Orthodox samizdat in Chuvashia in the 1960s–1980s

Abstract

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of Orthodox church samizdat in the second half of the 20th century. The term Orthodox samizdat used in this article refers to a set of texts reproduced in an artisanal way and distributed in church goers circle without the sanction of the church or secular authorities. In the conditions of Soviet reality, the church circles were a deep periphery of public life and was formed from the marginalized or those pushed out by the Soviet authorities to the social margins. The specific position of church people in the USSR determined the repertoire of samizdat texts and their ideological orientation. The source base for this article was formed by a large library of church samizdat left after the death of Elizabeth Feodorovna Zakharova, an active parishioner of the Vvedensky Cathedral in Cheboksary. Zakharova was a typical representative of the church goers. The article reviews the genres of works that were available as the samizdat in Zakharova’s library: liturgical texts, artisan copies of pre-revolutionary publications, spiritual verses, thematic collections, folklore, apologetic literature, eschatological and conspiralogical texts, etc. One of the peculiarities of the existence of Orthodox samizdat in Chuvashia was that many texts circulated in translations into the Chuvash language. Among the features of Cheboksary samizdat is the replication of the prosaic translation of John Milton’s poems “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained”. Church samizdat performed a number of important functions in church circles: it solved the problem of demand for liturgical and doctrinal literature in deficit conditions, shared uncensored texts, rallied church people and could be a source of additional income. In general, church samizdat was an important part of the culture of the church circle during the Soviet era. The spelling and punctuation features of the original unpublished sources are preserved in the article when cited.