The Story behind Samizdat,
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. (sixties to soviet-coup '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 the State, 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, or D.I.Y. musicians being constantly threaten or sued for copyrighting, or the famous self-handouts which stirred through the UK and Counties focusing on the dangers of fast-food franchises like McDonald’s 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 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 officially 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. It bears significance to say that modern-soviet states of today still use these methods mainly in S.E. Asia where it happened that associates of a Vietnamese priest of the Hue Archdiocese were caught with a rough draft of a petition to the United States and were scrutinised because of it. (The words from this Priest Van Ly follow taken from his ten-point plan statement in blue below).
Written words, being inked-interpretations of thoughts on paper. Written words, being links like keys to binding two minds together, was what the reigning soviet-regime feared the most. The fallen 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 Social Regime, had to be super-vigilant, or ever ready that not even the slightest counsel or opposition was in the air or ever underground. So in that case no thoughts could be passed on, and no words or no communication should be made possible without their consent and approval and 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. The poorer one was the more they were used has scapegoats when caught.
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 the 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.
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 with 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. The same ideology applied to schools facilities. The best interests for the State was considered and put into teaching practice to feed the school-boy or girl while they were there what they ought to believe. So in a way the regime’s thought became a new way of learning by unlearning what would be naturally desired; the freedom to know one’s history of how things came to be as they came to be. This social-engineering like in today’s Soviet-leftovers was never complete in practice, and so the peasant-public were not fully manipulated into the whole picture of the dictatorial regime during that era.
History is history. A fact that the federal republicans of the Soviet-State, could not grasp. They could not silence it all, silence all that has happened for the nation, in the nation. The events the upswings the important dates and people’s belief that made the former country what it was. The common people knew as well that history would live on in their hearts and the desire for progress for good that anyone just would believe in, was still to be sought, but danger as in any quest waited on the other side.
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, the pre-revolutionary information was still intact dangerous as it was. Whatever information around that needed to be expressed to one another were to be cherished, saved and used wisely. Confidence then grew as the brave-individuals were starting to notice their messages and intentions were being received by the like-minded.
Here is an example of what one-controversial and exiled-writer had to say about the - openness and honesty - of which was described then in Soviet-Russia as the “Glasnost.” This Glasnost or social awareness of actual fact was the spirit that drove self-publishers.
It was the Samizdat spirit of Glasnost which ended the Soviet Regime in the end...
“Glasnost, honest and complete glasnost, is the first and foremost condition for the healthy development of any society, and our society as well. And those who do not want glasnost for our country are simply indifferent to the fatherland."
Another described the task of soviet dissenters in the following way:
"We did not play in politics, we did not invent programs for 'liberation of the people.'. . . The only weapon we had was glasnost. Not propaganda but glasnost, so that nobody could say afterwards 'I did not know.'. . We were not expecting any victory -- there was not the slightest hope of winning.
But everyone wanted to have the right to say to his descendants: 'I did all I could. I was a citizen and I always demanded legality.'"
These words remarkably brave from their time from both Alexander Solzhenitsyn a public–enemy no one in ‘69, and Vladimir Bukovsky in ’79. Writers who both opposed and wrote about this in the U.S.S.R heydays sort of echo in what was said recently by the seized priest Van Ly. A present prisoner within the Vietnamese Regime of the same branch of Soviet-Politics, who spoke about his conditions and situations recently.
This is what he said not long ago:
“My duty and my conscience required me to fight for the freedom of our Church. If I had realized those terrified situations for our Church and I had not done anything I would have been guilty before God. Now I think I have accomplished my duty I do not feel sorry for myself.”
This was Van Ly speaking from his solitary-prison.
And that was only 2001.
A “classless society” may be what the United.Socialist.Soviet.Republics or U.S.S.R. was named by mouth and claim, but the men and women living in the shadowy arenas in their society 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 whomever, wherever they would get or receive it, if any future was foreseeable. An image of Winston squatting secretly in “1984” writing the words “To the future or to the past. To a time when thought is free...to a time when truth exists, and what is done cannot be undone."… “Down with Big Brother! Down with Big Brother! Down with Big Brother!..”, comes to mind.
They would keep writing, and protesting as the oppression increased and was sustaining itself. In every corner in everywhere, where open monitoring was necessary there would be remnants, opposing minds to the crimes against the human dignity, their human dignity. And of these remnants was the voice of the Catholic-Protestant and Christian 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 even within the Left. 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 fellow citizens. They may have been in reality the "heal to the humanity" of the people in chains, but what they were doing by voicing-an-opinion was to be called a political crime making them "Enemies of the State" as it then stood.
