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Samizdat tidsskrifter

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Maskinskrevet udgave af det samizdat-tidsskriftet Kronik over aktuelle begivenheder (Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий), udgivet i Moskva

I årene efter Stalin og det følgende tøbrud i USSR i midten af 1950'erne blev poesi fra USSR meget populær. Skrifter skrevet af en lang række digtere, kendte som ukendte, cirkulerede blandt den sovjetiske intelligentsia. En række samizdat-publikationer indeholdt uofficiel poesi, blandt dem Moskva-magasinet Sintaksis (Синтаксис) (1959-1960) af forfatteren Aleksandr Ginzburg, Vladimir Osipovs Boomerang (1960), og Phoenix (1961), fremstillet af Jurij Galanskov og Aleksandr Ginzburg. Redaktørerne af disse magasiner var stamgæster ved improviserede offentlige poesioplæsninger, der fandt sted mellem 1958 og 1961 på Majakovskij-pladsen i Moskva. Oplæsningsbegivenhederne varede ikke ved længe, ​​for snart begyndte myndighederne at slå ned på dem. I sommeren 1961 blev adskillige deltagere arresteret, sigtet og dømt for "antisovjetisk agitation og propaganda", hvilket satte en stopper for de fleste af de tidlige tidsskrifter.

De tidlige tidsskrifter (Sintaksis, Boomerang og Phoenix) havde et primært litterært fokus. På trods af lukningen af disse litterære tidsskrifter opstod andre litterære samizdat-tidsskrifter. Den russiske digter Josef Brodskij udgav digte, der cirkulerede i samizdat, da han ikke kunne få udgivet sine værker ad de officielle og statskontrollerede kanaler. Han blev i 1963 anklaget for "social parasitisme" og idømt fem års ophold i arbejdslejr.[1] En uofficiel litterær gruppe kendt som SMOG udstedte en almanak med titlen Sfinkserne (Sfinksij) og samlinger af prosa og poesi. Nogle af deres skrifter lå tæt op ad den russiske avantgarde fra 1910'erne og 1920'erne.


show-retssag i 1965 mod forfattere Yuli Daniel og Andrei Sinyavsky, anklaget for anti-sovjetisk agitation og propaganda, og den efterfølgende øgede undertrykkelse, markerede tøens død og begyndelsen på hårdere tider for samizdat-forfattere. Retssagen blev omhyggeligt dokumenteret i en samizdat-samling kaldet The White Book (1966), udarbejdet af Yuri Galanskov og Alexander Ginzburg. Begge forfattere var blandt dem, der senere blev arresteret og idømt fængsel i det, der var kendt som Retssagen mod de fire. I de følgende år blev noget samizdat-indhold mere politiseret og spillede en vigtig rolle i dissidentbevægelsen i Sovjetunionen.


From 1964 to 1970, communist historian Roy Medvedev regularly published The Political Journal (in Russian Политический дневник, or political diary), which contained analytical materials that later appeared in the West.


Not everything published in samizdat had political overtones. In 1963, Joseph Brodsky was charged with "social parasitism" and convicted for being nothing but a poet. His poems circulated in samizdat, with only four judged as suitable for official Soviet anthologies.[1] In the mid-1960s an unofficial literary group known as SMOG (a word meaning variously one was able, I did it, etc; as an acronym the name also bore a range of interpretations) issued an almanac titled The Sphinxes (Sfinksy) and collections of prose and poetry. Some of their writings were close to the Russian avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s.

The 1965 show trial of writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and the subsequent increased repression, marked the demise of the Thaw and the beginning of harsher times for samizdat authors. The trial was carefully documented in a samizdat collection called The White Book (1966), compiled by Yuri Galanskov and Alexander Ginzburg. Both writers were among those later arrested and sentenced to prison in what was known as The Trial of the Four. In the following years some samizdat content became more politicized, and played an important role in the dissident movement in the Soviet Union.

