The Story behind Samizdat, a rough desciption of
Any self-communicative medium in print or paste, material independently photocopied or recycled used to communicate within the circumference of the source’s territory, suburb, community, club, or abroad is known as samizdat. The samizdat was in popular usage during the soviet era. (mid-sixties to soviet-coup 66 -'91) There is where it derived its name, as used by so-called dissents or non-conformist to the Soviet-State or the central USSR. The material of this sort became in other words “blacklisted material” not suitable for the public interest as dictated by the State-powers.
OVER here or nowadays it is hard to find such material, which would not only be threatening to the political existence of our State as we know it, but would create the tension and consequences that existed for the black-listed, exiled or imprisoned Samizdat forerunners of the past. On the other hand if we shift this energy of -the individual-opinion vs. the status quo- we may well find that this tension yet exists, and that material is still being suppressed and blacklisted only not by State, but instead corporations.
Think of the boldly engraved sign in the inner-city halls that states: “fly-posters” will be prosecuted and are prohibited and why? Or how D.I.Y. musicians are being constantly threaten or sued for copyrighting. Why is that? Also the famous self-handouts which stirred through the UK and Counties focusing on the dangers of fast-food franchises like McDonald’s are as the later or modern examples of the Samizdat spirit.
Perhaps then the spirit of samizdat has evolved? Or has it just shifted territory?
For us who live in a so-called democratic environment the Samizdat is used or exists as a paradox to what our democracy allows. As now it seems that it exists between the lines of ambiguous or not-so clear laws of property, not as then in confined and undemocratic states, when if one was caught with material non-governmentally approved they would fiercely face the consequence and in some cases silently. Back then those who retained samizdat material without government permission, those who would continue to produce samizdat literature or "banned" literature without government approval be it, sacred or Biblical-scripture, classic literature, anarchist-theory, opposing political thought, or petitions to the regime, they would be brandished as enemies of the State, whether or not public opinion was for them, as the public in this case were under the system.
Written words, being inked-interpretations of thoughts on paper. Written words, being as links like keys to binding two minds together, was what the reigning soviet-regime feared the most. The Soviet-Regime knowing fully well that their laws, dictate-of-laws was to be forceful to the individual as there could not be an individual which was the idea or part of the whole picture of their regime, had to be super-vigilant, or ever ready that not even the slightest counsel of opposition was in the air or ever underground. So that no thoughts could be passed on, and no words no communication should be made possible without their consent and approval or for their benefit.
Some type-writers, old photo-copiers were seized from private hands. Much paper supply was to be used in public areas for open monitoring, as were most goods for the public during that era. In reality, the irony of that sort of scrutiny is that it defied the original intentions of the regime. Instead of monitoring incoming and outgoing goods for the honesty and equality of then made classless peasant-public which was promised and preached, they were abusing power monitoring beyond lines and boundaries than ever before as the paranoia of rivals and opposition continued. Libraries of course were re-shuffled, has the books in them could not reflect the theories of pre-revolution-thought against the government’s law and ideals, against what had become general practice in post-revolution, basically. It was the lessons of the “everybody for the same means” revolution that was in fact the Socialist sort of thought that the public were supposed to be communicating between themselves, and nothing more individual, because the-individual in this case would be counter-revolutionary or considered as a major threat to ends of the social needs.
Only those who dared, pined or were so repressed, so oppressed by their life in the soviet system, those who were punished not merely from the threats made to them as potentially opposing voices, but more importantly by their own conscience that they had defied and turned inside out for far too long was where the key of binding two-or-more minds through self-printing and copying was to be found. The very truth of time, the historical facts, and heart of poetry, saviours-of-State, and of the country, the literature wrote about them may have been burned and seized, but even fire leaves ashes and even militias leave some spoil or leftovers. Small yes, and unbelievable, but this past pre-revolution information was still intact dangerous as it was. Whatever information around, that needed to be expressed to one and other were to be cherished, saved and used wisely. Confidence grew as the brave-individuals were starting to notice their messages and intentions were being received by the like-minded.
