Word.ws English Dictionary

samizdat

Syllables: sa·miz·dat/ˈsæmɪzdæt/

samizdat noun: the secret copying and sharing of illegal publications, chiefly in the Soviet Union; underground publishing and its publications.

samizdat: the secret copying and sharing of illegal publications, chiefly in the Soviet Union; underground...
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Noun

samizdat (countable and uncountable, plural samizdats or samizdaty)

  1. (attributive, often, uncountable) The secret copying and sharing of illegal publications, chiefly in the Soviet Union; underground publishing and its publications.
    • [page 1] In a general sense any copy of a document which has been produced in the Soviet Union outside the chain of state publishing houses may be referred to as samizdat. […] [page 3] This term is modeled on the shortened form—gosizdat—of State Publishing House (Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo). […]...1975, F[erdinand] J[oseph] M[aria] Feldbrugge, “Samizdat: Origins and Organization”, in Samizdat and Political Dissent in the Soviet Union, Leiden: A[lbertus] W[illem] Sijthoff, →ISBN, pages 1 and 3
    • From a clandestine network of friends passing to each other typed copies of their new work, the initiative developed over the years into a parallel publishing system. […] [I]n cities the inquisitive reader did not have much difficulty in obtaining access to what was in fact a banned literature....1992, Igor Hajek, “Samizdat Literature: An Introduction”, in Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz, editor, Good-bye, Samizdat: Twenty Years of Czechoslovak Underground Writing, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern...
  2. (countable) A samizdat publication.
    • In Poland, some samizdats are different: they are professionally produced and are sold for money. But the money that these Polish consumers pay for these illegal samizdats is not dissipated in the domain of individual or corporate profits, nor does it help support the government and its publishing...1986, The Portable Lower East Side, [New York, N.Y.]: [The Portable Lower East Side], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4
    • Journals which once would have circulated, if at all, as underground samizdaty, those involved risking years in a labour camp, now carry the name, address and phone number of the editor.1990 April–June, Steve Brady, “Russia Today: At the Crossroads”, in Steve Brady, editor, Vanguard, number 30, Hove, East Sussex, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4, column 1

samizdat meaning in Arabic and Persian

samizdat in Arabic

underground publishing
سَامِيزْدَات sāmīzdāt

samizdat in Persian

underground publishing
سامیزدات sâmizdât

Examples of samizdat in a sentence

  • He also used the term samizdat with the same meaning but, as Telesin observes, samizdat ("self-publishing house") subsequently acquired a wider meaning.1975, F[erdinand] J[oseph] M[aria] Feldbrugge, “Samizdat: Origins and Organization”, in Samizdat and Political Dissent in the Soviet Union...
  • Samizdat was also an important source of new writing for the equally active and enterprising publishers of Czech (and some Slovak) books in exile.1992, Igor Hajek, “Samizdat Literature: An Introduction”, in Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz, editor, Good-bye, Samizdat: Twenty Years of...
  • While [Joseph] Stalin held sway, this criticism was limited to clandestine and fugitive expressions, circulated orally or in samizdat.2015, James P. Scanlan, “From Samizdat to Perestroika: The Soviet Marxist Critique of Soviet Society”, in Raymond C. Taras, editor, The...
  • In this way the doomsday argument began as a secret, almost samizdat doctrine, known to a few as the “Carter catastrophe.”2019, William Poundstone, The Doomsday Calculation […] , Little, Brown, →ISBN:

Synonyms of samizdat

Forms of samizdat

pluralsamizdats
pluralsamizdaty

Origin of samizdat

Borrowed from Russian самизда́т (samizdát, “self-publishing”), from сам (sam, “self”) + изда́т (izdát), an abbreviation of изда́тельство (izdátelʹstvo, “publishing house, publishing”) (compare Russian Госизда́т (Gosizdát, “State Publisher”)).

Questions about samizdat

What does samizdat mean?
Samizdat means the secret copying and sharing of illegal publications, chiefly in the Soviet Union; underground publishing and its publications.
What is samizdat in Arabic?
Samizdat in Arabic is سَامِيزْدَات (sāmīzdāt). See Samizdat meaning in Arabic.
How do you use samizdat in a sentence?
He also used the term samizdat with the same meaning but, as Telesin observes, samizdat ("self-publishing house") subsequently acquired a wider meaning.
What part of speech is samizdat?
Samizdat is a noun.
How do you pronounce samizdat?
Samizdat is pronounced /ˈsæmɪzdæt/ (UK).
What is the plural of samizdat?
The plural of samizdat is samizdats.

Words near samizdat in the dictionary

  1. samites
  2. samiti
  3. samitis
  4. samixogrel
  5. Samiyah
  6. samizdat
  7. samizdatchik
  8. samizdatchiki
  9. samizdatchiks
  10. samizdats
  11. samizdaty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: samizdat (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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