An Examination of the Effects of Samizdat
on Domestic and
Transnational Relationships in the
Former Soviet Bloc
On
March 5, 1953, the citizens of the Soviet Union breathed a sigh of relief.
Joseph Stalin was dead. In the years following his death up until the demise of
the Soviet Union, the intellectual classes engaged in an elaborate system of
underground publishing called samizdat, which
involved not only the various literary and political factions of the Soviet
Union but also intellectual circles in the West. The primary paradigm of the
Soviet Union during this time was that the Soviet government had a monopoly on
the possession and circulation of ideas and thought. While there certainly
existed in great numbers samizdat works of political and social
significance, the true threat to the Soviet regime samizdat posed was
not in its content, but in its very existence, in what it stood for. Samizdat
was a kind of “gateway dissent,” deriving its power
from its ability to build foundations—connections between people of
different backgrounds living on opposite ends of the globe—upon which future
change could occur. Thus the content of the works was not of great importance;
rather, it was the effect experienced by each person or social group as the
clandestine material was passed from hand to hand that generated the most
powerful dissent. By creating this channel of communication to encourage the
exchange of thought, samizdat served to subvert the paradigm of the
Soviet regime.
One
of the most important effects of samizdat stemmed from the
quintessential characteristics of the text itself. Samizdat was produced
by individually typing-out the works on privately-owned typewriters due to a
lack of copy machines, the few of which were operated exclusively by the
government. Once finished, the typescripts were then shared among a circle of
trustworthy friends and acquaintances.[1] Often retyped by
dozens of typists during their lifetime, the typescripts were riddled with
typos and grammatical errors.[2] Ann Komaromi calls
samizdat an “object-sign,” meaning that the
physical product has value in and of itself.[3] A western reviewer
describes this idealization from the Russian perspective: “‘the memory of a
first encounter with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is as much
a physical memory—the blurry
mimeographed text, the dog-eared paper, the dim glow of the lamp switched on
late at night—as it is one of
reading the revelatory text itself.’”[4]
The visceral
feelings experienced from the examination of the text had great implications
for the ideological connections the work eventually served to form. The name “samizdat” is a parody of the
word Gosizdat, the acronym for the state publishing house,[5] and the
underground publishing houses milked the idea that samizdat was a
clandestine parody of the powerful state institution to their advantage.
Komaromi describes how samizdat was an “opportunity for carnivalesque
consumption, something on which to get high.”[6] There was a
primitive sense of thrill derived from circulating, possessing, and reading
such illicit material. However, the real danger samizdat posed to the
Soviet regime was not due to the content which so enthralled the reader, but
what it represented. In an article written for Canadian Slavonic Papers
entitled “From Gosizdat to
Samizdat and Tamizdat,” D. Pospielovsky
calls samizdat a “historically
unprecedented phenomena” because it is “a product of a
system which rejects and bans independent thought as a matter of principle…” not because it was “considered to be a
direct threat to the public order.”[7] From the
perspective of the Kremlin, neither the subject nor the content of work mattered
as much as what it represented. Samizdat was an act of restoration—returning power
back into the hands of the people. This posed a great threat to the Gosizdat,
who had previously had control over the circulation of ideas and was now unable
to ease the flow. On this most basic level, samizdat formed a connection
between author and reader—not because of any
political agenda espoused or cultural phenomenon elucidated, but merely due to
its physical presence and tangibility.
The
circulation of samizdat caused immediate
and widespread government crackdowns, proving that the material did in fact
have an effect on the ability of the Soviet government to operate in the way in
which it wanted to. The empowerment people experienced as a result of
distributing and reading samizdat breached the concrete walls of Soviet
control. The first government action occurred in September of 1965 when two
writers, Andrei Sinyavksy and Yuli Daniel, were arrested and charged under
article 70, which prohibited “agitation
or propaganda carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet
Regime.”[8] After a number of
resulting protests and three petitions signed by Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, the
XXIII Congress passed 190-1 and 190-3 into the Criminal Code. The articles
condemned public protest and the dissemination, production, or printing of “anti-Soviet
slander.”[9] The head of the
KGB in 1970, Yuri Andropov, went so far as to say, “the Committee for
State Security is taking the requisite measures to terminate the efforts of
individuals to use ‘samizdat’ to disseminate
slander against the Soviet state…they are under criminal prosecution…”[10] The “prosecution” of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn ended in his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, and Natalya
Gorbanevskaya, a human rights activist, was sent to a psychiatric facility in
1969 for two years.[11] While the
preceding examples prove that samizdat was capable of disturbing the
foundations of the Soviet government, as the following examples will
demonstrate, the subversiveness of samizdat lay not in its content, but
in its power to bring otherwise disparate groups of people together and lay the
seeds for future dissent.
