A Few Questions About Samizdat:

Inviting Samizdat Readers to Share their Stories

Memories about samizdat, especially samizdat reading, are often not shared at all. At the same time, samizdat texts preserved in archives do not give us any information about who typed and copied them, who circulated them and who read them. Unlike traditional print culture, which has plenty of middlemen between author and reader, the samizdat process relied on the reader to fulfil all these roles. The chain that delivered the text to the reader – the central element of samizdat – is impossible to reconstruct without the personal stories of those involved.

The survey offered here (in Russian) invites all those with experience of (reading) samizdat to share their knowledge with an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers from Russia, the UK and Canada and to help preserve the story of samizdat for posterity.

Go to the Survey (К анкете Несколько вопросов о Самиздате).

Survey authors Gennady Kuzovkin and Josephine von Zitzewitz have gathered dozens of responses since its initial launch in 2017. The Survey is associated with the “History of Dissidence” project at the International Memorial Society.

Questions and comments may be directed to: memo.projects@gmail.com