Samizdat

a return to the pre-gutenberg era?

pp. 3-18

in: Harald G. Skilling, Samizdat and an independent society in Central and Eastern Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1989

Abstract

On 22 December 1848, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to "death" for having associated with a circle which met to talk of socialism and to criticize conditions in Russia, for having circulated a letter by the journalist Belinsky to Gogol which was extremely critical of the Orthodox Church, and for having attempted to circulate antigovernment writings with the aid of a private press. Although the sentence was in fact eight years of penal servitude, this was later commuted to four years in jail and four as a private soldier. Dostoyevsky served his full sentence and dropped out of Russian literature for some nine years.¹