of solidari-
ty – both by the authors, who would provide their works for free, and by the readers,
who would support the production of the works even at a higher cost (while enab-
ling the whole project with their annual membership fee). Solidarity and a shared
enthusiasm were to motivate people to participate in the running of this “parallel”
literary institution without any remuneration. The brunt of this burden was then
borne by women in the club, who volunteered as secretaries and proofreaders but
also included an artist and a graphic designer.
The LSC’s first step – to raise the alarm, to warn and subsequently recreate the “pa-
rallel polis”, a platform of people who shared a similar “world view” and were wil-
ling to support the alternative symbolically, financially, as readers, and as authors –
was actually successful. The club was undoubtedly aided in this by the social capital
accumulated by its representatives under the Communist regime, which bolstered
the project’s overall credibility. But the actual implementation of the altruistic sa-
mizdat vision was hampered by numerous problems (high prices, lack of flexibility,
limited aesthetic appeal, and partly also lacklustre content). It gradually became
apparent that this was an ideal that was insupportable in the given circumstances
and the chosen form. The community of samizdat “conspirators” did not receive
what they had expected from the club; the post-revolutionary fighting ethos abated,
and with it came a loss of interest by the literary community, whose needs were sa-
turated elsewhere in the market.
The first half of the 1990s is a period in which “books, and their price, […] became
a scene in which aspects of cultural traditions and stereotypes intersected with as-
pects of politics and psychology”.85 The closing down of the Liberated Samizdat Club
was not just the failure of one gesture of author-reader defiance towards the market
in the era of liberalisation and transformation. It also symbolises the destruction
of one myth and the sober awakening of one generation from its pre-revolutionary
ideas of the prestigious role of literature, literary works, and authors, which was to
be rewritten in the post-Communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe.86
Translation: Adam Prentis

85 ŠMEJKALOVÁ 2000, p. 155.

86 See WACHTEL, Andrew Baruch. Remaining Relevant after Communism: The Role of the Writer in Eastern Eu-
rope. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2006.
 Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 123

Appendix

Appeal of the Liberated Samizdat Club87

Appeal

We call on you, our literary public, authors, readers, and distributors of books with the fol-
lowing appeal:
The situation in our book market is dire. The old structures of book publishing and distribu-
tion are dying; the new are arising but slowly and painfully. The situation in the printing industry is
catastrophic. The monopoly of the printers allows them to push up prices. Small printers are almost
non-existent, and private publishers, dependent on large printing houses, are in a precarious posi-
tion, and many of them are fighting for survival. The old system of wholesale book distribution has
collapsed. Its warehouses and bookshop stores are overfilled both with actual pulp fiction and with
literature that is not without quality but which is currently almost unsellable. It very rarely happens
now that a book would be completely sold out upon publication. The rising costs of goods and servi-
ces are decreasing the purchasing power of readers of books.
It will take some time for a normally functioning book market to be established in our country
which would also enable the publishing of long-lasting, short-run editions that generally constitute
the majority of new high-quality book productions.
We believe that it is pointless to bombard our central authorities and other administrative
institutions with memorandums demanding remedial action. There is no choice but for culture to
help overcome this difficult period, caused by the developments of the past forty years, under its
own power.
We see the founding of a samizdat publishing venture, which would draw on all of the bene-
fits of the experience of classic samizdat: minimal production and distribution costs and maximally
flexible reactivity to readers’ interests, to be one of the possible paths. This opportunity has been
brought to us in technical cooperation with the European Literary Club, a transnational non-govern-
mental organisation for the collaboration of European artists and friends of European culture, which
was established last year in Prague. The ELC is willing to give “Liberated Samizdat” access to its
short-run printing press, which is the main prerequisite for executing the plan to publish original
books of value, which cannot be mass produced in the current situation, and there is thus the danger
that they might have to wait a very long time to get to readers. Modern, short-run printing methods
allow for the flexible production of a book in a very short time in runs of just a few hundred copies
in a decent paperback format, and for its delivery to the reader for the production costs. This is,
of course, possible only if any kind of profit is forgone by both the publisher and the distributor and
also by the author himself, who would receive no royalties for such a publication (though he would
retain full copyright for any eventual later edition). In fact, this is precisely how samizdat functioned
in the previous years.
The literary treatment of a book published in this way would be the sole responsibility of the
author, and not the publisher’s editors. The editorial board would merely decide on merit, after rea-
ding the manuscript, whether to recommend it for publication.
Therefore, we turn to all authors who have good quality manuscripts of prose, poetry, dra-
ma, film scripts, literary studies, criticism, history, philosophical essays, or commentary, etc., as-yet
unpublished or published solely in old samizdat, to offer them to us. We also appeal to successful
samizdat and exile authors: may they offer their manuscripts with the same altruism as they did in
the past, to allow them to reach readers as soon as possible. We welcome young, still unpublished
authors and their more mature works. However, we do not wish to be an imprint for beginning
authors, which might help discover new talents under the patronage of “older” writers. That is not
our task.
We turn to the readers’ community, to the subscribers and readers of old samizdat, and to all
lovers of demanding literature, who did not hesitate to wait long hours in queues for a good book,
and who spent considerable funds to procure badly legible samizdat copies:

