The Culture of Samizdat - Literature and Underground Networks in the Late Soviet Union

Winner of the 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles Samizdat, the production and circulation of texts outside official channels, was an integral part of life in the final decades of the Soviet Union. But as Josephine von Zitzewitz explains, while much is known about the texts themselves, little is available on the complex communities and cultures that existed around them due to their necessarily secretive, and sometimes dissident, nature. By analysing the behaviours of different actors involved in Samizdat - readers, typists, librarians and the editors of periodicals in 1970s Leningrad, The Culture of Samizdat fills this lacuna in Soviet history scholarship. Crucially, as well as providing new insight into Samizdat texts, the book makes use of oral and written testimonies to examine the role of Samizdat activists and employs an interdisciplinary theoretical approach drawing on both the sociology of reading and book history. In doing so, von Zitzewitz uncovers the importance of ''middlemen'' for Samizdat culture. Diligently researched and engagingly written, this book will be of great value to scholars of Soviet cultural history and Russian literary studies alike.>

Product details

• Authors: Josephine von Zitzewitz, Zitzewitz Josephine, Zitzewitz Josephine von
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2018
• EAN: 9781788313766
• ISBN: 978-1-78831-376-6
• No. of pages: 264
• Dimensions: 164 mm x 238 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Library of Modern Russia
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; History, Russia, European History, HISTORY / Europe / General, 20th Century, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Social and cultural history, HISTORY / Russia / General