What is Samizdat?

In the 1950s a neologism became popular among the Soviet intelligentsia to describe the unofficial publication and distribution of literary texts. Combining the Russian words for “self” (sam) and “to publish” (izdat’), the term “samizdat” denotes both the practice of self-publication and the growing corpus of texts that, throughout the post-Stalin period, were produced and disseminated in this unsanctioned manner. At first, samizdat involved the production and circulation of creative literary works, especially poetry, that were otherwise inaccessible given the Communist Party-State’s total control over the publishing industry. In the mid-1960s, however, samizdat took a political turn. The emergent human rights movement in Moscow, which included many individuals of Jewish ethnicity among its ranks, produced and distributed original samizdat periodicals that drew attention to the Soviet state’s violations of its own laws and constitution.

As more Soviet Jews applied to emigrate at the onset of the 1970s—and as those who were refused permission coalesced into the refusenik community—the nascent Jewish national movement followed the human rights activists’ lead and began publishing the first self-conscious Jewish samizdat periodicals. Over the next two decades, hundreds of Jewish national activists in the USSR assumed great personal risk to produce, publish, store, and circulate unofficial writings and translations throughout the Soviet Union. This large collection of samizdat was donated by former Soviet Jewish activist Alexander Smukler to the Wende Museum and digitized for the first time. Comprising approximately 120 issues of more than twenty periodicals, along with nearly twenty editions of translated literary and scholarly works, the materials in this collection speak to Jewish samizdat’s various functions.

This is somewhat counterintuitive considering that producers of Jewish samizdat insisted on the apolitical nature of their literary activities, at least in part motivated by a strategic sense of self-preservation. Subsequently, retrospective focus on samizdat’s clandestine attributes has eclipsed its public-facing, political impulses. Yet the chief editors of Evrei v SSSR [Jews in the USSR]—the longest lived and most intellectually vibrant Jewish samizdat periodical—broadcast their names and addresses on the front page of all twenty-one issues released between 1972, when physicist Aleksandr Voronel’ initiated the journal, and 1979, when the Soviet authorities shut it down. This transparent practice testifies to their prioritization of galvanizing national consciousness over any commitment to anonymity. Such publicity entailed a great deal of courage, given the dangers of underground publishing. Producers, distributors, and even consumers of Jewish samizdat could face arrest, loss of employment, humiliating searches and interrogations, and even harsh sentences of exile. But only one of the nearly twenty individuals who served as chief editors of Evrei v SSSR (the satirical poet Igor’ Guberman) received a lengthy sentence in a strict regime labor camp. Quite a few of them were granted permission to emigrate throughout the 1970s (others had to wait much longer), with some continuing editorial responsibilities from Israel. The authorities tolerated Evrei v SSSR considerably longer than contemporaneous, non-Jewish national samizdat publications. The Ukrainian Herald (1970-1974) and the Russian nationalist journal Veche (1971-1974) were shut down after a couple years. Their chief editors received much harsher punishments than their Jewish counterparts.

Prior to Evrei v SSSR, Jewish samizdat activity had mainly involved the translation, reproduction, and dissemination of creative literature and journalism that was unpublishable in the USSR. Leon Uris’ historical novel Exodus had a particularly electrifying effect on young Soviet Jews who sought out unofficial literature. Aleksandr Smukler representatively recalls discovering his identity and life purpose the night he voraciously read a samizdat copy of Uris’ fictionalized account of the establishment of the State of Israel in the basement of a Jewish musical theater in Moscow. In 1970, the first samizdat periodicals produced by Jewish national activists appeared in Riga and Moscow. In the main, these collections contained translated foreign journalism about Israel, along with open letters and public statements concerning Soviet Jews’ struggle for the right to emigrate.

The eclectic content of Evrei v SSSR continued to feature these traditionally favored genres of translated foreign writings and short documents related to emigration. But it also did something new in Jewish samizdat.

The eight issues of Evrei v SSSR contained in the Smukler collection showcase the periodical’s penchant for wide-ranging (and often esoteric) pontifications about the basis of Jewish national cohesion, including Voronel’s memoir The Trembling of Jewish Concerns (nos. 10¹ and 11). Evrei v SSSR also published pieces testifying to the generative, if tense, intellectual exchanges between Jewish and Russian national activists in the late USSR, including an interview with Gennadii Shimanov (no. 13) and an essay by Anatolii Ivanov (penname M. Skuratov) (no. 14), both radical Orthodox Christian Russian nationalist dissidents.

Jewish samizdat was also a project of cultural (re)-discovery and self-education. It provided a way for nationally oriented Soviet Jews cut off from Jewish tradition to educate themselves and others about Jewish religion, history, and culture. To this end, Evrei v SSSR’s regular section "Who Am I?” featured musings on Jewish identity from contemporary activists and prominent Jewish historical figures, including Sigmund Freud and Ilya Ehrenburg.

