Soviet Literature - Samizdat, Tamizdat and Gosizdat publishing

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Domains

Censorship of expression
Literature (all)
Publishing

Dates

Date of occurrence 1917-1991

Places

Russia (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

SamizdatSamizdat

means “self-publishing” and is the term used of unofficial or illegal publications produced or circulated in the Soviet period (often just barely legible carbon copies of typescripts) – although a similar tradition had existed of the circulation of hand-written copies of non-permitted, or imported, texts during the Tsarist era. Many banned works achieved limited circulation by such methods – as opposed to resorting to

tamizdat

(publication “over there” [

tam

] – i.e. in the West: illegal for Soviet authors, without permission; or achieving

gosizdat

(“state”, or officially sanctioned, publication).

Tamizdat Tamizdat means publication “over there” [tam] and is the colloquial term used for the illicit publication by Soviet writers of their works in the

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

256 words

Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "Soviet Literature - Samizdat, Tamizdat and Gosizdat publishing". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 September 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1590, accessed 19 April 2024.]

Save this article