Talk:Samizdat

Old talk
Please see Talk:Censorship for a suggestion of a possible article on Government suppression of literature. -- Sam

It is assumed that Bulgakov's novel was 'forbidden literature', but that may not necessarily be so. Every publication had to go through the official channels, but a novel or poem for which official publication was not sought, was not forbidden by the censors. It was not allowed by implication, but it canNOT be assumed that all self-published, Samizdat, material was submitted to and forbidden by the censors. It can be compared to today, where only one in a 1000 books written has a chance to be picked up by a publisher and those authors who do not bother to get into that queue, but self-publish instead, are not the authors of rejects. I am very much convinced that just as many of the samizdat authors did not not seek publishing approval for their work as today's authors self-publish because commercial publishing houses take on only miniscule portions of work written. 144.139.61.9 04:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

To comment on ''A rough translation would be something along the lines of "Passing on" or "Giving it amongst yourselves". '':

I feel that this is quite wrong. Judging from slavic etymology, Samizdat would be quite directly traslated as "self-released" or "self-published" in a sense that self refers to sole, him/her-self and individual. Or to quote from American Heritage Dictionary: "Russian : sam, self; + izdatel'stvo, publishing house (from izdat', to publish,...)" -- Luka


 * Sounds like a good argument to me, particularly since 'self-published' is listed as the original translation. Can anyone who speaks Russian corroborate?  Luka, would you like to edit the article to remove the incorrect statements?  --Saforrest 22:16, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)


 * Sounds true to me, although I'm not a native speaker of Russian. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 00:05, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Samizdat as meme
Mikkalai removed category:Memetics as "irrelevant", but I don't see how that is so. A samizdat publication is all about propagating ideas from person to person in a "viral" manner like a chain letter on steroids. I'm putting it back, please elabourate here if anyone wants to remove it again. Bryan 15:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I am removing the memetics category from this article since you learn no more about the article's contents from the category and v.v. Since so many things may be memes we should try to keep the category closely defined in order to remain useful. Hope you're okay with that. The link to meme would be enough I suggest. Facius 11:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

RE: Organizations and people who predicted the collapse of the USSR
I added Samizdat to   because of this reference, which talks about organizations and people who predicted the Soviet Union would collapse:

Various essays published in samizdat in the early 1970s were on similar lines, some quite specifically predicting the end of the Soviet empire.

p. 188

Signed:Travb 14:41, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

My late father Dr. Walter Gurski was CEO of an Osram company in Plauen, Saxony, in the Soviet Zone of Germany. From War's end to 1948 the factory operated under newly introduced communist rules and since 1948 he was adamant: 'Their system will go bankrupt, it must, no other way'. He was a physicist and mathematician, not an economist. 121.209.49.104 (talk) 05:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Related discussion
Please see Talk:Underground_press.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 00:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a mention of this use would fit in the similar phenomena section. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/books/31sali.html?em Carnydog (talk) 21:21, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Good link to Samizdat history and sources (Russian). Biophys (talk) 05:46, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Beyond historic samizdat
The current and growing self-publishing scene is quite similar to the samizdat scene of the late Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union they wanted to disseminate what they thought and wanted. Samizdat works bypassed the censors and government owned publishers but were not all calling for the Soviets to abdicate. I remember reading that some were just to generate improvements, were full of aggessive humour, or came from the mentality 'I am not one to ask permission'. But some of it, of course, was opposing the system.

Today the publishing industry has really narrow parameters for the authors they publish (young, academics, been on TV, famous or infamous in one way or the other), so writers who are over 40, who haven't had the good fortune of a university education, and haven't been on TV, find their works rejected. I remember reading that someone's book was rejected with the argument that he was not famous or an academic, so they could not publish his book. They did not even want to know what the book was about. Those who are aware of these parameters, don't even bother to apply and bypass the publishing industry through self-publication.

Whether the writer is 'silenced' by the censor or the selection criteria of the publishing business comes out the same.

Samizdat was and is outside the mainstream, uncensored, mostly the true work of that individual.

In the Soviet Union, samizdat was handwritten, typed, or later photocopied; in today's computerized world, samizdat is typeset and available on the internet.

'Self-published' can often sound as if it had not been good enough for a publishing house, when the criteria mentioned above are actually the decisive factors, apart from the fact that a lot more is written, than can find a home in a publishinh house.

I think, the word samizdat should be used in English for the whole self-publishing scene. 121.209.49.104 (talk) 05:42, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk pages are not for general discussion of the topic of the referenced page. KenThomas (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiLeaks references
The WikiLeaks reference seems inappropriate, intended to advertize WikiLeaks. I'm going to edit it to standard English, then delete it,  then remove the flag I added to this page. KenThomas (talk) 21:56, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This meme has been reinserted; it is not clear to me that it is appropriate.  I am deleting pending further discussion. KenThomas (talk) 03:39, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Meme continues to be re-inserted by anon IPs. Deleting and will request page protection if insertion continues without discussion.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by KenThomas (talk • contribs) 04:49, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * This KenThomas is blatantly anti-samizdat. Where will the censorship stop? GTFO PLS

