by The bloodiest period of Soviet totalitarianism ended in the fifties, but the habits remained long after, including the advanced system of alternative media that ultimately broke the state: samizdat.Tonight, along with Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and New York Post reporter Miranda Devine, I’ll be accepting the inaugural Samizdat Prize, given by the RealClear Media Fund. Samizdat is a bit of a play on words, since like a lot of politically oppressive groups the Soviets had a mania for reducing beautiful language to state-acceptable ugly compound words (GosPlan, GULAG, etc.), so in place of GosIzdat (State-Publish, the official publisher) dissidents created Sam- or “Self” Izdat: “Self-Publish.”Ten years ago PBS did a feature that quoted a Russian radio personality calling Samizdat the
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The bloodiest period of Soviet totalitarianism ended in the fifties, but the habits remained long after, including the advanced system of alternative media that ultimately broke the state: samizdat.Tonight, along with Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and New York Post reporter Miranda Devine, I’ll be accepting the inaugural Samizdat Prize, given by the RealClear Media Fund. Samizdat is a bit of a play on words, since like a lot of politically oppressive groups the Soviets had a mania for reducing beautiful language to state-acceptable ugly compound words (GosPlan, GULAG, etc.), so in place of GosIzdat (State-Publish, the official publisher) dissidents created Sam- or “Self” Izdat: “Self-Publish.”
Ten years ago PBS did a feature that quoted a Russian radio personality calling Samizdat the “precursor to the Internet.” Sadly this is no longer accurate….