The Gdańsk Agreement of 1980, established between the workers of the Lenin shipyard and the Polish People’s Republic’s undemocratically elected government, saw the beginning of the ‘Solidarity’ trade union’s fight against the Communist Regime. In the following seven years, around 4830 books and 2027 journals, many of which are in the British Library’s Solidarity Collection, were published underground in a so-called ‘second circulation’. As far as the records go, only 175 of these works were authored by a mere 97 female writers.

Superficial research into female involvement in Polish anti-government publishing could end here. Women in print? Official numbers leave no doubt: they were few and far between. To broaden the scope of this quest to uncover unheard female voices in the Solidarity Collection, avenues other than scholarly browsing of the Library’s basements had to be incorporated. And so, on a brisk December morning, one of them led all the way out of the bustle of central London into the quiet of Hampshire countryside.

“At that time my involvement in the anti-communist opposition was very important for me, probably more important than my medical studies”, recalls Anna Młynik-Shawcross, a retired psychiatrist based in Britain since 1985 – the year when she arrived here as a political refugee. Anna reflects on the times after the strikes in the shipyard ended and she graduated from the medical school. “However, I decided to follow medicine instead of getting involved as the unions’ activist”, she confirms. But how does this story begin? The interview with her is meant to deepen the present understanding of diverse roles women played in the 1970s-1980s Polish underground publishing.

Anna Młynik-Shawcross in her home (photo by Olga Topol).

Anna, born in 1955 in Gdańsk, first became involved with the democratic anti-communist movement at the beginning of her Medical School years, in the winter of 1976. When the communist government pushed for changes in the Polish constitution of the time, Anna, alongside a small group of Gdańsk students, joined the movement which started with signing the protest letters against those changes. In the summer of the same year the famous strikes began in Radom and Lublin and spread all over the country, while lots of people lost their employment. At that time the famous ‘Committee for Social Self-Defence’ (KOR) was set up. “I was able to get the list of names of the workers who were sacked [so that they could be helped by KOR]”, recalls Anna. In the years 1977-1978, she was part of the ‘Movement for the Defence of Human and Civic Rights’ (ROPCiO). She was a founder member of the Student Solidarity Committee set up in Gdańsk in November 1977 and was involved in organising student discussion groups and helping those persecuted by the Communist regime.

Around the same time, one of the first printing machines intended for the independent underground printing of works by authors censored by the regime was shipped from abroad with the help of Jaraczewski family, Józef Piłsudski’s descendants. Anna remembers the times she spent printing leaflets and the establishment of an underground periodical Bratniak published by the ‘Movement of Young Poland’, a Free Trade Union periodical called Robotnik Wybrzeża, as well as the first independent publishing house involved in distributing books across the country, Nowa.

An example of an underground publication, Kazimierz Brandys, Miesiące, (Warszawa 1980) Sol. 241w.

“I was in contact with them and was involved into distribution of books across Poland. They had to be well protected, so we had to have a network of people. We would distribute them through friends, all just through networks”, recalls Anna. Distribution of printed material posed challenges, with private flats acting as places of conspiracy. In the following years, Anna contributed to nothing less than the establishment of a new publishing house, Klin. Together with a small group of friends they set the ambitious goal of about 3,500 published books to be published, and worked tirelessly towards it. Still today she recalls, not without excitement, getting a ‘Western’ paper trimmer, as well as gaining the support of a bookbinder.

“It started with my money that I earned working as a student abroad”, Anna recalls, “We needed a lot of paper, but you couldn’t simply go into a shop and buy tons of paper. So we were going to different shops and buying small amounts.” The printing was primitive, primarily in the offset technique. “We got the paint and were spending hours and hours copying books”, adds Anna, a 2009 recipient of an Order of Polonia Restituta. Now, let us look again at the initial number mentioned above: 97 female writers? What about the women behind the scenes?

Anna expands on female involvement in the opposition movement, including the free press. Although often reluctant about such contribution because of concern for the welfare of their children, especially at that challenging time, many women were involved. She and Magda Modzelewska were involved in Gdańsk’s Student Solidarity Commitee. Joanna Duda-Gwiazda and Alinka Pieńkowska belonged to the Wolne Związki Zawodowe trade unions, which published journal Robotnik Wybrzeża. Finally, Bożena Rybicka, Małgorzata Rybicka, and Magda Modzelewska supported the journal Bratniak: “Małgorzata Rybicka was writing articles in Bratniak, while Magda Modzelewska was involved into editing and publishing”, recalls Anna.

