Samizdat Goes Respectable

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Image: Final scene of Fahrenheit 451

By Ray Tabler

Samizdat is a single coin from the linguistic inheritance bequeathed to us from the cold war. Other questionable treasures of that hoard include words and phrases like iron curtain, gulag, overkill, and mutually assured destruction. It was a crazy time. In fact, we only realize how crazy looking back on it from the (arguably) relative safety of the 21st century. From before I was born until some indeterminate date after the Soviet Union gave up the ghost in the chaos of the abortive coup to topple Gorbachev, strangle perestroika, and bring back the bad old days, the world was never more than 15 minutes from Armageddon. You got used to it. Duck & cover drills in elementary school. Proxy wars. Periodic nuclear saber rattling, and a few legitimate close calls. Enigmatic civil defense placards on the wall near basement entrances of substantial public buildings. It was just background muzak of the later 20th century.

The Soviets weren’t the first repressive regime to take a swing at policing what people think. And, they won’t be the last. They sure gave it the old college try, though. A major headache for the politburo was that people can get mighty creative when you go to monitor and control every aspect of their lives. Which brings us back to samizdat.

Samizdat is the Russian word for self-publishing. Forbidden literature. Banned books. Banned anything. The authorities reasoned that if people don’t get wrong-think in their head to begin with, it doesn’t have to be brainwashed out of there later on. Turns out wrong-think takes root and sprouts all on its own, no matter how brutally repressive the regime is.

The KGB used to keep samples of output from every single typewriter in the Soviet Union. If samizdat was seized, they’d have a ‘fingerprint” on file to trace down the source. And, forbidden works were typed up 4 or 8 copies at a time, using carbon paper. Page by page. Photocopier technology created a major headache for the secret police. Every single photocopied page in the Soviet Union page was supposed to be logged and accounted for. But it wasn’t really that hard to bribe the clerks who oversaw this system.

Still, why would people take the risk simply to read texts the authorities claim are dangerous? The lure has to be more than just the thrill of tasting forbidden fruit. I think it must’ve been that the public realized their government was lying to them. And, the thirst for truth is a powerful driving force.

Is it a coincidence that self-publishing is a direct translation of samizdat? Of course, self-publishing is completely legal, and won’t get you sent to the gulag. (At the moment.) But both activities are a grass-roots reactions to a centralized control of what people can read and say. This is not an indictment of any political point of view. The Soviets were of the left. Big publishing houses got that way due largely to market forces. Which are, nominally, a right-wing constituency. The wolf who hungers for power doesn’t really care what ideological sheep’s clothing it wears.

What’s important is that people found ways to make an end run around imposed constraints. Because that’s what we do. And it was all splendidly spontaneous, de-centralized, and grass-roots. As it had to be. By the time the Soviets, or the big publishers, realized what was happening, it was too late.

The image accompanying this post is from the final scene of the 1966 movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The book, and the film, are about a future society which banned the written word. Ostensibly because reading and writing causes disruption. Well, they are right about that. The end of Fahrenheit 451 shows the people memorizing the stories the government no longer allows to be written down. I find it a very comforting notion. Because, the truth always finds a way.

END.

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