- published: 23 Mar 2015
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Samizdat (Russian: самизда́т; IPA: [səmɨzˈdat]) was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. 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 summarized it as, "I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and get imprisoned for it."
Etymologically, the word samizdat derives from sam (Russian: сам, "self, by oneself") and izdat (Russian: издат, an abbreviation of издательство, izdatel'stvo, "publishing house"), and thus means "self-published". The Ukrainian language has a similar term: samvýdav (самвидав), from sam, "self", and vydannya, "publication".
The Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov coined a version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems and included the note Samsebyaizdat (Самсебяиздат, "Myself by Myself Publishers") on the front page.