samizdat

American  

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

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

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

samizdat

Taught by L.A.-based artist and poet Kate Ingold, the workshops center on samizdat, a practice in which Soviet dissidents hand-typed literature, criticism and poetry to bypass state censorship.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026

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

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025

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 ● Jun. 29, 2023

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 ● Apr. 21, 2023

This doctrine was so dangerous that the manuscript describing it had to be circulated in secret, an Athenian samizdat.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

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