It is a bit rich to claim John Wilcock, the co-founder of New York’s Village Voice (Obituary, 18 September), was “regarded as the father of the underground press”.
The real underground press existed in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe during the last decades of the communist dictatorships, with brave publishers like Miroslaw Chojecki in Poland, Gabor Demsky in Hungary and Jan Vladislav in Czechoslovakia. They were mercilessly pursued and harassed by the authorities. What they published were “samizdats”, small, pocket-sized, clandestine publications that were secretly handed from person to person.
One of them, “Kontakt”, a monthly magazine, was published by Chojecki, who had fled to Paris in 1981. It was then smuggled into General Jaruzelski’s Poland and mainly read by the intelligentsia. It is misleading and offensive to those who endangered their lives by producing the real thing to use the label “ underground press” when mentioning Village Voice or East Village, also edited by Wilcock.
Björn Rydström
London
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