In
an example of a second class of connection formed by samizdat, the actions of
two disparate political groups resulted in the revolutionizing of the very
structure of the underground publishing houses. Their specific discussions,
however, were irrelevant to the outcome of their relationship: the subversion
of the Soviet political paradigm. The two groups involved were the socialists
and the democrats, the former of which revered Leninism and the old Soviet ways
and the latter of which turned their heads wistfully towards Western liberal
democracy.[12] When Brezhnev
visited Washington in June of 1973, socialists and democrats were thrown into
widespread debate over the possible source of reforms in the Soviet Union, for
which both sides lay in hopeful expectation as a result of the détente.[13] Eventually,
Medvedev was worn down and conceded that pressure from the West and from the
lower Russian classes could in fact generate change. This democrat “victory,” which crowned
Sakharov as the “conscience of the
Soviet dissent movement,”[14] had profound
implications for the future of samizdat.
While
Sakharov’s deification may
appear to be the outcome of the debate, the more profound result actually
involved the democratization of the samizdat system, a process which
served to undermine the paradigm of the Soviet Union. After the democrats
obtained control over samizdat and gained credibility in the eyes of the
other dissident factions, some party members expressed a desire to reorganize
and rejuvenate the democratic movement. Plans were made to unite democrats
using kolizdat—collective samizdat
produced using a “‘home-made printing
apparatus’”[15]—so that information
and ideas could flow more efficiently. However, another group of
democrats, among them P. A. Abovin-Egides and P. Podrabinek, believed that it
was in the best interests of the democrats to reach over to other dissident
groups, such as the socialists and the Slavophiles.[16] A third internal
faction believed that democrats should work towards going “‘back to the people’” by making an effort
to write a “‘common language’” with “‘men on the street.’”[17] All three of these
ideas were extremely important for the future of samizdat. The first two
proposals were all about facilitating connections, both within the faction and
among other dissident groups. Stronger connections meant a more reliable flow
of information and therefore a better-armored militia of dissent to wage
peaceful war on the Soviet government. The third proposal, in which the
democrats strove to relate to the common man, was in fact borrowed from their
own political ideologies. It was only when these ideas were implemented,
however, that the democrats began to challenge the authority of the Soviet
government.
The
concept of the role of the individual in society, closely tied to the
philosophical concept of democracy, was another important aspect of samizdat that aided
dissidents in their quest to subvert the Soviet system. The Russian dissident
Andrei Amalrik believes that in contrast to most dissident movements, samizdat
was unique in that it did not require the individual to “sacrifice [his or
her] ‘I’ for the sake of the
general public.”[18] The “I” was in fact
elevated to previously unforeseen status in the dissident movement. However,
instead of living just for oneself—for the sake of the “I”—the individual
became part of a larger collection of “I”s, living “with all and for
all.”[19] Everything about samizdat,
from its production to consumption, therefore became an act of searching for
and expressing the self within a network of similarly-seeking souls. This
confluence of otherwise isolated people was essentially the creation of a
make-shift democracy. Democracy—from
the Greek demos meaning people—is fundamentally concerned with
establishing a chain of communication between the government and its citizens.
The government knows what its citizens think, and the citizens are able to
criticize the government. In Soviet Russia, the democrats were essentially
building a miniature model of a democracy within the confines of an extremely
rigid communist system. Not only did this democracy aid the flow of ideas, but
its very existence was poisonous to the Soviet regime, whose survival depended
upon universal acceptance of communist ideals. This concept of going back to
the people, of involving everyone—not just the intellectual circles—in the dissident
movement, directly subverted the contemporary paradigm: the Soviet government
has a complete monopoly on the flow of thought.
Although
the process by which the samizdat system was democratized was
facilitated by the existence of samizdat (all of the socialist-democrat
and democrat-democrat discussions were conducted via samizdat), the
subversion of the paradigm of the Soviet Union was not a result of the content
of the debate. The substance of the debate was not, after all, about ways to
bring samizdat back to the people or create a network of “I” spheres. Samizdat
itself accomplished that organically; its very existence and facilitation of
the connection between the two dissident groups caused that outcome—not anything that
was actually verbally communicated. In the next and final example of the
effects of samizdat, a similar phenomenon occurred when two countries
banded together to, albeit unwittingly, sow the seeds of future revolutions.
The
final case of a samizdat relationship most
aptly demonstrates the concept of “gateway dissent” because the
connection formed between the two parties served to lay the foundation for more
potent acts of dissent in the future. This connection is singular in nature
because it involves two vastly different groups of people: émigré Poles residing in
Sweden and the opposition forces back in Poland. During the period of détente in the 1970s,
Poland looked toward neutral Sweden as a possible “channel” between them and
the West, a bridge across the mighty Iron Curtain.[20] In the early 1970s,
Poland and Sweden began to take advantage of the two countries’ shared Baltic Sea
ports to circulate samizdat material—a method far safer and convenient than
transporting the works by land, as was previously done.[21] In 1976, however,
the articles being smuggled changed. After a series of antigovernment protests
in Poland that spurred the founding of a number of human rights and social
change organizations, an increasing number of underground publishing houses
began to crop up in Poland, notably Niezależna Oficyna
Wydawnicza (Independent
Printing House, NOWa).[22] Almost all of
these new publishing houses, including NOWa, received their supplies
(mimeograph machines, typewriter ribbons, pressure rollers, etc.) from Sweden.[23] In addition, their
relationship with Sweden allowed the dissidents to quickly develop strong
relationships to a larger émigré complex in
important Western cities, most notably Paris, London, and New York.[24] (Kultura,
perhaps the most influential of all Polish samizdat journals, was
published by a Pole living in Paris.[25]) For the first
time since the birth of the Soviet Union—or at least since the end of
Khrushchev’s Thaw—the Iron Curtain
had been successfully breached. And samizdat itself was the vehicle
which carried these relationships over the Curtain.
