Samizdat

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The Lower Silesian bulletin produced by Solidarność activists in 1981 on a matrix printer

Samizdat ([ samizdat ]; Russian самиздат from сам sam , even 'and издательство isdatelstwo , publishing' [to издавать isdawatch , hang up () to publish a book '], literally, self-supporting, even out Shared', in short, self-published ' ; scientifically transliterated samizdat ) referred to in the USSR and later also in large parts of the Eastern Bloc the dissemination of alternative , non-system-compliant "gray" literature via non-official channels, for example by copying by hand or typewriter or by photocopying and passing it on produced copies.

Samizdat existed to a significant extent in the Soviet Union , Poland , the GDR , Czechoslovakia and Hungary . Writers, poets, publicists and singers could only publish critical texts or texts deviating from the norms of socialist realism in the state-controlled publishing industry in exceptional cases . In addition to private readings, samizdat was often the only way to make non-conforming texts accessible to a wider audience in one's own country.

With non-conforming singers like Vladimir Vysotsky , concert recordings were made and redistributed on tape copies. This form of samizdat was known by the term magnitisdat . Another form of dissemination of sound recordings practiced since the 1940s was the 'rock on the bones' ( рок на костях rok na kostjach ), whereby a sound track was imprinted on an X-ray.

Soviet Union

See also : Censorship in the Soviet Union

prehistory

Since the censorship of unpopular content was already common in Tsarist Russia, there were already private texts, mostly in handwriting, that were widely used before the October Revolution . The Slavist Wolfgang Kasack cites the spread of Radishchev's trip from Petersburg to Moscow as the first historically verified case of samizdat ( Путешествие из Петербурга в Москву Puteschestwije is Peterburga b Moskwu , 1790). Further examples can be found: For example, from the beginning to the middle of the 19th century, almost every educated Russian had a copy of the comedy Mind Creates Suffering ( Горе от ума Gorje ot uma ) by the poet Alexander Gribojedow .

Shortly after the revolution - mainly for organizational and economic reasons - handwritten copied poems by Andrei Bely , Nikolai Gumiljow , Maximilian Woloschin and others were sold on the street, later the distribution channel was more of a private nature. Under Stalin the storage and distribution of forbidden texts was punished with up to 25 years in a camp; That is why people often learned forbidden poems by heart and only passed them on orally so as not to compromise themselves. At the end of the 1950s, samizdat came up as a term for the illegal and organized distribution of non-conformist literature - that is, literature that did not meet the content or aesthetic specifications of the CPSU .

Samizdat in Soviet times

A samizdat -like term was first used in the 1950s, when the Russian poet Nikolai Glaskow distributed his poems in a few handwritten copies under the name Samsebjaisdat ( самсебяиздат , "self-publishing"). He parodied the names of the state publishers, for example Goslitisdat ("State Publishing House for Literature"), Detisdat ("Children's Publishing House "), Politisdat or Wojenisdat ("Military Publishing House "). The term was shortened to samizdat in further use and became the epitome of uncensored literature.

Probably the best-known work, which in the Soviet Union could only appear in samizdat, was Archipel Gulag ( Russian Архипелаг Гулаг , 1968) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn . The chronicle of current events ( Хроника текущих событий Chronika teknuschtschichich sobyti ), on which Sergei Kovalev collaborated among others , also had a great influence .

The dissemination of literature without official permission to print was considered anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda under Article 70 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and was punished with imprisonment, banishment and expulsion.

At the end of the 1960s, samizdat scripts became increasingly popular in the West . For employees of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and also in the West in general, the samizdat scripts have become an important source of information about human rights violations in Eastern Europe .

GDR

See also : Censorship in the GDR

Edition of the Telegraph published by the Environmental Library

From the 1950s to the 1970s, typewriter carbon copies were mainly used in the GDR to distribute forbidden or unwanted literature. At the beginning of the 1980s, periodicals with the character of a magazine were created that were mainly produced and distributed in church rooms using the Ormig and later wax matrix processes - such as the Streiflichter (published by the environmental protection working group at the Leipzig City Youth Parish Office) and Schalom (published by Rainer Eppelmann and Thomas Welz from the Friedenskreis) of the Samaritan community Berlin-Friedrichshain). By the end of the 1980s there were over 30 artistic-literary periodicals with editions of between 20 and 200 copies and around 50 magazines, information booklets and periodicals, some of which were published by civil rights, peace, opposition and environmental groups in large numbers (up to 5,000 copies) were distributed. Some of these magazines were infiltrated by the State Security ("Stasi"). So was z. For example, the sample number of the Friedrichsfeld fire alarm was written by unofficial Stasi employees as decoys. The telegraph was distributed by the East Berlin environmental library (alongside the environmental papers ) during the reunification of the GDR . It is published today by the left ostbuero . From the mid-1970s, the chansonnier Hubertus Schmidt produced Magnitisdat recordings for himself and others in his rehearsal room, which were then reproduced on MCs and reel tapes and distributed at concerts. Caesar Peter Gläser proceeded similarly at the end of the 1980s.

Tamisdat

In research, the so-called tamizdat (also tamizdat , in Russian там tam "there") is differentiated from samizdat . Texts by authors living in communist countries were smuggled into the West, printed there in the respective national language in exile publishers and smuggled back to the source countries as a printed book. In contrast to the so-called exile literature , this term includes publications by authors who had not fled abroad or were forcibly relocated, but lived in their respective homeland, but were not able to publish there without restrictions.

