On the Czech periphery: Communist-era hippie communes, samizdat, and post-’89 zine culture
Translator, literary scholar and historical sociologist Martin Tharp’s
current research focuses on the working-class counterculture of post-1968
Czechoslovakia. He finds that – dissident groups such as Charter 77 aside
– the “underground” social movement comprised a diffuse and
generalised sentiment of an “emotive-artistic resistance to state
cultural control” and censorship.