The clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature The word “samizdat” is made out of “sam” (Russian: “self, by oneself”) and “izdat” (Russian: “publisher”), thus, self published. The term was coined as a pun by Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov in the 1940s
Home / Questions / In the erstwhile Soviet-bloc countries, what was ‘samizdat’ in the world of publishing?