\2602:63:C3E6:4400:DCF:952D:5F31:937C (talk) 13:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

POC||GTFO
What kind of clarification (above the references on Openwall Project) are you looking for? A google search for "Rabbi Manul Laphroaig" might help: Rabbi Manul Laphroaig. Or the file page on commons, I certainly didn't know if that's the title or the photographer (it's the title):. Or the flickr album: POC!!GTFO. Or the first line on Solar Designer: "Alexander Peslyak (born 1977), better known as Solar Designer, is a security specialist from Russia. – Be..anyone &#x1F4A9;  12:54, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think a the very least it should be made clear what a "samizdat license" is. – Nkrita (talk) 13:05, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Already answered in the intro of this article here: "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself." The hacking articles in the journal are not necessarily main-stream en-US legal, it is (or pretends to be) underground hacking culture; hard to judge the relevance (apart from "I like it", obviously). – Be..anyone &#x1F4A9;  13:10, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The Bukovsky quote references the subject of the article, namely the "key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand". It does not make clear what these people mean by "samizdat license". Is it a form of open source licensing that can be seen as a continuation of this practice? I can find no description of it. – Nkrita (talk) 13:29, 22 April 2016 (UTC)


 * While looking this up I discovered that the Jargon File has a concise entry for "less-than-official" dissemination of documentation with explicit parallels to samizdat (link). If the point is to show that there is a similar phenomenon in hacker and computer culture, this might be a clearer example. – Nkrita (talk) 14:08, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The relevance of the jargon dictionary and ESR is clear, and it contains the term. If you feel that's better, okay. Reference + quote added, tweak it as you see fit (with or without POC!!GTFO, of course I can't tell if Solar Designer is one of the authors, or if his Openwall Project just happens to host a copy. ;-)
 * – Be..anyone &#x1F4A9;  15:43, 22 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I have tried to make the wording in the article as precise as possible for now. I think it kind of works. If the journal appears in the article because of the term "samizdat license", it would be helpful to find some information as to what a samizdat license is supposed to be (rather than guess it). If the journal is here because it represents a "similar phenomenon" regardless of the term, then it would be best to explain it that way, using more examples and preferably bolstering it with other sources. – Nkrita (talk) 17:42, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * In #11, page 1: "Это самиздат. Denn was man Schwarz auf Weiß besitzt, kann man getrost nach Hause tragen. 0, $0 USD, £0, 0 RSD, 0 SEK, $50 CAD. pocorgtfo11.pdf. March 17, 2016."
 * In #8, page 1: "Это самиздат; yet, do thy worst old Time! 0, $0 USD, £0, $50 CAD. pocorgtfo08.pdf" (oldest I have in my download folder). Both below a blurb like that: "Funded by Single Malt as Midnight Oil and the Tract Association of PoC k GTFO and Friends, to be Freely Distributed to all Good Readers, and to be Freely Copied by all Good Bookleggers." – Be..anyone &#x1F4A9;  19:11, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

"Techniques" is incorrect - the stubborn myth of the soviet typewriter
The first two sentences of the "Techniques" section is unequivocally false :

"All Soviet-produced typewriters and printing devices were officially registered, with their typographic samples collected right at the factory and stored in the government directory. Because every typewriter has micro features which are individual as much as human fingerprints, it allowed the KGB investigators to promptly identify the device which was used to type or print the text in question, and apprehend its user."

However, I'm not sure what to replace it with. I'm curious if anyone has any ideas of how to clean this article up.

ChilledTonic (talk) 18:12, 25 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Added a citation. I suppose would've been even easier for KGB because of lack of competition / higher manufacturing tolerances. --PaulT2022 (talk) 03:25, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Some explanations
"Our troubles are untranslatable, it is an untranslatable play on words. <...> As writers teach us, life and language go hand in hand. I would even say it's the same. And the untranslatable play on words here is an untranslatable play on deeds. <...> We have learned to understand such things that words have nothing to do with it at all!" (Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian writer-satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky, 1986). Abbreviations (sometimes ugly and monstrous) were very popular in USSR. And therefore in USSR were popular abbreviated publisher names according to their specialization or geographical location: Politizdat (literally: "Politpub"), Stroyizdat ("Buildpub"), Voenizdat ("Militpub"), Lenizdat (from LENingrad), Rostovizdat (from ROSTOV-on-Don), Gidrometeoizdat ("Hydrometeopub"), Rosagropromizdat ("Rusagrarindustpub"), etc. There were few such publishers, but their books were everywhere. The name Samizdat (my literally translation: "Myselfpub") parodies this naming model. Also, in it I see irony over Soviet realities: a designation that sounds official, but under which you will find things that you cannot find in the official Soviet print. 178.187.94.129 (talk) 16:28, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * All this is good, but in order to add any if this to the article, you must provide reliable sources that say so. - Altenmann >talk 18:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I know. I just wanted, as a native speaker and a resident of the designated territory, to leave data for someone's search of reliable sources for refine of the article. That's why I wrote here, and did not edit the article. 178.187.94.129 (talk) 19:09, 7 July 2023 (UTC)