Samizdat in the 21st century: The origins, trends, and effects

Samizdat (literally – self-publishing) is a pronounced and growing phenomenon of modern intellectual life, competing with the traditional publishing process. The authors of fiction and scientific works attempt to get their works to readers independently or via specialized online platforms, bypass the publishers not only as a production link, and personally promote them to the market. However, intrusion of self-publishing (samizdat) into modern public discourse inevitably leads to the degradation and oversimplification of publishing in the world: lower quality of literary and scientific works, lack of prior ethical and expert assessment, low art and polygraphic execution of finished products. The illusion of creative freedom and independence from the tight publishing standards, availability of inexpensive publishing technologies result in the vast arrays of poor-quality, pseudoscientific literature that violates every possible ethical norm and tradition. The author emphasizes the need to regulate samizdat production and distribution in the Russian Federation, in particular to re-introduce licensing of publishing activities. Another option would be to merge publishing houses and publishing organizations into self-regulatory organizations (SROs). These solutions would allow publishing entities in the country, that in one way or another, publish the intellectual output, to monitor compliance with high publishing, ethical and technological standards and to develop these standards. Self-publishing authors would interact with publishing companies, which would improve the quality of their literary and scientific works. These measures would slow down the decay of publishing culture and allow preserving the freedom of creative enterprise.