A “classless society” may be what the United.Socialist.Soviet.Republics or U.S.S.R. was named by mouth and claim, but even the men and women living in the shadowy arenas were to further use their influence as little or large as it formerly was and to use it well according to the cry of their conscience from the reaction to the tyranny their eye-witnessed. Confidence naturally started to build from then on. People, influential and in common would keep records and diaries, journals of what they witnessed, and continued to witness. Saving it for whom ever, wherever they would get or receive it, if any future was foreseeable. They would keep writing, and protesting as the oppression increased and was sustaining itself. In every corner in everywhere, where monitoring was necessary there would be remnants, opposing minds to the crimes against the human dignity their dignity.
From these areas were the voice of the church which was ever so needed, and seen by large as the greatest political thereat to the soviets internally, there was also opposing political voices criticising and differing on social and civil practice. There were the workers voices the common voice of the people who lived, and worked for the system in the system and were the direct bearers of its weight. These combined with intellectual academic literates, artist and journalist would savour what was left of social-sanity, and dare to publish and print copy and pass material reflecting their hardship and the hardship of their citizens, they may have been in reality the heal to the humanity of the people, but what they were doing by voicing an opinion was to be called a political crime making them enemies of the state.
Poems-of-protest were no less in addition to pre-revolution existing type verses, ryhmes, and even Biblical literature plus persecution testimonies. All these froms of material were soon to be copied and self-published, known then as Samizdat material.
It was the Samizdat spirit that brought down the Soviet Regime in the end.
And as far as the dissenting voices calling for social awareness are concerned, here is an unidentified poet surely from the later Soviet years, whom is calling his people to act;
UNTITLED poem of Soviet condemnation:
Have won accolades
And passed in peace the time
That is now gone.
ALL we, His comrades, who
Kept silence while
Out of our Silence grew
The greatest evil...
WHO of nights could not sleep
And locked our doors
Lest we see from our own group
A tribe of murderers.
WE who dispensed sweet reason
Bear the bloodshed
Of jails,
the trials for treason
Upon our heads.
LET our contemptuous
Sons cast the shame
Stigma on each of us:
Ours is the shame.
THESE truths need not be weighed
In any balance.
WE HATE the one who has died
Less than our SILENCE.
Stalinism. Widely circulated among student groups.
HERE the "Manifesto of Man" by a journalist of the time, exiled and imprisoned for conscience. Here V, and VI of the Manifesto.
Heaven!
I don't know what I'm doing...
But if I had a knife for vengeance!
Look, someone has poured
a black lie over the white.
Look
the evening gloom
chews the bloodstained banner...
And life is terrible as a prison
built on bones.
I'm falling!
I'm falling!
I'm falling!
I leave it to you to grow bald.
I shall not feed on carrion
like the rest:
I shall not stuff my guts
with fruit exhumed from graves.
I don't want your bread
kneeded with tears.
And I'm falling, and I'm soaring
half-delirious and
half-asleep
And I feel
man
blooming inside of me.
VI
Here we're used to seeing
as they pass
through the streets in their time off
life's ruined faces
like yours.
And suddenly
like the roar of thunder
like Christ's return to the world
trampled and crucified
rose
the beauty of man.
This is me
calling to truth and revolt
willing no more to serve
I break your black tethers
woven of lies.
This is me
chained by the law
crying the manifesto of man!
And no matter that on my body's marble sheen
the raven's beak should carve
a bloody cross.
by Yuri Galanskov-
Written in 1960, published in samizdat magazine Phoenix I.
DONE IN PRACTICE OF THE SAMIZDAT.
The Rough Story Behind the Samizdat.
Prisoner Of Conscience:Resolution1948
Thaddeus Nguyen Van Ly speaking from Solitary Prison on his Ten-Point Plan... IN Samizdat style.
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