From Samizdat to Substack: How Underground Self-Publishing Shaped Modern Media

Bottom Line Up Front: Underground self-publishing movements—most famously samizdat—did more than keep dissent alive under censorship; they pioneered decentralized, community-driven models that echo in zines, blogs, and digital self-publishing today. Every "publish" button sits on a long, radical lineage of copied pages passed hand to hand.

When you click "publish" on Medium, Substack, or any digital platform, you're participating in a tradition that stretches back through decades of underground resistance. The typewritten pages passed hand-to-hand in Soviet apartments, the photocopied zines of punk clubs, and today's decentralized publishing platforms share more than just a do-it-yourself ethos—they represent a continuous evolution of how communities create, distribute, and preserve knowledge outside institutional control.

Historical Foundations of Subversive Self-Publishing

Defining Samizdat

Samizdat (Russian: самиздат, pronounced [səmɨzˈdat], lit. 'self-publishing') was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The term emerged from a clever linguistic pun: the word "samizdat" is made up of "sam" (Russian: сам, "self, by oneself") and "izdat" (Russian: издат, shortened "издательство," izdatel′stvo, "publisher"), thus, self-published. The term was coined as a pun by the Russian poet, Nikolai Glazkov, in the 1940s based on an analogy with the names of Soviet official publishing houses, such as Politizdat.

The practice served dual purposes: evading state censors while creating alternative information networks. Samizdat began appearing following Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, largely as a revolt against official restrictions on the freedom of expression of major dissident Soviet authors. But it quickly evolved beyond literature into [suspicious link removed].

Key Milestones in Samizdat Development

The movement gained momentum during the Khrushchev Thaw of the mid-1950s. The first full-length book to be distributed as samizdat was Boris Pasternak's 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago. This marked a turning point when major literary works began circulating outside official channels, establishing precedents that would influence underground publishing for decades.

The 1960s witnessed samizdat's transformation into a systematic news network. A Chronicle of Current Events was created by dissenting members of Moscow's literary and scientific intelligentsia. Its editors and contributors were particularly affected by the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, to which the third issue of the periodical and many subsequent reports and "Samizdat update" entries were devoted.

Natalia Gorbanevskaya: Pioneer of Underground Journalism

The most significant figure in samizdat journalism was Natalia Gorbanevskaya, who founded the Chronicle of Current Events in 1968. From 1968 onwards Gorbanevskaya was active in what was later called the Soviet "dissident movement." She was founder and first editor of A Chronicle of Current Events, a samizdat publication that focused on the violation of basic human rights in the Soviet Union.

"The first editor of the chronicle, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, was an interesting, tough character," recalled Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a fellow dissident. "She was a literary specialist and a translator from Polish, and she could also type very well." She said the Chronicle should have two elements: it should have reports about what is happening that were written in very restrained, accurate language, establishing editorial standards that would influence underground journalism globally.

Gorbanevskaya's commitment came at tremendous personal cost. She was a major contributor to the publication and responsible for introducing its regular "Samizdat update" section. A participant in the 1968 Red Square demonstration, she was forced to undergo psychiatric examination, then and later. In 1970 she was tried and convicted and sent to the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital.

Production and Distribution Mechanics

Samizdat operated through carefully orchestrated networks that prefigured modern viral distribution. Because of the government's strict monopoly on presses, photocopiers, and other such devices, samizdat publications typically took the form of carbon copies of typewritten sheets and were passed by hand from reader to reader.

As the first compiler of the Chronicle and its typist, Gorbanevskaya produced the "zero-generation" copy based on information from her friends in Moscow, using a typewriter purchased on the semi-legal grey market. She made six copies which were then secretly distributed to friends, who made further carbon copies on their own typewriters, passing them on, in turn, to friends and trusted acquaintances. This "copy chain" model would later inspire peer-to-peer networks and viral content distribution.

Global Counterparts and Parallel Underground Presses

Tamizdat and International Networks

The samizdat ecosystem extended beyond national borders through "tamizdat"—literature published abroad (там, tam, meaning "there"), often from smuggled manuscripts. By amplifying domestic voices through international networks, underground publishers in exile influenced public opinion and provided crucial support for the opposition at home.

Charter 77 and Eastern European Innovation

In Czechoslovakia, the Charter 77 movement exemplified how underground publishing could catalyze political change. The charter was published on 6 January 1977, along with the names of the first 242 signatories, which represented various occupations, political viewpoints, and religions. Although Václav Havel, Ludvík Vaculík, and Pavel Landovský were detained while trying to bring the charter to the Federal Assembly and the Czechoslovak government, and the original document was confiscated, copies circulated as samizdat and on 7 January were published in several western newspapers.

Charter signatories also supported underground publishing of both fiction and nonfiction. Although these latter writings are not official Charter documents, they shed much light on the Charter's underlying philosophy. The most famous of these is Václav Havel's "The Power of the Powerless," which became one of the most influential theoretical works on civil resistance.

