Samizdat
| Samizdat | |
| Russian | самиздат |
|---|---|
| Romanization | samizdat |
| Literal meaning | self-publishing |
Samizdat (Russian: самизда́т; IPA: [səmɨzˈdat]) was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.
Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows: "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."
Etymologically, the word samizdat derives from sam (Russian: сам, "self, by oneself") and izdat (Russian: издат, an abbreviation of издательство, izdatel'stvo, "publishing house"), and thus means "self-published". The Ukrainian language has a similar term: samvýdav (самвидав), from sam, "self", and vydannya, "publication".
The Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov coined a version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems and included the note Samsebyaizdat (Самсебяиздат, "Myself by Myself Publishers") on the .
Tamizdat refers to literature published abroad (там, tam, "there"), often from smuggled manuscripts.
"Эрика" берёт четыре копии, / Вот и всё! / ...А этого достаточно.
The "Erika" takes four copies, / That is all! / ...But that is enough.
Samizdat copies of texts, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita or Václav Havel's essay The Power of the Powerless were passed around among trusted friends. The techniques used to reproduce these forbidden texts varied. Several copies might be made using carbon paper, either by hand or on a typewriter; at the other end of the scale mainframe printers were used during night shifts to make multiple copies, and books were at times printed on semiprofessional printing presses in much larger quantities. Before glasnost, the practice was dangerous, because copy machines, printing presses, and even typewriters in offices were under control of the organisation's First Department, i.e. the KGB: reference printouts for all of these machines were stored for subsequent identification purposes, if samizdat output was found.
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