Back cover of Marguerite Duras Kochanek (Siedlce, 1987) Sol.235j. featuring a dedication to female colleagues working in the independent publishing movement.

Any involvement in the opposition’s fight for democracy and freedom of speech involved high risk and intimidation. Secret police employed numerous tactics, including arrests, house searches, sending anonymous letters with false information and all kind of threats. “One day my parents received an anonymous letter informing them that I was under the influence of drug addicts and that [my parents] should put pressure on me to disengage from the opposition. My parents were threatened that they would lose their employment. Also, for me, getting a job was hard, especially locally”, she recollects.

Friendships developed during her involvement with underground publishing, which were based on enormous levels of trust to support the clandestine activities. She reflects upon the fact that most of the people involved in the opposition groups belonged to the intelligentsia: “After Wałęsa joined the movement it was a bit easier to reach the working-class people. But they were being persecuted”.

The fascinating conversation goes on for hours. Initial conclusions drawn from limited research done so far into women in Poland’s ‘second circulation’ go down the drain.  And with that emerges a richer picture: that of publishing houses which, although dominated by men, could not have accomplished their mission fully without female efforts around printing and distribution of illegal pro-democratic materials. And so, a brisk December morning spent in a quiet Hampshire town can alone paint a fascinating picture of women working alongside men to help true information reach larger numbers of Poles during the Cold War. Imagine what could more such encounters, and digging deeper into the potential of oral history, bring to surface. 

Agata Piotrowska, Doctoral Fellow 2024, Slavonic and East European collections

Further reading:

Wojciech Chojnacki, Marek Jastrzębski, Bibliografia Publikacji Podziemnych w Polsce. Tom Drugi, 01 I 1986 – 31 XII 1987, (Warszawa: 1993). YA.1994.a.5556

Ann M. Frenkel, Paweł Sowiński, Gwido Zlatkes, Duplicator underground: the independent publishing industry in Communist Poland 1976-89, (Bloomington, Indiana: 2016). YD.2017.a.460

Józefa Kamińska (real names: Władysław Chojnacki, Wojciech Chojnacki), Bibliografia Publikacji Podziemnych w Polsce, 13 XII 1981 – VI 1986, (Paris: 1988). 2725.e.184

Shana Penn, Solidarity’s secret: the women who defeated Communism in Poland (Ann Arbor, Michigan: 2005). YC.2007.a.10368

The British Library’s collection of 1870-71 caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune (shelfmark 14001.g.41, Cup.648.b.2, Cup.648.b.8) offer insight not only into their contemporary conflicts, but the political and cultural worlds which had formed the outlooks of their artists.

The theme of Empire reappears several times in the collection. Building on earlier royal invasions of Algeria, between 1852-70 Napoleon III’s Second Empire launched several campaigns of imperial expansion across the globe, including in China, Southeast Asia, Lebanon, Mexico, and continued interventions in North Africa.

Though designed in part to boost French prestige on an international level, often the campaigns were deeply unpopular at home. This was particularly acute in cases where French forces combatted republican foes, such as the repeated interventions on the Italian peninsula and in Mexico, where Napoleon III’s attempts to put Austrian archduke Maximilian on the throne were eventually thwarted by Benito Juarez’s [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benito-Juarez] republican army. Yet thanks to strict censorship laws, those wishing to be critical of these campaigns – particularly of Mexico – could make only vague allusions for fear of arrest or fines.

When these systems of censorship fell away with the Empire in September 1870, the floodgates opened, exemplified by the remarks of Jules Ferry – who would go on to decree several of the Third Republic’s own colonial efforts less than a decade later - in his description of the French people as ‘sickened by the overseas adventures of the Second Empire’.

Caricaturists likewise centralised the Second Empire’s imperial follies in their criticism of the fallen regime. An excellent example of this is A. Belloguet’s twelve-print series Pilori-Phrénologie, each of which rather resemble the artwork of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Belloguet applies popular interest in phrenology – the pseudo-science which reasoned that one could detect personality traits from skull shape – to twelve leading figures of 1870-1, including Prussian minister Otto von Bismarck, future French president Adolphe Thiers and Pope Pius IX, all found in the Library’s third volume.

A. Belloguet, Pilori-Phrénologie (1), Napoleon III, (Paris, 1870) Volume 3 14001.g.41].

The first of the set takes on fallen French Emperor Napoleon III, which is actually an update of an earlier print circulated in Belgium towards the end of the Second Empire. Belloguet details the Emperor’s visage with a series of ad hominem attacks and details of his eclectic political life, including mentions of his two unsuccessful attempted coups in Strasbourg (1836) and Boulogne (1840) and his surrender at Sedan in 1870.

