Samizdat

Although the word " samizdat " itself appeared only in the middle of the 20th century, from ancient times, forbidden works were transmitted to each other in a manuscript way. In the XVIII century, this is how the satires of A.P. Sumarokov spread throughout Russia.

In the first half of the 19th century, when Russia was literally teeming with secret societies, the appeals of future Decembrists , and later of the “ populists ." On the very day after the death of A. S. Pushkin , which overtook him on January 28 (February 9), 1837, the whole of Petersburg (and after him Moscow ) read the handwritten repeatedly rewritten lines of M. Yu. Lermontov ’s poem “The Death of a Poet ” . At that time it was called “walking on lists”: the word “list” meant a handwritten copy. So, “on the lists”, there was a comedy by A. S. Griboedov “ Woe from Wit ”, forbidden by censorship for a long time. Only after the death of the author (1829), in 1831, the production of the full text of the comedy was allowed, without cuts, first in St. Petersburg, then in Moscow (the play was officially banned outside the capitals until July 6, 1863; the first publication of the comedy without distortion appeared in Moscow only in 1875 ^[3] ). In the second half of the 19th century, whole Russia was flooded with poignant poems of the Vologda disgraced priest Vasily Sirotin (best known as the author of the song “Street, street, you, brother, drunk”). Also in the manuscript "editions" were the works of N. A. Nekrasov , I. S. Barkov (because of their supposed obscenity), and at the same time really obscene texts attributed to Barkov, but not related to him; etc.

In the 20th century, technical innovations were already widely used for samizdat: typewriters , photocopiers of early samples, tape recorders, and other devices.

In the 21st century, the word " samizdat " is sometimes also used as the name of registered publications; they are published or distributed on the Internet openly, are available, and by virtue of this they are no longer “samizdat” in the original meaning of the word.

The question is being debated whether the magazines published in the last decade of the 20th century , and indeed any non-pursued publishing activity, should be called samizdat ^[4] .

The name " samizdat " appeared among the people as a natural parody of the names of Soviet state publishing organizations like " Goskomizdat ", " Politizdat ", etc. Probably the first word that was similar in meaning and form to the word "samsebyaizdat" was used by the poet Nikolai Glazkov , already in 1940‑ For years, he put this word on the painted and bound typewritten collections of his poems made by him ^[5] .

Also, “samizdat” in the 1970s and 1980s called home-made “books” collected from blueprints of pages of popular literature magazines (due to the small print runs that didn’t hit the shelves), for example:

• “ In August forty-fourth ”;
• " King of fish ";
• The White Guard ;
• separate James Hadley Chase novels:

In the form of “samizdat”, Robert Stilmark ’s famous adventure novel “The Heir from Calcutta ” (a two-sided photocopy from the only edition of 1958) was also known.

This “samizdat” could not be prosecuted for its content, but for “the theft of socialist property ”, that is, paper , the resource of a light-copier (they were all only in state property), binding material (not available for sale).

According to Alexander Daniel , samizdat is a specific way of existence of socially significant uncensored texts, consisting in the fact that their replication occurs outside the author’s control, in the process of their distribution in the reader’s environment ^[6] .

Vladimir Bukovsky in his autobiographical novel “ And the Wind Returns ... ” ^[7] gave the following definition of “samizdat”: “Samizdat: I compose, I edit, I censor myself, I publish, I distribute, I myself sit out for him.”