Solidarity and Polish Innovation

Poland developed particularly sophisticated underground publishing networks. Since 1976, independent underground publishing grew in Poland, reaching a truly industrial level. This level of publishing was instrumental in helping independent public opinion to mature, strengthening the cohesion of the Solidarność movement, and preserving the authority of Lech Wałęsa and other underground leaders.

In the 1980s, at any time there were around one hundred independent publishers in Poland that formed an "extremely interesting institution of an underground market." Books were sold through underground distribution channels to paying customers, reportedly including even top communist leaders. Among a few hundred periodicals, the Tygodnik Mazowsze weekly reached an average circulation of 20,000, occasionally printing up to 50,000 copies.

Punk Zines and DIY Culture

Western countercultures developed parallel underground publishing traditions that would profoundly influence modern media. In his comprehensive study, academic Stephen Duncombe reveals how "from their origins in early 20th century science fiction fandom, their more proximate roots in 1960s counter-culture and their rapid proliferation in the wake of punk rock, ...[zines became] a vital network of popular culture." (Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, p. 11).

The anti-consumerist nature of DIY publishing is a rebellion in itself and yet has a major craving for connection at the same time. This tension between independence and community would become central to digital publishing platforms decades later.

Cultural Impact Under Repression

Creating Counter-Publics

Underground publishing created what scholars term "counter-publics"—alternative spheres of discourse that challenged official narratives. Samizdat, the underground circulation of unofficial and forbidden literature in the Soviet Union, is an example of how censorship can backfire. Ideological restrictions produced walls of monotony in libraries and bookstores, propelling readers to search for more interesting fare.

For many people who lived ordinary Soviet lives, it was simply that "reading samizdat increased [their] individual feeling of freedom and represented a personal act of resistance." (Josephine von Zitzewitz, The Culture of Samizdat, p. 2). This transformation of consumption into resistance would later influence how digital communities understand participation and engagement.

Intellectual Exchange Across Borders

By the late 1960s, Soviet samizdat had expanded to include the entire range of textual genres, from poetry and novels to petitions, historical documents, open letters, and periodicals. The movement's scope demonstrates how underground publishing becomes a complete media ecosystem when traditional channels are restricted.

Seeding Post-Soviet Literary Canons

Devastating indictments of Soviet history such as Roy Medvedev's Let History Judge and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago sent shock waves across the Soviet Union and beyond. These works, initially circulated through samizdat networks, eventually became foundational texts in post-Soviet literature and historical understanding.

Technological and Philosophical Legacies in Today's Publishing

The Desktop Revolution and Zine Aesthetics

The 1980s-90s desktop publishing revolution directly inherited samizdat's DIY ethos. In the first comprehensive study of zine publishing, Stephen Duncombe explores the history and theory of subterranean cultural production. "From their origins in early 20th century science fiction fandom, their more proximate roots in '60s counter-culture and their rapid proliferation in the wake of punk rock, Notes from Underground pays full due to the political importance of zines as a vital network of participatory culture" (p. 11). Personal computers and xerox machines democratized production methods that had previously required industrial infrastructure, echoing samizdat's emphasis on accessible reproduction technologies.

Web 1.0 and the Copy Chain Model

Early internet communities directly mirrored samizdat distribution patterns. Personal websites, forums, and mailing lists replicated the trusted network model that underground publishers had perfected. The same principles of viral distribution through trusted connections that powered samizdat "copy chains" became the foundation for email forwarding, early social media sharing, and peer-to-peer networks.

Platform Self-Publishing and the Creator Economy

Modern platforms like Medium, Substack, and Wattpad embody samizdat's core principle: enabling anyone to publish without institutional gatekeepers. However, they also represent a significant departure from samizdat's gift economy model toward monetized creator platforms. The subscription models pioneered by Substack and Patreon transform the samizdat tradition of free circulation into sustainable publishing businesses, raising questions about whether commercialization undermines underground publishing's radical potential.

Censorship-Resistant Technologies

Contemporary tools like Tor, IPFS, and blockchain-based publishing systems directly address the surveillance and censorship concerns that drove samizdat innovation. When Bell Labs made UNIX source code illegal to distribute, the book A Commentary on the UNIX Operating System (which contained an annotated version of the source code) was retracted. Illegally copying and distributing the book was known amongst hackers as samizdat. Digital activists continue samizdat traditions through projects like Library Genesis, which holds over 2.4 million non-fiction books and 80 million scientific journal articles, operating in explicit continuation of samizdat principles.

Community Moderation and Trust Networks

Perhaps samizdat's most lasting contribution to digital culture is its model of community-based quality control and trust networks. Rather than follow previous samizdat genres, the literary almanac (e.g. Phoenix, Syntaxis) or collections documenting a single trial, the Chronicle of Current Events established editorial standards that prioritized accuracy and restraint over sensationalism. These principles influenced how online communities develop moderation systems, fact-checking protocols, and reputation mechanisms—from Wikipedia's editorial community to Reddit's upvoting system to Twitter's Community Notes feature.