Belloguet also highlights Napoleon III’s collar with four moments of repression. In addition to that of Paris in the aftermath of his coup in 1851, the collar lists ‘Mexico’, ‘Rome’, and ‘Aspromonte’. Each of the three were part of the Second Empire’s later expansionary aims – particularly offensive given that French opponents were republican, and in the case of the Italian campaigns in Rome and Aspromonte, French troops fought radical hero Giuseppe Garibaldi. As if to emphasise this, the bloody rag which drips from where Napoleon III’s mouth should be reads ‘Mentana’ – a conflict in November 1867 where Garibaldi was injured by French forces defending Rome on behalf of the Pope.

Though many caricatures directly attacked political personages or ideologies, several sets were dedicated to examining and gently mocking the disrupted rhythm of life in Paris under the siege. For instance, artists routinely produced images depicting the food crisis, making light of the fact that Parisians had turned to horsemeat to survive, and that some were even put into the position of eating cats, dogs, and even rats. Such social commentary also could include references to the Second Empire’s imperial campaigns.

An exemplar of such social caricature is found in the Library’s second volume, in a set entitled Paris Assiégé (Besieged Paris) by Jules Renard - signing his images as under a pseudonym the reverse of his surname, ‘Draner’. The twentieth of the set depicts novel positions taken up by Parisians in the boulevards in order to avoid the falling Prussian shells during their bombardment of the city, which had intensified in January 1871 after German forces had reached Paris in September.

Jules Renard (Draner), Paris Assiége (20) Les Effets du Bombardement (The Effects of Bombardment), (Paris, 1870) Volume 2 14001.g.41.

The figure in the foreground – subtly dressed in the colours of the French tricolore – claims that the Parisians kneeling were neither men nor women, but instead Ambassadors of Siam. Perhaps a rather obscure reference at first glance, but like the caricatures discussed in the previous blog of this series, Renard takes a cue from high art as inspiration for this print.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Réception des ambassadeurs siamois par l’Empereur Napoléon III au palais de Fontainebleu, 27 juin 1861 (Reception of Siamese Ambassadors by Emperor Napoleon III at Fontainebleu Palace, 27 June 1861). (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)

Renard references a painting presented at Paris’s 1865 Salon, Réception des ambassadeurs siamois par l’Empereur Napoléon III au palais de Fontainebleu, 27 juin 1861 by Jean-Léon Gérôme. In it, rows of ambassadors from the Kingdom of Siam (modern-day Thailand) kneel before the French imperial couple, presenting them with a letter from their king Mongkut (Rama IV). The two states had long since established relations: almost two centuries before this meeting, the court of Louis XIV had received visits from the Kingdom of Siam.

In 1856 Siam and France had signed a commercial treaty which granted France a foothold in Southeast Asia – which simultaneously reduced Siamese influence on its neighbouring areas. Fifteen years later, upon hearing the news of Napoleon III’s forced abdication in September, the rulers of Siam expressed their ‘exaggerated sympathies’ for the fallen Emperor.

These exaggerated sympathies were shared by the vast majority of French caricaturists operating in 1870-71. Yet despite their antipathy towards the regime’s foreign exploits, it was not long before France once again pursued foreign glory, their colonial policies now led by who had once been at the forefront of the criticism of such policies. If the ire of caricaturists towards foreign expansion was ever-present during 1870-71, it certainly waned from any long-lasting political programme in the years thereafter.

Anthony Chapman-Joy, CDP Student at the British Library and Royal Holloway

References/further reading

Morna Daniels, ‘Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune’, Electronic British Library Journal, (2005), pp. 1-19

Quentin Deluermoz, D’ici et d’ailleurs: histoires globales de la France contemporaine (XVIIIe-XXe siècle) (Paris, 2021) YF.2022.a.12094

Bertrand Tillier, La Commune de Paris: Révolution sans images? (Paris, 2004), YF.2004.a.14526

David Todd, A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 2021) YC.2022.a.7337

On this day, Ukraine celebrates the 33rd anniversary of its independence. On August 24, 1991, the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. Following international recognition and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became de facto a sovereign state in December of that year.

Today, on the 914th day of the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukraine is still bravely defending its independence and existence. Against all odds, publishing in the country is getting stronger. Only in 2023, 270 new publishers appeared on the Ukrainian book market, and book production increased by 73% in 2023 compared to 2022. According to the Ukrainian Book Chamber, as many as 6,951 monographs and brochures were published in the first half of 2024. In this blog, I would like to mark Ukrainian Independence Day by featuring a small selection of books that we received in the latest consignment from our vendor in Ukraine.

