Dictionary:

samizdat

  (sä'mĭz-dät', sə-myĭz-dät')

1. 1. The secret publication and distribution of government-banned literature in the former Soviet Union.
   2. The literature produced by this system.
2. An underground press.

[Russian : sam, self + izdatel'stvo, publishing house (from izdat', to publish, on the model of Gosizdat, State Publishing House : iz, from, out of + dat', to give).]

The New York Times reported on a little-seen antiwar documentary from 1971 that is surfacing now with uncanny reflections on the current US conflict in Iraq:

"Now, the 95-minute film — which has circulated like 16-millimeter samizdat on college campuses for decades but has never been accessible to a wide audience — is about to get its first significant theatrical release in the United States..."

Link: Film Echoes the Present in Atrocities of the Past

Posted August 10, 2005.

See our Word Overheard blog to see interesting uses of strange words.

[Russian, literally “self publishing”] The process of disseminating documentation via underground channels. Originally referred to underground duplication and distribution of banned books in the Soviet Union; now refers by obvious extension to any less-than-official promulgation of textual material, esp. rare, obsolete, or never-formally-published computer documentation. Samizdat is obviously much easier when one has access to high-bandwidth networks and high-quality laser printers. Note that samizdat is properly used only with respect to documents which contain needed information (see also hacker ethic) but which are for some reason otherwise unavailable, but not in the context of documents which are available through normal channels, for which unauthorized duplication would be unethical copyright violation. See Lions Book for a historical example.

samizdat, a Russian word meaning ‘self‐publishing’, applied since the 1960s to a clandestine mode of publication by which ‘dissident’ writings and other banned works have been secretly circulated, usually in typed carbon copies or photocopies. Novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and articles by Andrei Sakharov were among the important samizdat works of the 1960s and 1970s.

For more information on samizdat, visit Britannica.com.

The term samizdat is most often translated as "selfpublishing." It refers to the clandestine practice in the Soviet Union of circulating manuscripts that were banned, had no chance of being published in normal channels, or were politically suspect. These were generally typescripts, mimeograph copies, or handwritten items.

The practice got its primary impetus in the mid to late 1950s, a period that in a socio-literary context is often referred to as The Thaw. This itself is linked to Nikita Khrushchev's campaign of de-Stalinization, which provided an opening for literary themes previously disallowed. The opening was frequently arbitrary as the case of Boris Pasternak's novel Dr. Zhivago proved in 1958. The novel could not be published in the Soviet Union, and Pasternak was brutally vilified despite being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

The fact that broad categories of literature and sociopolitical themes still could not be addressed moved much of this output underground into samizdat. Sometimes this mode of literary output was systematic as with later journals and chronicles. But much of this was done spontaneously on an individual basis. Of key importance is that samizdat is inextricably linked to what came to be the dissident movements in the Soviet Union. These, in turn, were linked with other groups seeking, in early manifestations, protection of human rights, greater religious freedom, and more ethnic autonomy. As Scammell notes (1984, p. 507), samizdat "had come into existence in the late fifties as a result of the clash between the intellectuals' post-Stalinist hunger for more freedom of expression and the continuing repressiveness of the censorship." Freedom of expression was one thing, but it was deadly to the state's perception of what could be allowed when the political admixture was included. The fact that samizdat and dissent were coeval is impossible to avoid and had great consequences for Soviet history.

From the early 1960s to the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991, samizdat had an uneven history. There were periods of extreme repression, for instance in 1972 - 1973. But samizdat was not quelled. Very often, trials were benchmarks in the advancement of samizdat and its many causes. The February 1966 trial of two writers, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, who had been publishing abroad for several years using pseudonyms, was a sensation since they were given seven and five years respectively at hard labor for allegedly writing anti-Soviet material. Their arrest led to public protests by dissidents. A number of them were then arrested, and this, in turn, led to further protests and corresponding arrests. Books and pamphlets with documents from these trials were frequently compiled and circulated widely in secret. These added much fuel to the fire, and a constant cycle was created. The Soviet government was also severely criticized worldwide because of a new policy of punishing dissident writers by confining them to mental hospitals.

Samizdat and dissent grew despite all impediments. It was a cultural opposition, an independent subculture, as Meerson-Aksenov (1977) called it, and it signified that social and political judgments stemming from sources other than the state were seen to be critically significant. In reality, the Soviet state was stymied by this phenomenon because it no longer knew quite how to handle it. The blanket executions of the 1930s were out of the question. The breadth of the criticism was also sometimes incomprehensible to the government. It could include everything from opposing the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to the latest broadsides against modern art.