In the form of samizdat copies - “lists” - they first received circulation:

• works of V. Vysotsky -
  • lyrics of his songs and attributed to him,
  • a small prose story " Dolphins and Psychos ",
  • unfinished "A novel about girls ";
• uncensored almanac MetrOpol (late 1978, typewritten in 12 copies);
• typewritten article by Jan Maisels “ We ” (about fans of V. Vysotsky );
• works, books and materials on yoga - for example:
  • Ramacharaka . Hatha Yoga . Yogic philosophy of the physical well-being of man "(photocopy of typewriting);
• many famous large prose works, in particular:
  • Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak ;
  • “ The Gulag Archipelago ”, “ Cancer Corps ” and “ In the First Circle ” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn ;
  • " Yawning Heights ", " Bright Future " and "Yellow House" by Alexander Zinoviev ;
  • “The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Soldier Ivan Chonkin ” by Vladimir Voinovich ;
  • "The empty house" by Lydia Chukovskaya ;
• verses by Joseph Brodsky , Osip Mandelstam , A. Galich ;
• books of authors who were not formally banned (or the ban was formally lifted), but were published very little and could not reach many readers, for example:
  • poems and prose by Marina Tsvetaeva , Andrei Bely , Sasha Cherny , Anna Akhmatova , Varlam Shalamov , Daniil Kharms ;
  • some works of the Strugatsky brothers ;
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov ; and others;
• foreign literature (fiction, scientific, socio-political):
  • Translated by anonymous translators (e.g. Jilas )
  • anonymous translations of almost all the novels of the same D.H. Chase ;
  • improvised translations of individual works (such “hardcover” editions were even accompanied by illustrations):
    • science fiction - for example, The Legacy of the Stars by Clifford Saymak ;
    • a detective - for example, "The Creature " by Mickey Spillane (in 2 volumes);
  • anonymous translations of the 2nd and 3rd novels from the famous epic of Anne and Serge Golon about Angelica - “ The Way to Versailles ” and “ Angelica and the King ”;
• distributed in Moscow and Leningrad:
  • recorded jokes by Igor Huberman ;
  • epigrams on Soviet politicians and famous communist writers - for example:
    • epigrams of Zinovy ​​Paperny ;
    • epigrams Val. Gaft on various film and theater artists.

A. Galich ’s song “ We are no worse than Horace ” can be considered an “ode” to samizdat ^[8] .

The word tamizdat was often found next to the word samizdat ; sometimes as a contrast. “ Tamizdat ” refers to banned books and magazines published “there,” that is , abroad ^[9] . An example is:

• 4 collections of texts “ Songs of Russian Bards ” (Paris: YMCA-Press , 1977‑78);
• edition in 2 volumes “ V. Vysotsky . Songs and Poems ”(New York: Literary Abroad Publishing House, 1981‑83).

These books were also copied or reprinted, and "illegally" distributed.

The terms “ samizdat ” and “ tamizdat ” became international ^{[10] [11]} , as well as some other words that came from the USSR, for example, “ satellite ”, “ KGB ”, “ perestroika ”, “ publicity ”. In the 1970s, samizdat was so widespread that a joke was even written about it: “Grandmother reprints War and Peace on a typewriter - the grandson does not read anything other than samizdat” ^[12] .

Yevgeny Popov tried, along with “sam-” and “tamizdat,” to talk about “here from a publish” - he unofficially and illegally published the anthology “ Metropol ” in the USSR ^[13] .

Samizdat distributors were persecuted through the prosecutor's office and the KGB . The anthology of persecution (like other repressions) was called the “ Chronicle of Current Events ” and also spread in samizdat. The dissemination of information about repressions was suppressed especially brutally and also fell into the "chronicle".

The persecution of samizdat was contrary to international agreements signed by the Soviet Union in Helsinki . Groups were organized to facilitate the implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR, see, for example, the Moscow Helsinki Group . Documents of the Helsinki groups were published both in “sam-” and in “ tamizdat ”. The production and distribution of these documents was prosecuted by the authorities; members of the Helsinki groups were fired from their jobs, arrested and subjected to compulsory treatment ( punitive psychiatry ) ^[14] .

Despite the repression, the flow of samizdat expanded. The KGB Chairman Yu. Andropov in a secret message of the Central Committee in 1970 noted: “Over the period since 1965, over 400 various studies and articles on economic, political and philosophical issues have appeared that criticize the historical experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union from different angles and revise foreign and domestic policies of the CPSU , put forward various kinds of programs of opposition activity ” ^[15] .