87 Source: LA CML, LSC, box 1, Výzva (Appeal), also MY No. 9/1990 and Studentské listy No. 4/1991. Translation:
Adam Prentis.
Petra Loučová: The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club... 124

You have the opportunity to acquire, at the shortest notice, the books you anticipate, while at
the same time helping our book culture overcome hard times. We call on you to become members
of the “Liberated Samizdat Club”; this membership entitles you to order samizdat literature, whose
publishing programme will be provided to you in advance so that you may commit to the purchase of
titles that you are interested in (this interest will also determine the print run). The requested books
will be sent cash-on-delivery to those interested immediately upon publication.
We repeat that this is a self-sustaining cultural enterprise, in which all participants work for
free. The price of the published books will be set exclusively according to the actual production
costs. Even so, these will not be low: but readers of good books here have traditionally brought fi-
nancial sacrifices to Czech books – in times of danger, in the crisis years of the First Republic, during
the war, under the totalitarian regime of the past forty years. They will no doubt be ready to bring
such a sacrifice now as well.
And so we call on all creators and readers of good Czech books: help us overcome the difficult
situation of the current book market by supporting this self-sustaining initiative.
The editorial board of the “Liberated Samizdat Club”:
Jan Vladislav, chairman
František Kautman, Iva Kotrlá, Klement Lukeš, Karel Pecka, Vilém Prečan, Sylvie Richterová, Zdeněk
Rotrekl
Prague, 16 October 1990

***
Výzva Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu

Výzva

Obracíme se k naší literární veřejnosti, spisovatelům i čtenářům a distributorům knih s násle-

dující výzvou:
Situace na našem knižním trhu je vážná. Staré struktury vydávání i distribuce knih odumírají,
nové se rodí pomalu a těžce. Katastrofální je situace v polygrafickém průmyslu. Monopolní postavení
umožňuje tiskárnám cenový nátlak. Malé tiskárny téměř neexistují a soukromí nakladatelé, odká-
záni na velké tiskárny, mají pozici velmi obtížnou a mnozí z nich bojují za pouhé přežití. Zhroutil se
starý systém knižního velkoobchodu. Jeho sklady stejně jako sklady knihkupectví jsou přeplněny
vedle skutečného braku ne špatnou, ale v dané situaci těžko prodejnou literaturou. Dnes už jen zcela
výjimečně je některá kniha po vydání okamžitě rozebrána. Se stoupajícími cenami zboží a služeb
klesá také kupní síla čtenářů knih.
Potrvá nějaký čas, než u nás vznikne normálně fungující knižní trh, který umožní vydávat
i dlouhodobě prodejnou a malotirážní literaturu, z níž se obvykle skládá většina nové hodnotné
knižní produkce.
Domníváme se, že je zbytečné bombardovat ústřední orgány a jiné správní instituce memoran-
dy, žádajícími, aby zjednaly nápravy. Nezbývá, než aby kultura i tuto těžkou dobu, zaviněnou vývo-
jem uplynulých čtyřiceti let, svými vlastními silami pomáhala překonat.
Jednu z cest k tomu vidíme v založení samizdatového nakladatelství, které by využilo všech
výhod zkušenosti klasického samizdatu: minimální náklady na výrobu a distribuci a maximálně
pružné reagování na čtenářské zájmy. Taková možnost se nám naskytla v technické spolupráci s Ev-
ropským literárním klubem, nadnárodní nevládní organizací pro spolupráci evropských umělců
a přátel evropské kultury, která vznikla loňského roku v Praze. EKK je ochoten dát „Osvobozenému
samizdatu“ k dispozici svou polygrafickou malotirážní základnu, což je hlavní předpoklad realizace
plánu vydávání původních hodnotných knih, které v nynější situaci nesnesou masový náklad, a pro-
to je nebezpečí, že by musely čekat velmi dlouho, než by se dostaly ke čtenáři. Moderní malotirážní
tiskárenské metody umožňují operativně, ve velmi krátké době vyrobit knihu v nákladu několika set
výtisků, v paperbackové, slušné úpravě, a dát ji do rukou čtenáře za výrobní náklady. Samozřejmě, že
je to možné jen za předpokladu rezignování na jakýkoli zisk jak ze strany vydavatele, tak ze strany
distributora a ovšem i autora, který by nedostal za toto vydání honorář, (pro eventuelní další vydání
by si však zachoval všechna autorská práva). Ostatně právě tak tomu bylo v samizdatu minulých let.
Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2 125