Dissemination of sound recordings

Magnitisdat

Derived from Uncle Sam and Tamisdat is the concept of magnitizdat (to Russian магнитофон magnitofon ), which primarily related to the Soviet bard movement is used since the 1960s. This involves the private production of recordings of mostly unofficial concerts by Soviet musicians and their distribution on tape copies. This initially took place in the form of tape reels, and since the 1970s increasingly in the form of audio cassettes. While the quality of the samizdat depended on the number of copies made, the quality of the private sound documents depended on the level of recording technology and that of the intervening transfer processes. Since the texts of the bard songs were usually not published, numerous samizdat anthologies of the literary chanson were created on the basis of Magnitisdat recordings, some of which were very questionable in terms of text (this is the genre of bard music).

"Rock on the bone"

Record on an x-ray

After the end of the Second World War , records that were not tolerated by the censorship came from the west to the USSR with the returning soldiers. They were reproduced on x-rays and disseminated. The images used, which showed heads, ribs, arms, etc., were bought from the hospitals, embossed underground and sold under the hand. The fact that they depict body parts was eponymous. Other names are "ribs" ( ребра rebra ) and "bones" ( кости kosti ).

These porters had many advantages - the material was available in abundance and their flexibility made them easy to hide from a search. Recordings of musicians in exile and rock and roll music were later distributed in this way.

A documentary by director Igor Morozov was released on this subject in 2007 under the title “Музыка на ребрах” ( “Musika na rebrach” , German: “Music on the ribs”).

Today's archives of samizdat

In Russia, the human rights organization Memorial maintains an archive in which documents from the history of dissidents and nonconformists - beginning with the Khrushchev era  - are collected. The holdings include both samizdat and tamizdat .

The archive of the Libri Prohibiti in Prague contains Czech and Slovak samizdat literature from 1960 to 1989, including numerous magazines, and was declared a world document heritage in 2013 (as far as periodicals are concerned) . In addition, there is Czech exile literature or literature from Tamizdat from 1948 to 2000, and Polish samizdat from 1979 to 1989.

In Poland, the archive of the democratic opposition is located at the KARTA center . It contains among other things 4,850 books and brochures, 2,900 magazine and newspaper titles and 486 tapes from the Polish samizdat, the so-called second circulation ( Polish Drugi obieg ).

In Germany, the Research Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen has compiled a transnational archive with literature and photos from Poland, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the GDR. Holdings of non-conformist samizdat journals from the GDR include a. the Matthias Domaschk Archive, which emerged from the Berlin Environmental Library , in the Robert Havemann Society  eV, Berlin, the Thuringian Archive for Contemporary History in Jena (www.thueraz.de), the German Literature Archive Marbach , the German National Library Leipzig and the Saxon State Library . Literary and artistic samizdat magazines have been digitized by the TU Dresden; digitization of samizdat magazines from the spectrum of opposition and civil rights groups such as Grenzfall , Grubenkante , Kopfsprung , Lausitzbotin , Platform , and Environmental Papers is in preparation. This seems important, because their poor paper quality soon threatens to become illegible.

literature

  • Ferdinand JM Feldbrugge : Samizdat and political dissent in the Soviet Union. Sijthoff, Leyden 1975, ISBN 90-286-0175-9 .
  • Wolfgang Eichwede , Ivo Bock (ed.): Samizdat. Alternative culture in Central and Eastern Europe. The 60s to 80s (= documentation on culture and society in Eastern Europe. Vol. 8). Edition Temmen, Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-86108-338-8 .
  • Angela Murche-Kikut : Monographs in the Polish Second Circulation. 1976-1990. = Druki zwarte w polskim "drugim obiegu" (= Archive of the Research Center for Eastern Europe. Vol. 2). Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89821-883-2 ( publisher information ).
  • Free Russian Literature 1955–1980. By Jurij Malzew . An annotated literary history of samizdat in the Soviet Union-USSR. In Italian 1976: L'altra letteratura (1957-1976). Russian (Cyrillic): Possev-Verlag V. Gorachek, Frankfurt / M. 1976. German original edition, extended to 1980: Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 1981.

Web links

Samizdat in the Soviet Union

Samizdat in Czechoslovakia

Samizdat in Hungary

Samizdat in the GDR

Samizdat in Poland

Individual evidence

  1. ^ English translation under the title A Chronicle of Current Events on the Amnesty International homepage .
  2. ^ Benjamin Nathans: Moscow Human Rights Defender to Amnesty International. In: Sources on the history of human rights. Working Group on Human Rights in the 20th Century, May 2015, accessed on January 11, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Uncensored protest postcards, samizdat and taboo topics on jugendopposition.de ( Federal Center for Civic Education / Robert Havemann Society eV), viewed on March 15, 2017.
  4. ↑ This included, for example, the magazine Reizwolf published in Weimar . See Axel Stefek: 1988-1989. Voices from the underground: The "irritant wolf" . In: Ders .: Weimar unadjusted. Resistant behavior 1950-1989 . Weimar 2014, pp. 131–136. The Stadtmuseum Weimar preserves a number of the magazines with texts, original graphics and photographs, which were published in an edition of only 20 (25) copies.
  5. ↑ Magnitizdat in Leipzig
  6. ↑ Florian Hassel: Later visit to a myth. For the first time the Rolling Stones played in Russia and confronted the fans in Moscow with the wrinkled reality of a transfigured band. In: Berliner Zeitung . August 13, 1998, accessed June 15, 2015 .
  7. ^ Libri Prohibiti: Collection of periodicals of Czech and Slovak Samizdat in the years 1948-1989. In: Memory of the World - Register. UNESCO , 2013, accessed June 20, 2013 .
  8. ↑ Author: * 1932 in Rostov-on-Don, also Yuri Wladimirowitsch Maltsev / Mal'cev. Studied in Leningrad. University professor in Moscow. 1974 emigrated to Italy. Ullstein Book No. 38028, Series: Ullstein Continent. Translation from Russian by Gösta Maier. ISBN 3-548-38028-X .