Dictionary

tamizdat en · NOUN

Etymology

Borrowed from Russian тамизда́т (tamizdát, literally “published there”), from там (tam, “there”) + изда́ть (izdátʹ).

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Writings published abroad and smuggled back into the former USSR.
   • The fact that samizdat/tamizdat were written symbols of the human suffering in the Eastern bloc encouraged a less critical and often naive reading of the texts both then and now. Thus, we hope here to critically view some of the inherent dangers of samizdat/tamizdat publication, without diminishing its relevance as visualizations of human experience. 2013, Friederike Kind-Kovács, Jessie Labov, “Introduction: Samizdat and Tamizdat”, in Friederike Kind-Kovács, Jessie Labov, editors, Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond: Transnational Media during and after Socialism (Studies in Contemporary European History; 13), New York, N.Y.: Berghahn Books, →ISBN, page 3:
   • Some are describing these works as a new version of tamizdat — a term meaning “published over there” used during the Cold War to describe manuscripts smuggled out of the Soviet Union for publication in Europe or the US. [2026 July 24, Valeriya Safronova, “Russia’s New Censorship Fuels a Literary Resistance Abroad”, in Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg L.P., retrieved 03 Aug 2026, Dispatch:
   • Foremost—and most controversial — of the Western groups engaged in tamizdat is the Posev‐Grani [organization], commonly known as N.T.S. 1970 March 15, Albert Parry, “Samizdat Is Russia' Underground Press”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 03 Jul 2019:

Forms

Relateds

tamizdatchik · samizdat