The emergence of Soviet samizdat after the Stalin era was largely associated with fiction, which was banned in the USSR not for political, but for aesthetic or philosophical reasons. So, Lilianna Lungina recalls:

Since the books of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century were not reprinted and their names were deleted from the history of culture, Leonid Efimovich Pinsky took the initiative to search for old books or foreign facsimile reprints to make copies. The verses of Tsvetaeva , Mandelstam , Gumilyov , Khodasevich were reprinted in four copies on a typewriter, or even copied by hand, bound in small brochures and passed them to each other. Many of our friends followed this example ^[16] .

According to the art critic Ekaterina Destot , the existence of non-political samizdat in the USSR also had an aesthetic and cultural dimension:

The phenomenon of books printed on a typewriter in several copies arose in the USSR after World War II , in the wake of the collapse of totality and the spontaneous restoration of the private. Characteristically, samizdat did not see the difference between new texts and translations of banned authors: reprinting was not a mechanical process, but a kind of personal appropriation , dictated by dissatisfaction and suffering. Then the technology was cleansed of this achingly personal character - Samizdat magazines began to appear ... After that, it was already possible to realize the bad “fourth copy” aesthetically - as a form of criticism of the text ^[17] .

In the future, along with frankly dissident writings, self-published politically harmless works, but for one reason or another, were not included in the official “clip”, for example, translations of books by Tove Jansson and John Ronald Roel Tolkien ^[18] .

In samizdat also distributed:

• recipes ;
• recipes for alcoholic cocktails and home brewing .

Topographic maps were copied and copied, pornographic materials, model patterns and patterns from Western magazines (for example, “ Playboy ”, “ Burda-moden ”) and others were captured.

Self-published materials and works (for example, V. G. Azhazhi , Felix Siegel ) on the topic of UFOs and ufology that were not welcomed and kept secret in the USSR, were also widely known.

A special topic is rock samizdat : home-made typewritten magazines “ Roxy ”, “Ear”, “Mirror” and others, telling about domestic and foreign rock music.

There was a small commercial samizdat for sale (especially on trains, trains, markets) of the same recipes, patterns; as well as calendars - for example, with photographs of V. Vysotsky ; disgraced Stalin , Bruce Lee ; erotica , animals.

At the time of the intensification of the “ fight against drunkenness and alcoholism ”, the words “samizdat” or “manuscript” were slang names for moonshine ^[19] .

Initially, samizdat emerged as a cheap and affordable alternative to mass printing and was distributed in handwritten form and in typewritten copies. To speed up the process of reproduction, carbon paper was used . When correspondence by hand (ballpoint pen) on newsprint (50 g / m²), three copies were clearly obtained, when using a typewriter - five. More copies were obtained on the tissue paper, but because of its translucency, only one side of the sheet could be used.

In the 1970s, for the production of samizdat, workers at large Soviet institutes began to use printers (these were the first alphanumeric printing devices (ADCUs) of large computers) and plotters , as well as large-format paper. To reproduce typewritten samizdat in the same institutes, photocopying began to be used. One of the measures to combat such a phenomenon on the part of the authorities and superiors was strict accounting and control of the use of special equipment by the so-called “ First Division ”. The illustrations were photographed before reproduction, printed on photographic paper like ordinary photographs and manually pasted into the finished publication. Sometimes the whole edition was photographed (on a standard 35 mm film ). Negatives were used to transfer materials abroad and for reproduction.

The Moscow physicist V.N. Kurdyumov made the following description of the process:

Manufacturing technology.