But
what is the significance of this growing alliance between Poles and Swedes? The
important question to ask here is how this relationship was perceived back at
the Kremlin. The answer requires a leap forward to 31 August, 1980, when the
Polish Solidarity movement (Solidarność)—began at the Gdańsk Shipyard,[26] the first
non-communist labor union in the Soviet Union.[27] Samizdat,
as it turned out, played a pivotal role in the development of this movement.
Pamphlets were often handed out at the shipyard and activists frequently
published organizational announcements to inform the public about what was
going on.[28] The development of
Solidarność was a crucial step towards the
destruction of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet bloc. In June
1989, members of Solidarność were elected to
seats in Parliament, electing in August of that year Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the
first noncommunist premier since the 1940s.[29]
But
what does this have to do with Sweden? The answer is that without the
relationship Polish dissidents formed with Sweden (which led to, of course, the
founding of numerous samizdat publishers, many
of which aided in the circulation of samizdat during the Solidarność years), Solidarność would not have
been nearly as organized, efficient, or efficacious as it was. The samizdat
produced in the early 1970s with the help of Sweden can therefore be classified
as “gateway dissent,” for it lay the
foundations for future acts of far more extensive and profound dissent.
However, the samizdat of the early 1970s did not cause the events of
1980 in its content, but rather in its existence; the relationships it formed
during that time led directly to Poland’s ability to start a large-scale
revolution. In this way, Swedish-Polish samizdat did indeed subvert the
existing political paradigm of the Soviet Union—although it did take nearly a decade
to lay out the groundwork. Solidarność proved that the
people did have a voice of their own separate from the dictations of the
Kremlin—and they proved
this by their usage of samizdat.
The
existence of samizdat in the Soviet
Union was one of the most remarkable acts of dissent in the history of
oppressed populations. It had a strong presence in many countries in the Soviet
bloc and involved thousands of people from a variety of ethnic and cultural
backgrounds who would have otherwise remained socially isolated. However,
despite the positive outcomes samizdat produced, what was written down
on the page was not of great importance in the grander scheme of events. The
discussions between the socialists and the democrats did not reach the ears of
the Kremlin; what did was due more to what samizdat stood for than what
it was actually trying to express. The connection formed between the
Sweden and Poland in the 1970’s—not the content of
the samizdat which they produced together—helped to set to the stage a few years
later when the Polish Solidarity movement was born. In short, presence was of
more significance than substance. The effects of samizdat in the
twentieth century pose interesting questions in the twenty-first. The path of
Russian dissent is yet unknown. Who will step up to the plate and challenge
Putin’s totalitarian
monstrosity? Will it be Pussy Riot? Alexei Navalny? In the years ahead, who or
what will replace samizdat?
[1] Ann Komaromi, “The Material
Existence of Soviet Samizdat,” Slavic Review 63 (Autumn, 2004): 599.
[2] John D.H. Downing, Radical Media:
Rebellious Communication and Social Movements (London: Sage, 2001), 356.
[7] Dimitry Pospielovsky, “From Gosizdat
to Samizdat and Tamizdat,” Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des
Slavistes 20 (March
1978): 46.
[8] Tania E. Lozansky, “The Role of
Dissent in the Soviet Union Since 1953,” The Concord Review 2 (1989): 7.
[10] “Creating an Underground Press: Samizdat in the
Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc,” Tavaana, accessed 7 April, 2014, https://tavaana.org/en/content/creating-underground-press-samizdat-soviet-union-and-eastern-bloc.
[19] Andrei Amalrik, Notes of a Revolutionary,
trans. Guy Daniels (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 26.
[20] Lars Fredrik Stöcker, “The Baltic
Connection: Transnational Samizdat Networks between Émigrés in Sweden and
the Democratic Opposition in Poland,” in Samizdat, Tamizdat & Beyond:
Transnational Media During and After Socialism, ed. Friederike Kind-Kovács et al.
(Oxford: Berghahn, 2013), 54.
[26] Stephen W. Mays, “A Synthetic
Analysis of the Polish Solidarity Movement” (Graduate thesis, Marshall University, 2011), 33.
[27] “Solidarity,” Encyclopedia
Britannica, accessed 9 April, 2014, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/553374/Solidarity.
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