samizdat

Where does the word "samizdat" come from? It comes from Russian samsebyaizdat, and was adopted directly into English (1960s).

Samizdat’s story begins in Russian: samsebyaizdat meant “self-publishing.” The poet Nikolai Glazkov typed his poems in the 1940s as 'Samsebyaizdat', Myself-by-Myself Publishers, mocking official names like Gospolitizdat; shortened to samizdat, it named hand-copied banned texts. It reached English by 1960s as samizdat. Known in the West as works like Solzhenitsyn's circulated in typescript; A Chronicle of Current Events, the dissident bulletin begun in 1968, was produced this way. Today, samizdat means the secret copying and distribution of banned literature, especially in the USSR.

1. Stage 1 · Russian · 1940s samsebyaizdat "self-publishing", the poet Nikolai Glazkov typed his poems in the 1940s as 'Samsebyaizdat', Myself-by-Myself Publishers, mocking official names like Gospolitizdat; shortened to samizdat, it named hand-copied banned texts.
2. Stage 2 · English · 1960s samizdat "clandestine self-publishing", known in the West as works like Solzhenitsyn's circulated in typescript; A Chronicle of Current Events, the dissident bulletin begun in 1968, was produced this way.