samizdat

Definition

The secret copying and sharing of illegal publications, chiefly in the Soviet Union; underground publishing and its publications.

Etymology

Borrowed from Russian самизда́т (samizdát, “self-publishing”), from сам (sam, “self”) + изда́т (izdát), an abbreviation of изда́тельство (izdátelʹstvo, “publishing house, publishing”) (compare Russian Госизда́т (Gosizdát, “State Publisher”)).

Example Sentences

• "[page 1] In a general sense any copy of a document which has been produced in the Soviet Union outside the chain of state publishing houses may be referred to as samizdat. […] [page 3] This term is modeled on the shortened form—gosizdat—of State Publishing House (Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo). […] According to Julius Telesin, a Russian writer who emigrated to Israel in 1970, the word samizdat occurs first in the late fifties when a Moscow poet, exasperated with the operation of the censorship system, bound together the typewritten sheets of his poems and wrote Samsebiaizdate ("Publishing House for Oneself") in the place where the name of the publishing house would normally appear. He also used the term samizdat with the same meaning but, as Telesin observes, samizdat ("self-publishing house") subsequently acquired a wider meaning."
• "From a clandestine network of friends passing to each other typed copies of their new work, the initiative developed over the years into a parallel publishing system. […] [I]n cities the inquisitive reader did not have much difficulty in obtaining access to what was in fact a banned literature. Samizdat was also an important source of new writing for the equally active and enterprising publishers of Czech (and some Slovak) books in exile."
• "Indeed, internal criticism of the USSR from a Marxist perspective has been a continuing fact of Soviet life for decades. While [Joseph] Stalin held sway, this criticism was limited to clandestine and fugitive expressions, circulated orally or in samizdat."