Everything necessary for the “production” described below was in the free market in the 1960s and 70s. Photographing with typewritten text was carried out with a Zenit SLR camera. The device with a simple home-made device was mounted on a tripod of a standard enlarger . The text was located at a distance of about 40 cm from the lens. An auxiliary ring with a thickness of 6 mm was placed between the lens and the body of the apparatus, which made it possible to focus the image. When shooting, a film was used, which allows to obtain a higher resolution, but requiring additional lighting. Four 500 W lamps were located at a distance of 50 cm from the text. The manifestation of the film (36 frames 36 × 24 mm in size) was carried out in a conventional photo tank used in amateur photography. The whole process of shooting and obtaining a negative film with 36 frames takes about 1.5 hours. The total time for receiving 585 frames is 25.5 hours of work (excluding the drying time of each film). The frames were printed on standard 10 × 15 cm contrast photo paper . Printing a single frame takes about 3 minutes; printing 585 frames - about 30 hours (excluding the drying time of each print). Photo prints were glued with rubber glue on both sides to a sheet of white paper. Sheets are stitched in 5 packs of 55-60 sheets. Bookbinding. The lederin blank was glued to cardboard rectangles and dried under a press. Homemade press, primitive. The binding of one volume requires 4-5 hours of work (including drying) ^[20] .

Beginning in the late 1970s, during the period of the spread of the EU computers and SM computers , the distribution of samizdat began in the form of computer files transferred from one computer center to another on magnetic tapes or, more rarely, disks.

By the method of samizdat, not only literary works, journalism and images were distributed, but also music . The audio works were either cut with the needle of a home-made phonograph in old x- rays (“ on the bones ”; 1950-1960s), or were recorded on a tape recorder and subsequently copied from each other. In the 1970s and 1980s, this gave rise to the phenomenon of magneto-albums .

Examples of “bone records” include:

• the song of Paul McCartney and his ensemble “ Wings ” - “ Mrs Vandebilt ” (the recording was accompanied by the “introduction” of the announcer);
• the song “ Can't buy me love ” performed by the ensemble “ The Beatles ”;
• the song " Harlequin " performed by Alla Pugacheva ;
• the song "Old Vulture" ( "Birds are not people. And they don’t understand ..." ) performed by Valery Obodzinsky (from the film " Mackenna 's Gold ");
• one of the performances of the famous instrumental composition " El Bimbo ";
• guitar couplets “ An open letter to a friend Vasya, with whom he studied in the same class ” (author M. Nozhkin ; performed by Igor Divov ).

There is also a tape recording of a concert by Alfred Talkovsky , made in 1976.

In the late 1980s, the persecution of samizdat practically ceased, typewritten and handwritten forms became a thing of the past, and the alphanumeric printing device (ADCU) and matrix printer became the main breeding tool. Then commerce came to samizdat: P. Assa and N. Begemotov , printed on the Stirlitz printer, as well as a selection of political jokes distributed by post cash on delivery , copied on floppy disks and distributed on the Fido network.

From the beginning of the 1990s to the present moment, a laser printer is used to make the first copy of the publication, and then it is reproduced on a photocopy machine or on a risograph . Due to the general availability of office equipment and consumables, the entire circulation of the publication can be printed on a laser printer (the so-called “personal publishing houses” have spread in the West since the mid-1980s). Typewritten samizdat is almost never found now, but some manuscript editions themselves are works of art.

In the mid-1990s, due to the mass distribution of personal computers and the underdevelopment of global networks, there were few attempts to distribute self-published discs in the form of interactive magazines with ASCII images , but the electronic form of transmission quickly supplanted both paper and magnetic media.

• The novel " Celebrity " (2012)

• One of the first examples of Soviet samizdat was the famous report of N. S. Khrushchev " On the Stalin personality cult ." This report was closed and published in the official Soviet press in full only after the start of perestroika , however, a fairly large number of typewritten copies were circulated throughout the country ^[21] .
• Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev , in fact, “provoked” the appearance of samizdat, and with his knowledge the persecution of samizdat members began in the USSR. However, in 1964, Nikita Sergeyevich was dismissed and sent into exile to the cottage, almost isolating him from the outside world. And here it is, the irony of the fate of the former party leader: a person who sought to eradicate samizdat himself was eventually forced to become samizdat: Khrushchev wrote memoirs and, well aware that they would not be printed in the USSR, purposefully prepared them for publication in the West. Somehow, Khrushchev’s memoirs became known to the highest party leadership. The former First Secretary on this occasion was summoned to a meeting of the Party Control Committee, but Nikita Sergeyevich, as a true self-publisher, denied everything ^[21] .
• Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) , talking about the popularity of his book " Unholy Saints " on Mount Athos , mentions a curious detail, from which it follows that the word "samizdat" has an international meaning:

