Censorship in Twentieth-Century Literature - Geoffrey F. Peterson (essay date 2000)
Geoffrey F. Peterson (essay date 2000)
SOURCE: Peterson, Geoffrey F. “The Soviet Censorship and Samizdat.” In The Images of the Twentieth Century in Literature, Media, and Society, edited by Steven Kaplan, pp. 79-84. Pueblo, Colo.: University of Colorado, 2000.
[In the following essay, Peterson explains how samizdat, or underground émigré publishing, functioned as a response to Soviet censorship in the twentieth century.]
On September 8, 1965, Andrei Sinyavsky was on his way to read a lecture at Moscow State University when he was arrested in the streets. As Sinyavsky recalled a few years ago, “A first arrest is almost like first love. You remember everything down to the smallest details. The last words my wife said to me before I left the house were, ‘Dear, we've run out of money. Maybe you could borrow from someone until you get your salary.’”1 For the next five months, Sinyavsky had no contact with his wife and...
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