SAMIZDAT IS RUSSIA'S UNDERGROUND PRESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300600017-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 13, 2004
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: March 15, 1970
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

The New York Times Magazine
15 March 1970
Approved For Release 2004/10/28. CIA-RDP88-01314
c-I = SE~ (no M
ALBERT PARRY, author of "The New
Class Divided" and other books, heads
Slavic studies at Case Western Reserve By ALBERT PALYX3Y
University in Cleveland. Khrushchev's fall in October, 1964
ENSORSHIP existed even be-
'L WESTERN Sovietologist cannot dimmed the timid light. Still, the
fore literature, say the Rus- study samizdat on the spot. The new Brezhnev - Kosygin terror was
sians. And, we may add, cen- K.G.B. would quickly net him. But not so complete as Stalin's, and so
sorship being older, literature has to comprehensive channels of informa- underground typing and copying be.
be craftier. Hence, the new and re- tion do thrive between samizdat and San to spurt in 1965-66.
markably viable underground press its Western sympathizers. I have just The year 1965 was marked by the
,in the Soviet Union called samizdat. returned from a swing through sev appearance of the clandestine jour.
The word is a play on Gosizdat, eral European centers of such infor- nals Russkoye Slovo (Russian Word),
which is a telescoping of Gosudar- mation. Kolokol (The Bell), both named for
stvennoye Izdatelstvo, the name of In January, Munich's institute for anti-Czarist periodicals of a centuy
the monopoly-wielding State Publish- .
the Study of the U.S.S.R. ran . earlier, dand Sfinks (Sphinx). They.
ing House. The sam part of the new London a three-day symposium, en- protest, ebut essays of -political
the emphass cwas mainly.
word means "self." The whole- . tirely In Russian, at which recent on free-spirited poetry.
samizdat--translates as: "We publish Soviet defectors, mostly writers In September.' ourselves"-that is, not the state, but (headed by Anatol Kuznet
d ! 1965, Andrei -.
v
y
sa
an
we, the people.
' ky and Yull Daniel were arrested ted In
'
Arkady Belinkov), but also musicians, ! Moscow for having published in the
Unlike the underground of Czarist film directors and professors now 1 West, for nearly a decade, their
times, today's samizdat has no print living in England,' Germany, France pseudonymous antiregime books.
ing presses (with rare exceptions): and the United States, discussed the They were tried end. condemned In
The K.G.B., the secret police is too problem of Soviet censorh d h
s
t
TAT
pan
e
efficient. It is the typewriter, each ways of eluding it. I was invited to "Do?it? ~? is page produced with four to eight,. attend and listen. In London, at the-:.
Yourself the generesa
carbon copies, that does the job.. By' conference and in numerous private
.:,_ .
the thousands and tens of thousands interviews, and later also In Munich, ' lie.' Oa. it means the forbidden
.
of frail. smudged onionsr :?`` s ._ Frankfurt. Park- 7agreb B l
r
d
g
a
e
i
d
sam
zdat spreads across the land a an
New rvrk, r met these and other +ilr/ritingS that QirauZ
mass of protests and petitions, secret' experts 'on samlzdat. Files and piles ?
syn's banned novels, George Orwell's' Publications were placed before me. 1 . axnOng ZOW01 intelleetuals.
"
Animal Farm" and "1934," Nicholas Facts, rumors, personal experiences,
Berdyayev's. philosophical essays, ideologies were offered by old West- February, 1966. The atmosphere of
documents of the Czech Spring, all, ern hands in Kremlinology and the reaction and repression was hotting
sorts of sharp political discourses latest Russian perebezhchiki ("cross- up'
and angry poetry. ers-over," as, defectors call them- Nonetheless, the underground press
The impudence of the movement,' selves). In this report, necessarily, "did not abate. Instead, it shifted itsi
not all the sources of my data can, accent from poetry and other literary;
even at this time of heightened per- be identified. content to politics. The protest of
secution, reaches a
point where in- In Frankfurt, a proud collector intellectuals against the Sinyavsky-
vitations to an evening get-together showed me the earliest underground :'Daniel case led to Alexander Ginz
include whispered lures that "
a poet Soviet-era item known to have sur- I burg's "Belaya Kniga" ("White
published by samizdat will be pres. vived: a hand-written, solidly bound Book") of the complete minutes of
ent " Of late, samizdat publications book on religious themes -done in the trial. In time, Ginzburg and his.
have percolated even into the high
M
w i
.
osco
n 1925. At Leyden Univer- group-Purl Galanskov, Alexei Do-i
schools, where some of the authors' sity, Prof. Karel van bet Reve has . , brovolsky, and Vera Lashkova-were
and typists are the youngsters them-
f th
b
al
_. . .
o
e
est
so
zdat
?
But the 4uu-Page minutes of theirs
with the dat books, brochures, and leaflets of
younger generation is at. secret trial became also available to'
tested by this widely told Moscow the late nineteen-sixties. The count,. !
i
sam
zdat. And it was in 1967-68 that
story: ?he told me, is 140 entries, and it is one of the most remarkable docu-
A Soviet official strides into his ' fast. growing. The freshest 1970 sped
wens are just beginning to come in. ments of the underground appeared .
wife's room. "Nastasha, you have
been typing for five straight days," The starkest paucity of such pub-, in samizdat: the call by Academician
he says. "What takes so long?" "Oh, lications occurred In Stalin's long Andrei Sakharov, one of the fathers'
Ivan, don't you know?-I am typing -period between, say, 1927 and his, of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, for
Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina; that's death in 1953. His terror was too Progress,. coexistence and Intellectual
What." "But. why? There is the book. embracive to allow much, If any,, 'freedom-his warning against the
It's perfectly legible, you can read underground literature. Khrushchevi resurgence of Stalinism In the Krem.
it in print." "Yes, bu rA ego lh sal /4b/ e?ed -Fk 8 1314R00Q300600017-9 cont.
won't read "anything unless It's rat er led, people e pro ste n the ;
typed." mid-fifties and early. sixties. . Theq N .all the' spate of underground