sa·miz·dat
| \ ˈsä-mēz-ˌdät
\
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Definition of samizdat
: a system in the U.S.S.R. and countries within its orbit by which government-suppressed literature was clandestinely printed and distributed
also
: such literature
Examples of samizdat in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The Biden administration greeted the suggestion that his op-ed was being distributed like samizdat with an eye-roll.
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Alex Shephard, The New Republic, "Larry Summers Is Finally, Belatedly Irrelevant," 5 Feb. 2021
Deprived of her platform, Wang was relieved to see her readers turning her essays into samizdat.
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Han Zhang, The New Yorker, "The Chinese Diarist Who Saw Into the World’s Pandemic Future," 3 June 2020
While readers may have been searching out samizdat videos from China to try to make sense of the phenomenon, American reporters were treating their audiences to many, many, many articles about anti-Chinese or anti-Asian sentiments.
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Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, "Coronavirus: Death by Kowtow," 24 Feb. 2020
Émigré scholars and nativist autodidacts met secretly in rural museums and published samizdat treatises filled with runic letters and outlandish ethnological hypotheses.
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Jacob Mikanowski, Harper's magazine, "The Call of the Drums," 21 July 2019
Last Child received dazzling reviews and was passed around public schools as samizdat.
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Conor Williams, The Atlantic, "The Perks of a Play-in-the-Mud Educational Philosophy," 26 Apr. 2018
Though publicly unavailable, the study is circulating among academics as a sort of email attachment samizdat.
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Sopan Deb And Max Fisher, New York Times, "The Holocaust Museum Sought Lessons on Syria. What It Got Was a Political Backlash.," 17 Sep. 2017
The book was published in the West and circulated in samizdat form in the Soviet Union.
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Sophia Kishkovsky, New York Times, "Igor Shafarevich, Russian Mathematician With a Mixed Political Legacy, Dies at 93," 13 Mar. 2017
The video was grainy, balky and awkwardly framed — which only added to the samizdat, you-are-there electricity of the broadcast.
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James Poniewozik, New York Times, "C-Span, Gun Control and a Protest Made for Streaming," 23 June 2016
See MoreThese example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'samizdat.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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“Samizdat.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/samizdat. Accessed 18 May. 2021.
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The first known use of samizdat was in 1967
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