By Stephan Delbos

Most of us take complete self-expression for granted. Weblogs, Facebook, MySpace; our society is based in part on the belief that every individual’s opinion deserves to be heard. As foolish or illusionary as this may be in reality, there is little doubt that a relatively free media is an improvement over most alternatives.

Imagine a society in which individuals cannot express their thoughts or even read books or newspapers not officially-sanctioned by the conservative, authoritarian government. For those living in post-communist countries like the Czech Republic, this was a reality until recently. Where could an intellectual turn for escape? 

Writers in communist countries resorted to a kind of underground information system known as samizdat. The word is derived from two Russian words: Sam (self) and Izdat (publishing house), thus the term can be loosely translated as self-published. During communism, samizdat newspapers were virtually the only way to get hold of uncensored news, like reports on Chernobyl or names of the recently arrested. Samizdat networks also circulated literature from banned writers such as Václav Havel and Ivan Klíma, to name just two of the most famous examples.

How did samizdat work? Texts were copied by hand, by typewriter or mimeograph machine. If you received a samizdat text, you were expected to make a few copies before passing it on. Anyone caught with banned texts or printing equipment faced imprisonment, and it was not uncommon for writers to be sent to prison for publishing books or magazines.

Samizdat involved more than making copies, however. There existed a whole underground network of writers and intellectuals who circulated banned texts throughout the country. Some texts were even illegally exported for foreign publishing. Samizdat, then, was the literary version of the underground railroad, smuggling texts to freedom. And not just in the Czech Republic, but throughout the Soviet bloc.

The next time you’re sharing your latest spontaneous philosophical ponderings with millions of potential blog readers, tip your hat to the writers who labored under the threat of imprisonment simply because, as the Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert wrote, “If someone else keeps silent about the truth, it could be a tactical maneuver. If a writer keeps silent about the truth, he is lying”.

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