  In the monastery of Simon Peter on Athos, many who met me said that they were reading the book "Unholy Saints." In Greece, two editions were published in a short time. But in the Athos monastery, the situation is special. They do not have their own books, they take everything in the library. But since, to my joy and surprise, quite a few wanted to read this book, they photocopied it and distributed it. And Father Macarius, when he told me about this, so called what was happening - " samizdat ." It turns out that this Russian word is known in Greece ^[22] .

• One of the largest samizdat archival collections in foreign countries is located in the Christian Russia Center ( Italian: Russia Cristiana ) ^[23] in Seriate , Italy .
• In the form of “samizdat” there was Nick Quarry ’s novel “In The Opium Ring” (typewriter set from the only edition in the 1970s and 80s in the weekly Literary Russia from 10.9 - 10.29.1971; abridged translation from English Ark. Gershman).
• Standing alone in samizdat is a cycle of novels written by unknown authors “based on” novels about Angelica A. and S. Golon . Two works of this cycle are known (typewriting):
  • The Barbary Slave (Book 4);
  • The Crown of Plessis-Beller (Book 6).

• Unofficial art of the USSR
• Censorship in the USSR
• Dissidents in the USSR
• Chronicle of Current Events
• Human rights movement in the USSR
• Democratic union
• MeterOpole (almanac)
• Fanzine
• Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code

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• Констриктор Б. « Дышала ночь восторгом самиздата »
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• Samizdat. Alternative culture in Central and Eastern Europe from the 1960s to the 1980s / Wolfgang Eichwede, ed. — Bremen, 2002.
• Самиздат Ленинграда. 1950‑е — 1980‑е: Литературная энциклопедия / под общ. ed. Д. Северюхина; авт.-сост.: В. Долинин, Б. Иванов, Б. Останин, Д. Северюхин. — М. : Новое литературное обозрение, 2003. — 624 с. — ISBN 5-86793-216-8 .
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• Алексеева Л. М . Рождение самиздата // История инакомыслия в СССР: Новейший период . — Вильнюс; М. : Весть, 1992. — 352 с. — ISBN 5-89942-250-3 .
• Джузеппе Боффа . «От СССР к России. История неоконченного кризиса. 1964—1994». Глава I — «Брежнев, Косыгин и общество на распутье» .
• Самиздат и Радио Свобода .
• Что такое самиздат? .
• Леонард Терновский . « Воспоминания о самиздате ».
• Антология самиздата .
• Антология самиздатской поэзии .
• История иркутского самиздата .
• Материалы самиздата в центре Андрея Белого.
• Библиотека Вѣхи .
• Рок-самиздат .
• А. Кушнир, С. Гурьев. «Золотое подполье» и размышления на тему — статья о советском рок-самиздате.
• Максим Мошков о Самиздате .
• Околомузыкальный самиздат .
• Русскоязычный сайт о самиздате .
• Русская виртуальная библиотека. Неофициальная поэзия .
• Самиздат в СССР .
• Архив ныне выходящего самиздата .
• Фонд нетрадиционной печати в Государственной публичной исторической библиотеке .
• Музыкальный самиздат . Выпуск ток-шоу « Севалогия » от 28-05-2005.
• Самиздат неподцензурная журналистика в СССР (неопр.) . Журнал «История». Дата обращения 13 сентября 2013.
•   — сообщество «российское зин-коммьюнити» в « Живом Журнале »
• Без цензуры: периодика «самиздата» до и после распада СССР в фондах Российской национальной библиотеки