: a system in the Soviet Union and countries within its orbit by which government-suppressed literature was clandestinely printed and distributed
also: such literature
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the WebThe first is from a Sorokin still writing in the mode of underground artist, one who got his start pecking away at the absurdities of a political system from its edges, writing in samizdat or for émigré journals abroad. Jennifer Wilson, Harper’s Magazine , 25 May 2022 During an earlier iteration of Russian authoritarianism, in the Soviet Union, samizdat played this role. Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic, 15 Mar. 2022 The authorities reacted to this self-publishing, or samizdat, with arrests. David Satter, WSJ, 30 Dec. 2021 In the pre-internet era, Soviet dissidents passed around samizdat. Joel Mathis, The Week, 28 May 2021 With the bulk of fashion and culture writing blurring into prefab content molded for social-media shares, the duo’s effort reads like sartorial samizdat. Nathan Taylor Pemberton, The New Yorker, 10 Dec. 2021 The academy, one of the most traditionalist German art schools, was then an unlikely citadel of experimentation, and Western art books were passed around like samizdat. Thomas Meaney, The New Yorker, 27 Sep. 2021 No matter: readers resorted to a practice that, in Soviet times, would be called samizdat (self-publishing) and copied the work by hand. Gary Saul Morson, The New York Review of Books, 25 Mar. 2021 The Biden administration greeted the suggestion that his op-ed was being distributed like samizdat with an eye-roll. Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 5 Feb. 2021 See More
Word History
Etymology
Russian, from sam- self- + izdatel'stvo publishing house