Abstract
The study explores the origin of the name "underground" for the people around the rock group The Plastic People of the Universe and the origins of the "Czech underground" as art movement with political and social overtones. As the key document for the self-definition of the "Czech underground" it considers A Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival, richly layered text written by Ivan Martin Jirous in 1975.
In the "Czech underground" movement it sees programmatic filiation with the avant-garde and the social utopian projects of the past and describes the main self-identifying elements of the Czech underground.