Jewish samizdat’s educational agenda especially informed the journal Tarbut [Culture], a Moscow initiative which spun off from Evrei v SSSR and produced thirteen issues between 1975-1979, the final ten of which are included in the Smukler collection. Tarbut was spearheaded by a group of Jewish activists who prioritized Jewish cultural revival over the political struggle for unrestricted emigration. Whereas the writings in Evrei v SSSR tended to analyze late Soviet Jewry’s political predicaments with constant reference to Russian and Soviet culture and history, Tarbut was more concerned with teaching Soviet Jews how to be Jews in their everyday lives. It provided context and information about Jewish holidays, religious rituals and customs, and even traditional recipes. Yet, for all their differences, Evrei v SSSR and Tarbut both exemplify the Socratic ethos and enthusiasm that characterizes much 1970s national samizdat—Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

The Smukler collection contains the entire six-issue run of Evrei v sovremennom mire [Jews in the Contemporary World]. From 1978-1981, this periodical aimed to inform Soviet Jews about the contemporary affairs of Jewish communities throughout the world. While Jewish advocacy for Soviet Jewry in the West—especially in the United States—has received significant scholarly attention, Evrei v sovremennom mire illuminates the less studied, reverse side of this process: namely, how Soviet Jews observed other Jewish communities and, in so doing, inscribed themselves into the global notion of Jewish peoplehood.

Jewish samizdat production slowed down in the first half of the 1980s against the backdrop of an intensifying Cold War and an increased crackdown on national activity. With the emigration of the most prominent Moscow-based Jewish activists throughout the 1970s, Leningrad inherited the torch as the center of Jewish samizdat. There, a cohort of Jewish intellectuals initiated the Leningradskii evreiskii al’manakh (LEA) [Leningrad Jewish Almanac]. Eschewing earlier Jewish samizdat’s transparency and inherently political content, the cultural-historical orientation of the nineteen issues of LEA that appeared from 1982-1989—seventeen of which are included in the collection—reflects the more repressive climate of the early 1980s.

But as Gorbachev’s reforms led to a significant liberalization of Soviet culture and society, Jewish self-publishing experienced a dynamic final act. The Smukler collection includes a wealth of periodicals and translated literary works from the perestroika years, an understudied and transformative phase of Soviet Jewish mobilization. Samizdat producers continued translating and circulating old-time favorites, like Uris’ Exodus, along with memorial books commemorating Holocaust victims; collections of Hebrew poetry, Jewish folklore, and bible stories; and studies of anti-Semitism.

The several periodicals comprising the Smukler collection’s perestroika-era materials include the final thirty of the forty-five issues of Informatsionnyi biulleten’ po problemam evreiskoi repatriatsii i kul’tury [The Information Bulletin on Issues of Jewish Repatriation and Culture], which appeared from 1987-1990. The Bulletin was produced and distributed by The Jewish Information Center in Moscow, one of the many organizations established in the blossoming of Jewish civil society during the final years of Soviet power. In 1988, Mr. Smukler became the Center’s Executive Director and editor-in-chief of The Bulletin. Appearing monthly, and replete with a sleek cover design printed in colored ink and a copyright notice, The Bulletin provided updates about Jewish affairs throughout the USSR. It devoted special attention to the revival of Jewish culture and communal life and intensifying expressions of political anti-Semitism. While intended to continue earlier traditions in Jewish samizdat, The Bulletin’s official appearance and informational tone are a far cry from Evrei v SSSR’s lengthy essays, faintly typed on cigarette paper, covering arcane topics like the semiotics of kabbalah. Jewish samizdat was transitioning from a spontaneous literature of self-discovery into the official print culture of a national subgroup.

Despite their divergences, powerful threads of continuity unite the perestroika-era periodicals with earlier Jewish samizdat initiatives. One such thread is their common commitment to the construction of a national collective memory of catastrophe. Evrei v SSSR, for example, published a piece about Jānis Lipke, a Latvian dock worker who saved dozens of Jews from the Nazi genocide (no. 20). Tarbut translated a primer from The Jewish Catalog, a popular American publication, about how to teach Holocaust history to children (no. 13). Evrei v sovremennom mire reported on the reception of the immensely popular 1978 American miniseries Holocaust in various countries (no. 3), and The Bulletin covered grassroots Holocaust commemoration efforts across the USSR.

Mr. Smukler estimates that The Bulletin had a print run of “a couple hundred.” While small, this figure dwarfs the print runs of earlier Jewish samizdat initiatives. Most Jews in the Soviet Union never laid eyes on samizdat. But the corpus of Jewish samizdat provides an unparalleled source of real-time information about the evolution of the Jewish movement’s politics and goals over time. In addition, the texts provide a record of how the movement presented itself to observers abroad. After all, much of Jewish samizdat was reprinted in other countries, in tamizdat. Beginning in 1974, the Center for the Research and Documentation of East European Jewry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem began publishing a 27-volume collection of Jewish samizdat. The Smukler collection provides convenient online access to issues of Evrei v SSSR and Tarbut included within that series. Its digitized scans of these original periodicals will be of interest to those curious about the materiality and production process of samizdat. These scans also include translated materials omitted from the Hebrew University series. Conversely, the digitization of the collection’s samizdat periodicals from the 1980s and 1990s makes most of these materials easily accessible for the first time, illuminating the overlooked final chapter of Jewish DIY literature in the Soviet Union.