Samizdat

Samizdat (self-published, in Russian ????????) was a grassroots practice to evade officially imposed censorship in the Soviet-bloc countries wherein people clandestinely copied and distributed government-suppressed literature or other media. The idea was that copies were made a few at a time, and anyone who had a copy and access to any sort of copying equipment would make more copies.

Related Topics:
Russian - Grassroots - Censorship - Soviet-bloc

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The term was coined in an analogy with the names of Soviet publishing houses, such as Politizdat (short for Politicheskoe izdatelstvo, ??????????, ??????????????? ???????????? ???????????? ??????????, State Publishing House of Political Literature), Detizdat (literature for children), etc.

Related Topics:
Publishing house - Politizdat

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

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Essentially, the samizdat copies of text, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, were passed from one person to another. The techniques used to print the forbidden literature and newspapers 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 large 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.

Related Topics:
Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita - Carbon paper - Printing press - Glasnost - Copy machine - Typewriter - First Department - KGB - Identification

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

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In the book Interesting Times, set in the Discworld, the Samizdat phenomenon also appears in the same context as it did in real life.

Related Topics:
Interesting Times - Discworld

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