samizdat

American  

[sah-miz-daht, suh-myiz-daht] / ˈsɑ mɪzˌdɑt, sə myɪzˈdɑt /

noun

1. a clandestine publishing system within the Soviet Union, by which forbidden or unpublishable literature was reproduced and circulated privately.

2. a work or periodical circulated by this system.

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samizdat British  

/ səmizˈdat /

noun

1. 1. a system of clandestine printing and distribution of banned or dissident literature

   2. ( as modifier )

      a samizdat publication

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Etymology

Origin of samizdat

1965–70; < Russian samizdát, equivalent to sam ( o )- self- + izdát ( el'stvo ) publishing agency; coined as a jocular allusion to the compound names of official Soviet publishing organs, e.g., Gosizdát for Gosudárstvennoe izdátel'stvo State Publishing House

Example Sentences

I’ve been thinking about the samizdat from David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.”

From The Wall Street Journal

Indeed, there’s a novel nested within this novel, a samizdat work recounting the history of World War II and its aftermath as we know it, in which the Germans and Japanese are defeated.

From Salon

After years of being out of print, with copies and PDFs circulating among gay artists and activists like samizdat, it was republished in 2018.

From New York Times

But the text of his speech was quickly leaked by his supporters who posted it online in a modern-day version of samizdat, the way works of dissident writers were copied and shared in Soviet times.

From BBC

By contrast, the scenes of the teenage Adéla helping to produce samizdat in communist Czechoslovakia feel lived in and significant.

From Washington Post