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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
samizdat

"illegal and clandestine copying and sharing of literature," 1967, from Russian samizdat, literally "self-publishing," from sam "self" (see same) + izdatel'stvo "publishing" (from iz "from, out of," from PIE *eghs; see ex-; + dat' "to give," from PIE *do-; see date (n.1)). Said to be a word-play on Gosizdat, the former state publishing house of the U.S.S.R. One who took part in it was a samizdatchik (plural samizdatchiki). Later and less common was tamizdat "writings published abroad and smuggled back into the U.S.S.R.," from tam "there."

Wiktionary
samizdat

n. 1 (cx uncountable often attributive English) The secret copying and sharing of illegal publications, chiefly in the Soviet Union; underground publishing and its publications. 2 (cx countable English) A samizdat publication.

WordNet
samizdat

n. a system of clandestine printing and distribution of dissident or banned literature [syn: underground press]

Wikipedia
Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.

Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows: "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."

Samizdat (disambiguation)

Samizdat is the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries.

Samizdat may also refer to:

  • Samizdat (poetry magazine), a Chicago-based poetry journal
  • Samisdat (zine), a 1960s United States zine
  • Samisdat Publishers, Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel's publishing house (now defunct)
  • Samizdat B92, a Serbian publishing house, part of the B92 radio and TV station
  • Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code, a controversial book about Linux by Kenneth Brown
  • Samizdat (video cartridge), a fictional movie also known as "The Entertainment," in David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest
  • Samizdat (Generation Warriors), fictional organization in Anne McCafferey's book Generation Warriors
  • Samizdat (Interesting Times), in Terry Pratchett's book Interesting Times
Samizdat (poetry magazine)

Samizdat was an international poetry magazine published in Chicago from 1998 until 2004 and edited by the poet Robert Archambeau. It was noted for its unusual format, being printed on large newsprint pages. Contributors included Adam Zagajewski as well as Clayton Eshleman, Pierre Joris, Jerome Rothenberg, Michael Heller, C.S. Giscombe, and others associated with experimental poetry. Eclectic and xenophilic in nature, the journal published work on or by Irish experimental poets, Eritrean poets, and new translations of poetry by Pablo Picasso and Paul Celan.

Special issues were devoted to Scandinavian poetry, the work of John Matthias, and the collaboration between Joris and Rothenberg.

The journal was named after the Russian underground literary movement. The Russian word "samizdat" translates literally as "self-published"; the word was chosen to reflect the journal's refusal of institutional funding.

Usage examples of "samizdat".

So when a man in South America was threatened with the wreckage of his career for using ex-terrorists to inform on functioning terrorists, Devereaux wrote a paper so sarcastic that it circulated throughout the grinning staffers of Ops Division like illegal samizdat in the old Soviet Union.

Attempts to trace the matrix of the samizdat without viewing it from induction on postal codes, e-micros-copíes on the brown padded mailers, immolation and chromatography on the unlabelled cartridge-cases, extensive and maddening interviews of those civilians exposed place the likely dissemination-point someplace along the U.

Thus, the same pious blowhards who love to prattle about the sacrosanct First Amendment when the speech at issue is obscene or treasonous are constantly issuing lunatic demands for regulation of America’s most dangerous Samizdat media: the World Wide Web.

Thus, the same pious blowhards who love to prattle about the sacrosanct First Amendment when the speech at issue is obscene or treasonous are constantly issuing lunatic demands for regulation of America's most dangerous Samizdat media: the World Wide Web.

If the universal experience of liberal hectoring was not so unpleasant, Americans might not have turned to the Samizdat media with such zeal.