Persistent Tensions

Quality Control vs. Total Freedom

The democratization of publishing raises questions that samizdat editors confronted decades earlier. Stephen Duncombe "pays full due to the political importance of zines as a vital network of popular culture. He also analyzes how zines measure up to their utopian and escapist outlook in achieving fundamental social change." (Publisher's summary of Notes from Underground). Samizdat maintained quality through community editorial processes and trusted networks. Digital platforms struggle with balancing open access against misinformation, harassment, and low-quality content—challenges that underground publishers solved through social rather than technological means.

From Gift Economy to Creator Economy

Historical samizdat operated on gift economy principles where information circulated freely to serve collective resistance. Eugeniusz Smolar, a key figure in Polish underground publishing, noted: "We never did this [for money] and saw ourselves as an intrinsic part of the opposition. It is not by chance that the title of our magazine was modestly called Aneks – Annex to the Censored Press in Poland." (Interview with Eugeniusz Smolar). Modern platforms increasingly monetize the same distribution mechanisms, potentially altering the social dynamics that made underground publishing networks effective tools for social change.

Digital Censorship and Corporate Control

While samizdat emerged to evade state censorship, contemporary self-publishers face new forms of control through platform policies, algorithmic suppression, and corporate content moderation. As one analysis notes, "The scholarly publishing sector is undergoing its second digital transformation. The first saw a massive shift from paper to digital, but otherwise publishing retained many of the characteristics of the print era." (Jan Velterop, "The Open Access Citation Advantage"). Questions emerge about whether decentralized publishing platforms truly serve samizdat's goals when they operate within corporate-controlled infrastructure and under state-influenced content policies.

Contemporary Scholarly Analysis

Recent academic work has begun connecting samizdat principles to modern publishing challenges. "Drawing on the insights of samizdat research, I will then identify three dimensions of the politics of self-publishing: materiality, experimentation, and the ethics of openness," writes Endre Dányi, arguing that understanding samizdat's material practices offers valuable insights for navigating contemporary publishing disruptions. (Dányi, "The politics of self-publishing"). Since then, Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars have extended their gaze to a wide range of sites, from hospitals through high-tech innovation centres to stock exchange trading rooms, in order to explore how scientific knowledge is being produced and distributed through seemingly trivial material practices—and how it could be produced and distributed differently.

Conclusion: The Unbroken Chain

From carbon copies typed in Moscow apartments to blockchain-based publishing protocols, underground self-publishing represents an unbroken tradition of technological and social innovation. The morally powerful dissident community of the Soviet Union coalesced around The Chronicle Of Current Events, which continued producing several editions each year until 1983. The persistence of this tradition across technological revolutions suggests something fundamental about human needs for independent expression and community-controlled information.

Today's digital publishing econsystem—from Medium articles to TikTok videos to NFT art drops—operates on principles that samizdat pioneers developed under far more restrictive conditions. Every viral Twitter thread, every independent newsletter, every community-moderated forum carries forward the essential samizdat insight: that meaningful publishing is about creating trusted networks of information sharing, not just technological distribution.

The challenge for contemporary digital culture is preserving samizdat's radical potential—its commitment to truth-telling, community building, and resistance to authority—while navigating new forms of control and commodification. Understanding this lineage matters because it reveals that today's "disruption" of traditional media is actually the latest chapter in a much longer story of how communities create and maintain independent voices.

As we confront new forms of censorship, misinformation, and platform control, samizdat's history offers both inspiration and practical guidance. As historian Robert Horvath wrote, "These people knowingly sealed their own fate. They knew that sooner or later they would be cruelly punished for this, whether by imprisonment or by exile. But even knowing this, not doubting it, they held the free movement of information, the reporting to the entire world of what was happening to people in the Soviet Union, more dearly than their own fates." (Paraphrased from Robert Horvath's analysis in Putin's 'Preventive Counter-Revolution').

Every publish button sits on this foundation of courage, creativity, and commitment to free expression. Recognizing that heritage is essential for anyone hoping to build media systems that serve communities rather than corporations, truth rather than profit, and resistance rather than compliance.

Further Reading

• Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture by Stephen Duncombe - The definitive academic study of zine culture and DIY publishing

• The Culture of Samizdat: Literature and Underground Networks in the Late Soviet Union by Josephine von Zitzewitz - Recent scholarly analysis of samizdat's social networks

• A Chronicle of Current Events - Complete digitized archive of the most important samizdat publication

• Red Square at Noon by Natalia Gorbanevskaya - Firsthand account of the 1968 Red Square demonstration and samizdat organizing

Take-away: Subversive self-publishing was never just about dodging censors; it forged resilient, peer-to-peer practices that remain the DNA of modern independent publishing—reminding us that every "publish" button sits on a long, radical lineage of copied pages passed hand to hand.