Information AboutSamizdat |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT SAMIZDAT | |
| history of poland 1945–1989 | |
| polish literature | |
| censorship | |
| political repression in the soviet union | |
| russian loanwords | |
| victims of soviet repressions | |
| samizdat | |
| soviet phraseology | |
|
containing a collection of forbidden Trotskyist Samizdat texts. In contrast to such catchy bookcovers, typical cover page of a geniuine ''samizdat'' publication was made to look as inconspicuous as possible in order to avoid attention.]] Samizdat (, , ) 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 Machine s were guarded by what Mikhail Bulgakov called "the secret service" ( 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 {Link without Title} get imprisoned for it." TECHNIQUES Essentially, the samizdat copies of text, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's novel '' purposes. TERMINOLOGY AND RELATED CONCEPTS The term was coined as a Pun by Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov in 1940s in an analogy with the names of Soviet official Publishing House s, such as ''Politizdat'' (short for ''Politicheskoe izdatel'stvo'', , State Publishing House of Political Literature), Detizdat (literature for children), etc. Etymologically , the word "samizdat" is made out of "sam" (сам, "self", "by one~") 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" (, 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 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. 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 the information bulletin "Хроника текущих событий" (Khronika Tekushchikh Sobitiy; ''The Chronicle Of The Current Events ''), 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 return 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 Tatar s", "Repressions in Ukraine ", " Lithuania n 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 Tape s and widely copied, increasing his popularity and leading, in part, to the Iranian Revolution . In Poland In the People's Republic Of Poland during the 1970s and 1980s, several books (sometimes as long as 500 pages) were printed in quantities often exceeding 5000 copies. Newspapers were also published. For example, in 1980, a news-sheet, ''Solidarnosc'', reached a print run of 30,000 copies daily {Link without Title} and some of the largest runs reached over 100,000 copies. Most of the Polish underground press was organized in the 1970s by the Movement For Defense Of Human And Civic Rights (ROBCiO) and Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). Over several years, alongside hundreds of small individual publishers, several large underground Publishing House s were created, fueled by supplies smuggled from abroad or stolen from official publishing houses. The Polish underground press drew on experiences of Second World War veterans of Armia Krajowa and much attention was paid to conspiracy; however, after Martial Law In Poland and the government crackdown on Solidarity , the activities of underground publishing were significantly curtailed for several years following. However, with the communist government losing power in the second half of the 1980s, production of Polish samizdat (''bibuła'') dramatically increased and many publications were distributed throughout the entire country. After the Autumn Of Nations in 1989 some of the underground publishers transformed into regular and legal publishing houses. In United Kingdom Stewart Home 's history of samizdat from Lettrisme to Class War was published by the samizdat operation called Unpopular Books in the 1980s. FOOTNOTES |
|
|