Samizdat (Russian: самиздат) was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries. The idea was that copies were made a few at a time, and anyone who had a copy would make more copies, often by handwriting or typing, because copy machines were guarded by what Mikhail Bulgakov called "the secret service" (see KGB, Soviet censorship).

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 get imprisoned for it."

Techniques

Essentially, the samizdat copies of text, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, 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

The term was coined as a pun in an analogy with the names of Soviet official publishing houses, such as Politizdat (short for Politicheskoe izdatel'stvo, Russian: Политиздат, Государственное

Etymologically, the word "samizdat" is made out of "sam" (сам, "self") and "izdat" (издательство, izdatel'stvo, "publisher").

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" means "there"), often from smuggled manuscripts.

History

In the Soviet Union

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.

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 (the Nobel Prize in

Not everything published in samizdat had political overtones. In 1963, Joseph Brodsky (to become a Nobel laureat 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 Newest 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 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. 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 reputable samizdat publications was information bulletin "Хроника текущих событий" (Khronika Tekushchikh Sobitiy; The Chronicle of the Current Events), dedicated to the defense of the human rights in the USSR. For 15 years from 1968 to 1983, total of 63 issues were published. The anonymous authors encouraged the readers to utilize the same distribution channels in order to pass the 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.

In Iran

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.

In Poland

In Poland during the 1970s and 1980s, several books (sometimes as long as 500 pages) were printed in quantities often exceeding 5000 copies.

In London

Stewart Home's history of samizdat from Lettrisme to Class War was published by the samizdat operation called Unpopular Books in the 1980s.

Footnotes

1.   "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
2.   by Ludmila Alekseyeva. Vilnius, 1992 (in Russian)
3.   Archive at memo.ru

See also

• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of the press
• Podcasting
• Samizdat Express
• Self publishing

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