One of the most striking titles we have acquired is a posthumous edition of Viktoriia Amelina’s poetry Svidchennia (‘Testimony’) (Lviv: "Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva", 2024). In April 2023, Viktoriia visited the British Library and took part in a panel discussion on the role of writers during times of war. Some readers of this blog might remember her passionate and emotional presentation. Viktoriia Amelina died on July 1, 2023, as a result of injuries received in a Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk. You can watch a recording of the event in her memory organised by the Ukrainian Institute in London and the British Library here.

Cover of Svidchennia by Viktoriia Amelina

In her short interview with the Ukrainian online media Chytomo.com, the head editor of the publishing house Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva Sofiia Cheliak commented on their decision to choose illustrations to complement Viktoriia’s poetry: “we wanted [the illustrations to convey] sacredness, for me it was the only possible option for the illustration, so that it sounded in unison with the poetry. Looking at the layout, we realized how much it was the right decision <...> This book is what my broken heart looks like."

One of the poems in this book is titled A word in the dictionary (Future), and it reads:

Future – is what we ask
each other about in silence:
Do you see it?
Can you see it?
Here she asks and explains:
because I don’t see it, I don’t.
She squints.
Recently – she says, –
I’ve started seeing a little bit of
“tomorrow”, and beyond that – nothing.
And all the way to the end of her darkness we are walking through the sunny
Obolon: two women
and a dog.
(Translation: Katya Rogatchevskaia)

In 2021, Viktoriia organised the first literary festival in the small town of New York in the Donetsk region. She suggested the theme “De-occupation of the Future” for the following one, but it appears to be even more relevant for the post-war times. Apparently, today the town is under Russian occupation. We strongly believe that the festival will soon return to Ukrainian New York, where people will rebuild their future and remember Viktoriia's life and legacy.

Another book that stood out to me is Pisnia vidkrytoho shliakhu (‘Song of the Open Road’) by Artem Chekh (Chernivtsi, 2024). At the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, the author, who took part in the war in Donbas in 2015-16, joined the Ukrainian army. The new book was presented at the International Literary Festival Meridian Czernowitz held in Chernivtsi.

Cover of Pisnia vidkrytoho shliakhu by Artem Chekh

As literary critics tell us in their reviews, the book is about a war, but not about the current war, as readers might expect. The action takes place in the 19th century, and the main character is a former serf from the Russian Empire who is trying to escape from his master. His adventures take him through Europe, Great Britain and eventually to America, where he finds himself just before the start of the Civil War. Critics agree that the symbolic meaning of the novel is a long, difficult, bloody, but open road to freedom and identity.

Among research publications, I would like to single out a new fundamental chronological overview of Ukrainian visual arts by two prominent Ukrainian art historians, Paola Utevs’ka and Dmytro Horbachov, Budynok iz levamy: Narysy istorii ukrains'koho vizual'noho mystetstva XI–XX stolit' (‘The House with Lions: Essays on the History of Ukrainian Visual Arts, 11th -20th centuries’) (Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo "Dukh i Litera", 2024).

Cover of Budynok iz levamy: Narysy istorii ukrains'koho vizual'noho mystetstva XI–XX stolit' by Paola Utevs’ka and Dmytro Horbachov

The monograph focuses on the formation of the main artistic movements and techniques and touches on all visual arts, from architecture to book illustrations and graphic design. It is also important that the authors analyse primarily artworks located in Ukraine, among them works by Taras Shevchenko, Petro Levchenko, Mykola Pymonenko, Oleksandra Ekster, Oleksandr Bohomazov, Anatol Petrytskyi, Oleksandr Arkhipenko, and Kazimir Malevich. This book is especially timely now as the world is making the acquaintance of Ukrainian art from a new perspective, for example, through the current exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts ‘In the Eye of the Storm’.

In this blog, I have highlighted just three titles out of over 300 received in the last five months. The books are being processed, and we are working hard to make them available to our readers as soon as possible.

Ukrainian books awaiting processing by our cataloguing team

Meanwhile, I would like to draw your attention to a recent publication by Vernon Press. In June 2024, they released a volume edited by Lada Kolomiyets and titled Living the Independence Dream: Ukraine and Ukrainians in Contemporary Socio-Political Context. We will make sure to add this important contribution to our collections.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections