Samizdat means “self-publishing” and is the term used of unofficial or illegal publications produced or circulated in the Soviet period (often just barely legible carbon copies of typescripts) – although a similar tradition had existed of the circulation of hand-written copies of non-permitted, or imported, texts during the Tsarist era. Many banned works achieved limited circulation by such methods – as opposed to resorting to tamizdat (publication “over there” [tam] – i.e. in the West: illegal for Soviet authors, without permission; or achieving gosizdat (“state”, or o…
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Cornwell, Neil. "Soviet Literature - Samizdat, Tamizdat and Gosizdat publishing". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 September 2005
[https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1590, accessed 17 January 2019.]