Underground publishing and the public sphere

the long version

Censorship and its counterpart, the 'underground' production and distribution of printed texts and images, existed ever since a 'public sphere' came into being. The volume approaches this phenomenon by covering cases from the Tsarist Empire, the Soviet Union, Central Europe, South America and China. In a long-term as well as global perspective, the well-known practise of samizdat under communist rule may be understood as part of a long tradition of underground publishing still relevant today in places like Russia, Iran, or China.