par Larissa Lissjutkina
1991, in La Revue des revues no 11
Russia: The Metamorphosis of the Samizdat
Long the legitimate bastion of free-thought and the culture of protest, and well entrenched in a parallel economy with its specialized infrastructure of production and distribution, the samizdat’s criteria of consumption were negatively set by the official book-market. It needed only be censored. With the free-marketing of information in the post-glasnost years, the legalization of the samizdat orchestrates its disappearance in a three step process determined by the competition to retain readership. The emergence of the partial consumer in lieu of the total reader plays a fundamental role in this metamorphosis.