Samizdat tidsskrifter

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The longest-running and best-known samizdat periodical was A Chronicle of Current Events (Хроника текущих событий).[2] It was dedicated to defending human rights by providing accurate information about events in the USSR. Over 15 years, from April 1968 to December 1982, 65 issues were published, all but two appearing in English translation.[3] The anonymous editors encouraged the readers to utilize the same distribution channels in order to send feedback and local information to be published in subsequent issues.

The Chronicle was distinguished by its dry, concise style and punctilious correction of even the smallest error. Its regular rubrics were "Arrests, Searches, Interrogations", "Extra-judicial Persecution", "In Prisons and Camps", "Samizdat update", "News in brief", and "Persecution of Religion". Over time, sections were added on the "Persecution of the Crimean Tatars", "Persecution and Harassment in Ukraine", "Lithuanian Events", and so on.

The Chronicle editors maintained that, according to the 1936 Soviet Constitution, then in force, their publication was not illegal. The authorities did not accept the argument. Many people were harassed, arrested, imprisoned, or forced to leave the country for their involvement in the Chronicle's production and distribution. The periodical's typist and first editor Natalya Gorbanevskaya was arrested and put in a psychiatric hospital for taking part in the August 1968 Red Square protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1974, two of the periodical's close associates (Pyotr Yakir and Victor Krasin) were persuaded to denounce their fellow editors and the Chronicle on Soviet television. This put an end to the periodical's activities, until Sergei Kovalev, Tatyana Khodorovich and Tatyana Velikanova openly announced their readiness to resume publication. After being arrested and imprisoned, they were replaced, in turn, by others.

Another notable and long-running (about 20 issues in the period of 1972–1980) publication was the refusenik political and literary magazine "Евреи в СССР" (Yevrei v SSSR, Jews in the USSR), founded and edited by Alexander Voronel and, after his imprisonment, by Mark Azbel and Alexander Luntz.

The late 1980s, which were marked by an increase in informal organizations, saw a renewed wave of samizdat periodicals in the Soviet Union. Publications that were active during that time included Glasnost (edited by Sergei Grigoryants), Ekspress-khronika (Express-Chronicle, edited by Alexander Podrabinek), Svobodnoye slovo ("Free word", by the Democratic Union formed in May 1988), Levyi povorot ("Left turn", edited by Boris Kagarlitsky), Otkrytaya zona ("Open zone") of Club Perestroika, Merkurii ("Mercury", edited by Elena Zelinskaya) and Khronograph ("Chronograph", put out by a number of Moscow activists).[4]

Not all samizdat trends were liberal or clearly opposed to the Soviet regime and the literary establishment. "The Russian Party... was a very strange element of the political landscape of Leonid Brezhnev's era—feeling themselves practically dissidents, members of the Russian Party with rare exceptions took quite prestigious official positions in the world of writers or journalists," wrote Oleg Kashin in 2009.[5]

Genres of samizdat

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Samizdat covered a large range of topics, mainly including literature and works focused on religion, nationality, and politics.[6] The state censored a variety of materials such as detective novels, adventure stories, and science fiction in addition to dissident texts, resulting in the underground publication of samizdat covering a wide range of topics. Though most samizdat authors directed their works towards the intelligentsia, samizdat included lowbrow genres in addition to scholarly works.[7]

Hyung-Min Joo carried out a detailed analysis of an archive of samizdat (Архив Самиздата, Arkhiv Samizdata by Radio Liberty, sponsored by the US Congress and launched in the 1960s, and reported that of its 6,607 items, 1% were literary, 17% nationalist, 20% religious, and 62% political, noting that as a rule, literary works were not collected there, so their 1% (only 73 texts) are not representative of their real share of circulation. [6]

Typewritten edition of Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman, Moscow

