Tamisdat

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Tamisdat ( Тамиздат [- z -]: Russian там - there, издавать - hang up / publish (a book); (cf. издательство - publisher); literally: "Dortauflage", "Dortveretztes", "Dortherausgabees", in short: "Dortherausgabees" “) Is the name for forbidden literature from the socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc , which was written by authors living in their home countries but printed in the West. The authors of the Tamisdat lived z. B. in the Soviet Union , Czechoslovakia , Poland or the GDR . The exile publishers, which published the works in the respective mother tongue, were usually based in France , the USA , the Federal Republic of Germany and Canada . The term tamizdat includes works from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. ​​

Word meaning

Tamizdat was an ironic new formation in the Russian language in analogy to the already existing word samizdat (self-published) or the official names of state publishers such as Gosisdat (state publisher). While the forbidden texts in the samizdat were copied in their own country using various techniques, in the samizdat the text was smuggled into the West and printed there by a publisher. After that, individual printed copies were smuggled back to the country of origin.

A distinction is made between samizdat and tamizdat in research, i.e. the literature of those authors who lived as exiles abroad and published them there with publishers. However, there are manifold overlaps and interrelationships between samizdat, tamizdat and exile literature. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's works were occasionally published in samizdat or tamizdat, other works appeared during his involuntary exile in the West.

Tamisdat in the GDR

The GDR occupies a special position in the socialist camp because here the tamizdat was always stronger than the samizdat. Authors of non-conforming literature and journalism had the opportunity to publish in the Federal Republic of Germany - that is, in a neighboring country with the same language and an audience that bought these publications. For both economic and linguistic reasons, the GDR's Tamizdat was in a much more favorable position than the Russian, Czech or Polish Tamizdat.

Since 1964, for example, Robert Havemann published his writings in West Germany. The books published there such as Dialectics without Dogma? Science and Weltanschauung (1964), Questions, Answers, Questions (1970) or replies to the head office “Ewige Truths” (1971) were smuggled into the GDR and circulated there as the original edition or as a copy in samizdat. Rudolf Bahros The alternative. The critique of the real existing socialism was published in 1977 as a preprint in Spiegel and later as a book. This writing was also smuggled back and distributed in the GDR. The works of Stefan Heym can serve as a literary example, most of which were only published in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1976 until the collapse of the GDR.

In the Honecker era , unauthorized publications were repeatedly prosecuted in the West as violating foreign exchange regulations.

literature

  • Wolfgang Kasack : Lexicon of Russian literature of the 20th century. Volume 1: From the beginning of the century to the end of the Soviet era (= works and texts on Slavic Studies. Vol. 52). 2nd, revised and significantly expanded edition. Otto Sagner, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-87690-459-5 .
  • Manfred Quiring : Lost Brothers. In: The world . October 14, 2005, accessed July 14, 2019 (from the Russian Center for Exile Literature and Tamizdat in Moscow).

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