Yet stating slogans such as “enemies of the State” were not enough to keep those with the samizdat spirit away. Those hailed as dishonest, and disgraceful dissents held in, in spite of these proclamations.
Threats were thrown and proposed even updated and increased in measure but was not successful enough to throw off the spirit of glasnost. For those who chose to apply themselves to the social calamities and be honest and open about it, it was not about winning friends, or defying laws for political purposes, but about truth and only such which concerned most. These official threats that were made against the individuals honesty or conscience instead helped to work against State-policies itself like this; the greater the paranoia and phobia of rival voices, State-opposition or let me say “free-thinkers” were, the more extended and harsh were the threats then made and so the more extensive and ridiculous the inhuman practices of punishment became afterwards. The more the practices of punishment then became, the more also opposition was then made in-turn to reveal its greater measures and expose it to the world. Then the more there were individuals created against the policy to unite in their own ways to speak and give their briefs, petitions and testimonies on the sort of illegal-made-legal practices that the government was promoting against their causes. So this was the reaction of consciously convicted individuals responding to the unjust actions of their space and time.
Thoughts and words, opinions and testimonies some were caught others betrayed. Yet circles-of-truth would be intact, preserving history, preserving faith and belief in goodness and fairness of humanity or the likeness of God.
Such individuals could be found in the Keston Library archives, in fact here is a description from Keston Interactive about their material relating to the Samizdat:
"KESTON'S ARCHIVE is renowned for its rich collection of samizdat, or self-published, literature, a phenomenon which developed rapidly in the mid-1960s and remained the intellectual mainstay of Soviet believers right up to the collapse of communism. In our archives samizdat means anything from handwritten scraps of paper, through the most primitive form of cyclostyling, to typing with a number of decreasingly legible carbon copies underneath, as even photocopiers in private hands were banned during the communist period. Such documents include appeals to the Soviet authorities against the closure of churches, petitions to free prisoners of conscience and dossiers on their ‘crimes’, transcripts of court proceedings against believers, spiritual testimonies and stories of conversion, prayers and Bible commentaries, and whole volumes of church history."
Keston.
This is a petition which is yet to be confronted. The first of its kind to be sent by any Priest or religious leader, to the United States on the conditions in his region Vietnam. This address mentions the state of repressive policies and possible measures for reforms. This petitioner here is the seized Christian Vietnamese Priest Van Ly :
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great honor to be perhaps the first Vietnamese Roman Catholic priest living under a communist regime to testify before your Commission at a location that represents the ideals of democracy. I would like to send my greetings of the New Millennium to you and to the people of the United States.
In the opening statement of the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh tried to win your nation's support by solemnly quoting the second paragraph of Declaration of Independence of the United States: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
In less than 250 years since her independence, your country has become the shining example of freedom and independence-anyone who wants to know what freedom and independence are only needs to visit your country and her people. As an eyewitness living in Communist Vietnam for more than 25 years, I would like to boldly and frankly present my ideas on three issues as your invitation letter has suggested.
Written to the U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, originally in 1994, but was withheld up until the year 2000 when re-edited by the priest himself Mr. Nguyen Van Ly of the Hue Archdiocese who now is serving 15 years plus, from 2001 in prison.
Poems of protest were no less in addition to pre-revolution existing verses and rhymes and Biblical literature and persecution testimonies.
And as far as the dissenting voices calling for social awareness are concerned, here is an unidentified poet surely from the later Soviet years this voice was, which is calling the people to act;
ALL we who in his name
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.
It is said that it was written sometime in the fifties in the year of the year of Khrushchev's "secret speech" condemning Stalinism. Widely circulated among student groups.
Here following from the "Manifesto of Man" by a journalist of the time exiled was also a prisoner of conscience. Here V, and VI of the Manifesto.
V
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.
The Manifesto of Man
by Yuri Galanskov-
Written in 1960, published in samizdat magazine Phoenix I.
If the Samizdat is in a way the internet-for-the poor a description given by a prominent Soviet dissident Sergei Kovalev for those who know, then the direction of the WTO (World Trade Organization) protest which put Seattle back on the global map back in '99 just goes to show what is becoming of the previously concealed and quite unchallenged corporate legacies, and what role self-promotion via e-zines on the Internet is playing in its downfall...
With the Pope JPII mentioning what role sons in the catholic faith are to play in saving the environment in a FAR EAST periodical, and with individuals within the global IndyMedia network proposing for wireless connections to help more actively in the global justice movement there seems to be no greater time for the Christian church with social and communal activists to unveil their spirit of glasnost than the present.
In fact situation has almost made it a given.
been fighting for his relgious tolerance for almost thirty years, seized and now in prison:
he wrote before then- "freedom of religon or death"
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