newspapers were dependent on the government grants of printing paper, which limited the number of copies. Semi-legal news bulletins were printed by Solidarity and other opposition groups in almost every town, on paper sent as an aid by some Scandinavian and Western-European trade unions, without the regime's consent, but for the time being rarely prosecuted. All that ended December 13, 1981, when General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law and banned Solidarity. The Polish underground press drew on experiences of Second World War veterans of Armia Krajowa and much attention was paid to conspiracy; however, after martial law in Poland and the government crackdown on Solidarity, the activities of underground publishing were significantly curtailed for several years. Nevertheless, with the communist government losing power in the second half of the 1980s, production of Polish underground printing (bibuła) dramatically increased, and many publications were distributed throughout the entire country. After the Revolutions of 1989 some of the underground publishers in Poland transformed into regular and legal publishing houses. There were important differences of scale between Polish underground publishing and the samizdats of the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other countries in the Soviet Bloc. In the 1980s, at any given time there were around one hundred independent publishers in Poland who formed an exceptionally vibrant segment of the black market. Books were sold through underground distribution channels to paying customers, including subscribers. Among the few hundred regional periodicals with a usual hand-to-hand circulation of 2,000-5,000, the countrywide "Tygodnik Mazowsze" weekly reached an average circulation of 60,000 - 80,000 copies, while some issues topped 100,000. The estimated production of books and thick journals can be put close to one thousand per year and more than one million copies. Other products on this market included audio cassettes, videocassettes, posters, postcards, calendars, stamps and buttons. As an indication of how many Poles had access to underground publications in the martial-law decade, 3 of every 4 responders in a research in Kraków by the Niezależne Biuro Badania Opinii Społecznej NSZZ „Solidarność” (Solidarity's Independent Public Opinion Poll Bureau) in 1985 claimed to read it (26% "regularly", 47% "often", 22% chose "irregular and rare", with the remaining 5% declaring "never". However, this range of influence had to be far more modest in smaller towns and countryside, where few underground groups were active. See also Polish literature Polish literature during World War II References External links Marek Kaminski -