Tamizdat, coined as a derivative of samizdat (self-publishing) and gosizdat (state publishing), refers to the publishing industry “over there,” i.e. abroad. It stands for the corpus of manuscripts rejected, censored or never submitted for publication at home but smuggled through various channels out of the country and printed elsewhere, with or without their authors’ knowledge or consent, and not infrequently for the purpose of being sent back behind the Iron Curtain as ideologically subversive material. A powerful weapon on the literary fronts of the Cold War, tamizdat was as symbolic of late Soviet culture as its more familiar and better researched domestic counterparts, samizdat and gosizdat.
Tamizdat Project is a virtual environment that looks at the patterns of circulation, first publications and reception of contraband literary manuscripts from the USSR. It is an online archive of documents that deal with how and why masterpieces of Russian literature first appeared abroad long before they could see the light of day in Russia, already after Perestroika. Although its subject matter is historically finite, Tamizdat Project is an ever growing undertaking as the website is constantly populated with new content, including previously unpublished archival materials.
Tamizdat Project Lab, led by project director Yasha Klots (Hunter College), is a hands-on workshop, each devoted to the history of a literary manuscript on its way to publication. This inaugural workshop will take as a case study Anna Akhmatova’s famous poem “Requiem” (Munich, 1963). Composed decades earlier, “Requiem” had never been written down until 1962 and existed only orally, in the memory of the author and her closest friends. A slap in the face of Stalinism, it could not be published in Soviet Russia for ideological reasons even during the “warmest” years of Khrushchev’s Thaw. To read “Requiem” in the original, click here; in English click here; to hear Akhmatova recite “Requiem,” click here.
Tamizdat Project Lab is limited to 25 participants. Please RSVP below and let us know what languages you can work with. Knowledge of Russian is NOT required. Please bring your own laptop to participate in the workshop. If you cannot attend but are still interested in volunteering for Tamizdat Project, please click here! Looking forward to seeing you!