Za literární podobu takto vydané knihy by odpovídal výlučně autor, nikoli redakce nakladatel-
ství. Redakční rada by po přečtení rukopisů jen meritorně rozhodovala, zda rukopis doporučuje či
nedoporučuje k vydání.
Obracíme se tedy na autory, kteří mají kvalitní rukopisy prózy, poezie, dramatu, filmových scé-
nářů, literární vědy, kritiky a historie, filozofické esejistiky či publicistiky apod., dosud nepublikova-
né nebo publikované jen v starém samizdatu, aby nám je nabídli. Apelujeme i na úspěšné samizda-
tové a exilové autory: ať nabídnou své rukopisy právě tak nezištně, jako to dělali v minulosti s tím,
aby se dostali ke čtenáři co nejdříve. Vítáme mladé, dosud nepublikující autory a jejich zralejší díla.
Nechceme však být edicí začínajících autorů, která by pod patronací „starších“ spisovatelů pomáhala
objevovat nové talenty. To není naším úkolem.
Obracíme se na čtenářskou obec, na odběratele a čtenáře starého samizdatu i na všechny mi-
lovníky náročné literatury, kteří neváhali stát dlouhé hodiny ve frontách na dobrý knižní titul, a vy-
nakládali značné finanční prostředky na zakoupení špatně čitelných kopií samizdatu:
Máte příležitost získat co nejdříve vámi očekávané knihy a na druhé straně pomůžete naší kniž-
ní kultuře překonat těžké údobí. Vyzýváme vás, abyste se stali členy „Klubu osvobozeného samiz-
datu“, toto členství vás opravňuje k odběru samizdatové literatury, jejíž vydavatelský program vám
bude předem nabídnut s tím, abyste se přihlásili k závaznému odběru titulů, které vás budou zajímat
(podle tohoto zájmu bude stanoven i náklad). Vyžádané knihy budou ihned po vydání zasílány zá-
jemcům na dobírku.
Upozorňujeme znovu, že jde o svépomocný kulturní podnik, na němž všichni zúčastnění pracují
bezplatně. Ceny vydaných knih budou určeny výhradně reálnými výrobními náklady. I tak nebudou
nízké: ale čtenář dobré knihy u nás tradičně přinášel české knize finanční oběti – v dobách obrození,
v letech krize za první republiky, za války, za totalitního režimu uplynulých čtyřiceti let. Jistě je bude
připraven přinášet i nyní.
Vyzýváme tedy všechny tvůrce i čtenáře dobrých českých knih: pomozte podporou této svépo-
mocné akce překonat těžkou situaci současného knižního trhu.
Ediční rada „Klubu osvobozeného samizdatu“:
Jan Vladislav, předseda
František Kautman, Iva Kotrlá, Klement Lukeš, Karel Pecka, Vilém Prečan, Sylvie Richterová, Zdeněk
Rotrekl

V Praze, dne 16. října 1990

Cite:
Loučová, Petra. The “Old” Samizdat Is Dead, Long Live the “New” Samizdat! The Liberated Samizdat Club
in the Post-Communist Czechoslovak Book Market. In Forum Historiae, 2020, Vol. 14, No. 2, s. 104-125.
ISSN 1337-6861. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/forhist.2020.14.2.7

Mgr. Petra Loučová

Tým bibliografie literárního samizdatu / Oddělení teorie
Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR
Na Florenci 1420
110 00 Praha 1, Česká republika
E-mail: [email protected]