In its early years, samizdat defined itself as a primarily literary phenomenon that included the distribution of poetry, classic unpublished Russian literature, and famous 20th century foreign literature.[8] Literature played a key role in the existence of the samizdat phenomenon. For instance, the USSR's refusal to publish Boris Pasternak's epic novel, Doctor Zhivago, due to its focus on individual characters rather than the welfare of the state, led to the novel's subsequent underground publication. The fact that Doctor Zhivago contained no overt messages of dissidence highlighted the clumsiness of the state's censorship process, which caused a shift of readership away from state-published material.[9] Likewise, the circulation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's famous work about the gulag system, The Gulag Archipelago, promoted a samizdat revival during the mid-1970s.[10] However, because samizdat by definition placed itself in opposition to the state, samizdat works became increasingly focused on the state's violation of human rights, before shifting towards politics.[11]

The majority of samizdat texts were politically focused.[6] Most of the political texts were personal statements, appeals, protests, or information on arrests and trials.[12] Other political samizdat included analyses of various crises within the USSR, and suggested alternatives to the government's handling of events.

No unified political thought existed within samizdat; rather, authors debated from a variety of perspectives. Samizdat written from socialist, democratic and Slavophile perspectives dominated the debates.[13] Socialist authors compared the current state of the government to the Marxist ideals of socialism, and appealed to the state to fulfil its promises. Socialist samizdat writers hoped to give a "human face" to socialism by expressing dissatisfaction with the system of censorship.[14] Many socialists put faith in the potential for reform in the Soviet Union, especially because of the political liberalization which occurred under Dubček in Czechoslovakia. However, the Soviet Union invasion of a liberalizing Czechoslovakia, in the events of "Prague Spring", crushed hopes for reform and stymied the power of the socialist viewpoint.[15] Because the state proved itself unwilling to reform, samizdat began to focus on alternative political systems.

Typewritten edition of National Frontiers and International Scientific Cooperation by Zhores Medvedev.

Within samizdat, several works focused on the possibility of a democratic political system. Democratic samizdat possessed a revolutionary nature because of its claim that a fundamental shift in political structure was necessary to reform the state, unlike socialists, who hoped to work within the same basic political framework to achieve change. Despite the revolutionary nature of the democratic samizdat authors, most democrats advocated moderate strategies for change. Most democrats believed in an evolutionary approach to achieving democracy in the USSR, and they focused on advancing their cause along open, public routes, rather than underground routes.[16]

In opposition to both democratic and socialist samizdat, Slavophile samizdat grouped democracy and socialism together as Western ideals that were unsuited to the Eastern European mentality. Slavophile samizdat brought a nationalistic Russian perspective to the political debate, and espoused the importance of cultural diversity and the uniqueness of Slavic cultures. Samizdat written from the Slavophile perspective attempted to unite the USSR under a vision of a shared glorious history of Russian autocracy and Orthodoxy. Consequently, the fact that the USSR encompassed a diverse range of nationalities and lacked a singular Russian history hindered the Slavophile movement. By espousing frequently racist and anti-Semitic views of Russian superiority, through either purity of blood or the strength of Russian Orthodoxy, the Slavophile movement in samizdat alienated readers and created divisions within the opposition.[17]

Predominantly Orthodox, Baptist, Pentecostalist, Catholic, and Adventist groups authored religious samizdat texts. Though a diversity of religious samizdat circulated, including three Buddhist texts, no known Islamic samizdat texts exist. The lack of Islamic samizdat appears incongruous with the large percentage of Muslims who resided in the USSR.[12]

Jewish samizdat importantly advocated for the end of repression of Jews in the USSR and expressed a desire for exodus, the ability to leave Russia for an Israeli homeland. Jewish samizdat encouraged Zionism. The exodus movement also broached broader topics of human rights and freedoms of Soviet citizens.[18] However, a divide existed within Jewish samizdat between authors who advocated exodus, and those who argued that Jews should remain in the USSR to fight for their rights.

Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans also created samizdat, protesting the state's refusal to allow them to return to their homelands following Stalin's death.

Ukrainian samvydav opposed the assumed superiority of Russian culture over Ukrainian culture and condemned the forced assimilation of Ukrainians to the Russian language.[19]

In addition to samizdat focused on Jewish, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tartar concerns, authors also advocated the causes of a great many other nationalities.