The most famous of the systematic publications was The Chronicle of Current Events, which was issued without interruption from 1968 to 1972 and sporadically thereafter. Other notable publications included the Ukrainian Herad, the Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania, and historian Roy Medvedev's Political Diary (which ran from 1964 to 1971). This is by no means to minimize the huge number of individual contributions. Together they undercut the power and prestige of the Soviet state.

Bibliography

Bukovsky, Vladimir. (1978). To Build a Castle. London: Deutsch; New York: Viking.

Meerson-Aksenov, Michael, and Shragin, Boris. (1977). The Political, Social and Religious Thought of Russian 'Samizdat' - An Anthology, tr. Nickolas Lupinin. Belmont, MA: Nordland.

Reddaway, Peter, ed. and tr. (1972). Uncensored Russia: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union. New York: American Heritage.

Scammell, Michael. (1984). Solzhenitsyn: A Biography. New York: Norton.

—NICKOLAS LUPININ

Russian term
самиздат
Translit: samizdat
English: self-published

Samizdat (Russian: самиздат) was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries. Copies were made a few at a time, and those who received a copy would be expected to make more copies. This was often done by handwriting or typing.

This grassroots practice to evade officially imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.

Vladimir Bukovsky defined it as follows: "I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and [may] get imprisoned for it."^[1]

Techniques

Essentially, the samizdat copies of text, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita or Václav Havel's writing The Power of the Powerless, were passed among friends. The techniques to reproduce the forbidden literature and periodicals varied from making several copies of the content using carbon paper, either by hand or on a typewriter, to printing the books on semi-professional printing presses in larger quantities. Before glasnost, the practice was dangerous, since copy machines, printing presses and even typewriters in offices were under control of the First Departments (KGB outposts): for all of them reference printouts were stored for identification purposes.

Terminology and related concepts

Etymologically, the word "samizdat" is made out of "sam" (Russian: сам, "self, by oneself") and "izdat" (Russian: издат, shortened "издательство", izdatel'stvo, "publisher"), thus, self published.

The term was coined as a pun by Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov in the 1940s, who typed copies of his poems indicating "Samsebyaizdat" (Самсебяиздат, "Myself by Myself Publishers") on the front page ^[2] in an analogy with the names of Soviet official publishing houses, such as Politizdat (short for Politicheskoe izdatel'stvo, Russian: Политиздат ^[3]), Detizdat (Russian: Детиздат, literature for children), etc.

Magnitizdat refers to the passing on of taped sound recordings (magnit- referring to magnetic tape), often of "underground" music groups, bards or lectures.

Tamizdat refers to literature published abroad (там, tam, meaning "there"), often from smuggled manuscripts.

In the history of the Polish underground press, the usual term in the later years of Communism was drugi obieg or "second circulation" (of publications), the "first circulation" implied being legal and censored publications. The term bibuła ("blotting-paper") is older, having been used even in Tsarist times.

History

Samizdat, a book published by Pathfinder Press containing a collection of forbidden Trotskyist Samizdat texts. In contrast to such catchy book covers, the cover page of a genuine samizdat publication was typically made to look as inconspicuous as possible in order to avoid attention.

Self-published and self-distributed literature has a long history, but samizdat is a unique phenomenon in the post-Stalin USSR and other countries with similar socio-economic systems. Under the grip of censorship of police state these societies used underground literature for self-analysis and self-expression. ^[4]

At the outset of the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s USSR, poetry became very popular and writings of a wide variety of known, prohibited, repressed, as well as young and unknown poets circulated among Soviet intelligentsia.

On June 29 1958, a monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky was opened in the center of Moscow. The official ceremony ended with impromptu public poetry readings. The Moscovites liked the atmosphere of relatively free speech so much that the readings became regular and came to be known as "Mayak" (Russian: Маяк, the lighthouse), with students being a majority of participants. However, it did not last long as the authorities began clamping down on the meetings. In the summer of 1961, several meeting regulars (among them Eduard Kuznetsov) were arrested and charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" (Article 70 of the RSFSR Penal Code). Editor and publisher of Moscow samizdat magazine "Синтаксис" (Syntaxis) Alexander Ginzburg was arrested in 1960.

Some legitimate publications in the state-controlled media, such as a novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1970), first published in literary magazine Novy Mir in November 1962, were practically impossible to find in (and later taken out from) circulation and made their way into samizdat.

Not everything published in samizdat had political overtones. In 1963, Joseph Brodsky (to become a Nobel laureate in 1987) was charged with "social parasitism" and convicted for being nothing but a poet. In the mid-1960s, an underground literary group СМОГ ("Самое Молодое Общество Гениев", Samoye Molodoye Obshchestvo Geniyev, translated as The Youngest Society of Geniuses) issued their literary almanac "Сфинксы" (Sfinksy; The Sphinxes) and collections of prose and poetry. Some of their writings were close to Russian avantgarde of the 1910s–1920s.

