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Samizdat

2 stages from Russian to English.

Today it means the secret copying and distribution of banned literature, especially in the USSR

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

samsebyaizdat→samizdat

Russian · 1940s

"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

English · 1960s

"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

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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.