Contraband audio

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Homemade "bone record"

Ribs, "music on the ribs", "bone records",[20] or roentgenizdat (roentgen- referring to X-ray, and -izdat implying samizdat) were homemade phonograph records, copied from forbidden recordings that were smuggled into the country. Their content was Western rock and roll, jazz, mambo, and other music, and music by banned emigres. They were sold and traded on the black market.

Each disc is a thin, flexible plastic sheet recorded with a spiral groove on one side, playable on a normal phonograph turntable at 78 RPM. They were made from an inexpensive, available material: used X-ray film. Each large rectangular sheet was trimmed into a circle and individually recorded using an improvised recording lathe. The discs and their limited sound quality resemble the mass-produced flexi disc, and may have been inspired by it.

Magnitizdat, less common, is the distribution of sound recordings on audio tape, often of underground music groups, bards, or lectures (magnit- referring to magnetic tape).

Further influence

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After Bell Labs changed its UNIX licence in 1979 to make dissemination of the source code illegal, the 1976 Lions book which contained the source code had to be withdrawn, but illegal copies of it circulated for years.

The act of copying the Lions book was often referred to as samizdat. In hacker and computer jargon, the term samizdat was used for the dissemination of needed and hard to obtain documents or information.[21]

The hacker journal PoC||GTFO calls its distribution permissions a samizdat licence.[22]

  1. ^ a b Crump 2013, s. 107.
  2. ^ A Chronicle of Current Events, 1968–1982 (in Russian) Archive at memo.ru.
  3. ^ A Chronicle of Current Events 1968–1983 (in English). All 1968 and 1969 issues may be found in Reddaway 1972
  4. ^ Urban, Igrunov & Mitrokhin 1997, s. 87.
  5. ^ Kashin 2009.
  6. ^ a b c Joo 2004, s. 572.
  7. ^ Komaromi 2004, s. 606.
  8. ^ Stelmakh 2001, s. 148.
  9. ^ Meerson-Aksenov & Shragin 1977, s. 27.
  10. ^ Joo 2004, s. 575.
  11. ^ Meerson-Aksenov & Shragin 1977, s. 30.
  12. ^ a b Joo 2004, s. 574.
  13. ^ Joo 2004, s. 576.
  14. ^ Meerson-Aksenov & Shragin 1977, s. 47.
  15. ^ Joo 2004, s. 587.
  16. ^ Joo 2004, s. 587–588.
  17. ^ Joo 2004, s. 588.
  18. ^ Meerson-Aksenov, "The Jewish Question in the USSR – The Movement for Exodus," 385–86.
  19. ^ Joo 2004, s. 573–574.
  20. ^ NPR 2016.
  21. ^ Raymond 1996; Jargon File 2004: "Note that samizdat is properly used only with respect to documents which contain needed information (see also hacker ethic) but which are for some reason otherwise unavailable, but not in the context of documents which are available through normal channels, for which unauthorized duplication would be unethical copyright violation."
  22. ^ "International Journal of PoC – GTFO issues [Openwall Community Wiki]". openwall.info. Hentet 2016-04-22.

General sources

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Further reading

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Outsiders' works

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Insiders' works

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Skabelon:External links


[[Category:Censorship in the Eastern Bloc]] [[Category:Censorship in the Soviet Union]] [[Category:Eastern Bloc mass media]] [[Category:Newspapers published in Slovakia]] [[Category:Polish dissident organisations]] [[Category:Polish literature]] [[Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union]] [[Category:Second economy of the Soviet Union]] [[Category:Soviet culture]] [[Category:Soviet phraseology]] [[Category:Ukrainian anti-Soviet resistance movement]] [[Category:Underground press]] {{RU-stub}} {{autoritetsdata}} [[Kategori:Kultur i Sovjetunionen]] [[Kategori:Litteratur fra Rusland]]