The infamous 1965 show trial of writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky (also charged with violating Article 70) and increased repressions marked the demise of the Thaw and harsher times for samizdat. The trial was carefully documented in The White Book by Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg. Both writers were later arrested and sentenced to prison in what was known as The Trial of the Four. Some of the samizdat content became more politicized and played an important role in the dissident movement in the Soviet Union.

From 1964 to 1970, historian Roy Medvedev regularly published analytical materials that later appeared in the West under the title "Политический дневник" (Politicheskiy Dnevnik; The Political Journal).

One of the longest-running and well-known samizdat publications was the information bulletin "Хроника текущих событий" (Khronika Tekushchikh Sobitiy; Chronicle of Current Events)^[5], dedicated to the defense of human rights in the USSR. For 15 years from 1968 to 1983, a total of 63 issues were published. The anonymous authors encouraged the readers to utilize the same distribution channels in order to send feedback and local information to be published in the subsequent issues. The Chronicle was known for its dry concise style; its regular rubrics were titled "Arrests, Searches, Interrogations", "Out of Court Repressions", "In Prisons and Camps", "News of Samizdat", "Persecution of Religion", "Persecution of Crimean Tatars", "Repressions in Ukraine", "Lithuanian Events", etc. The authors maintained that according to the Soviet Constitution, the Chronicle was not an illegal publication, but the long list of people arrested in relation to it included Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Yuri Shikhanovich, Pyotr Yakir, Victor Krasin, Sergei Kovalev, Alexander Lavut, Tatyana Velikanova, among others.

Another notable and long-running (about 20 issues in the period of 1972-1980) publication was refusenik political and literary magazine "Евреи в СССР" (Yevrei v SSSR, Jews in the USSR), founded and edited by Alexander Voronel and after his release, by Mark Azbel and Alexander Luntz.

With increased proliferation of computer technologies, it became practically impossible for the government to control the copying and distribution of samizdat.

Similar phenomena in other countries

After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was exiled by the Shah of Iran in 1964, his sermons were smuggled into Iran on cassette tapes and widely copied, increasing his popularity and leading, in part, to the Iranian Revolution.

Poland has long history of underground press.

Footnotes

1. ^ (Russian) "Самиздат: сам сочиняю, сам редактирую, сам цензурирую, сам издаю, сам распространяю, сам и отсиживаю за него." (autobiographical novel И возвращается ветер..., And the Wind returns... NY, Хроника, 1978, p.126) Also online at [1]
2. ^ Samizdat, an article by Pavel Shekhtman in the Krugosvet encyclopedia
3. ^ Full title: "Государственное издательство политической литературы", State Publishing House of Political Literature
4. ^ (Russian) History of Dissident Movement in the USSR. The birth of Samizdat by Ludmila Alekseyeva. Vilnius, 1992
5. ^ (Russian) Chronicle of Current Events Archive at memo.ru

See also

• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of the press
• Self publishing
• Václav Havel
• Velvet Revolution
• Zine

External links

• December 1970 report by KGB regarding "alarming political tendencies"in Samizdat and Preventive measures (from the Soviet Archives collected by Vladimir Bukovsky)
• Alexander Bolonkin - Memoirs of Soviet Political Prisoner detailing some technology used
• Anthology of samizdat
• Samizdat archiveВѣхи (Vekhi Library, in Russian)
• Julius Telesin - Inside "Samizdat", published in Encounter 40(2), pages 25-33, February 1973
• Präprintium. A Berlin Exhibition of Moscow Samizdat Books, Stephen Küpper, published in Other Voices, v.1 n.2 1998.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - samizdat

Nederlands (Dutch)
samizdat

Français (French)
n. - samizdat

Deutsch (German)
n. - heimlich kopierte u. verteilte Literatur

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ιστ.) παράνομος ή αντιστασιακός τύπος στη Σοβιετική Ενωση

Italiano (Italian)
stampa clandestina

Português (Portuguese)
n. - sistema (m) de impressão clandestina de livros na ex-URSS

Русский (Russian)
самиздат

Español (Spanish)
n. - copia y difusión clandestina de literatura en los países comunistas

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - samizdat

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
原苏联政府禁止的文学作品的秘密印刷

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 原蘇聯政府禁止的文學作品的祕密印刷

한국어 (Korean)
n. - (옛 소련의) 지하 출판사, 비밀 출판

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 地下出版

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) نظام أعلام سري للأدب ألممنوع في روسيا‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮הוצאה לאור במחתרת (בבריה"מ)‬

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