Samizdat, or self-publishing in Russian, was an underground press and publishing phenomenon based in Soviet Russia that often occurred under strict censorship laws. Writers and dissidents used this practice to circumvent strict censorship regulations by typing up manuscripts to circulate among friends; usually, these copies would be handed from person to person and circulated further afield.
In the 1960s and 70s, an underground movement known as “samizdat” gained strength as more and more individuals sought to challenge the Soviet regime. Samizdat publications often voiced criticism against government policies; they provided dissidents an outlet to express their ideas while building relationships among fellow dissidents who shared similar viewpoints.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn made the concept of samizdat widely known in the West with the release of his work The Gulag Archipelago (1971). Based on Solzhenitsyn’s experiences in Soviet forced labor camps and the highly critical of Soviet rule, this work was released only outside Russia. However, Solzhenitsyn received his Nobel Prize for Literature the same year but could not travel to Sweden to collect it.
The Gulag Archipelago was widely distributed within the Soviet Union through samizdat copies despite several raids conducted by the KGB (Soviet secret police) to stop its spread; estimates indicate that over 20 million readers eventually read it.
Samizdat was of paramount importance during the Soviet era for both books and publishing; it allowed for the disseminating of banned or censored materials that otherwise wouldn’t reach public view. Samizdat also played an essential part in dissident movements by sharing forbidden ideas freely and publishing underground newspapers.