Tamizdat@Ca’Foscari

An archival and scholarly project at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice dedicated to the study, digitisation, and valorisation of a historical collection of Soviet, Central and Eastern European tamizdat stored at the Ca’ Foscari University Library.

Tamizdat@Ca’Foscari aims to promote a collection of 199 volumes which were showcased in 1977 at the Biennale of Dissent’s exhibition Libri, Riviste, Manifesti, Fotografie, Videotapes, Samizdat [Books, Journals, Posters, Photographs, Videotapes, Samizdat], which were subsequently donated to the Ca’ Foscari University Library of Foreign Languages and Literatures (BALI, Ca’ Bernardo).

Tamizdat@Ca’Foscari provides an interactive digital exploration of this historical book collection by presenting the results of extensive archival research conducted at several institutions (Hoover Institution Library and Archives — HILA, Stanford; Open Society Archives — OSA, Budapest; Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts — ASAC, Venice; Ca’ Foscari Historical Archive, Venice).

Tamizdat

The Russian acronym tamizdat — which literally means ‘published (izdat’) over there (tam)’, or abroad — traditionally refers to Soviet, Central and Eastern European texts that, having been censored or unpublished in the Eastern bloc (often for ideological reasons), were clandestinely smuggled across the Iron Curtain and published in the West.

The term tamizdat encompasses four different types of texts:

1. works written in the Eastern bloc that were censored and/or unpublished there, and were therefore smuggled out of the USSR and its satellite countries to be printed in the West, both in translation (English, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Spanish etc.) and in the original languages (Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian);
2. translations into Russian and Eastern European languages of Western texts banned in the Eastern bloc;
3. re-editions of texts originally published in Russia/USSR and Eastern Europe, which had become unavailable to Soviet and East European readers, often for ideological reasons;
4. works written in the West by Soviet, Central and Eastern European émigré authors, and published there in Russian or other Central and Eastern European languages (Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, Bulgarian etc.), as well as in translation (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish etc.).

The Biennale of Dissent’s Book Collection at Ca’ Foscari BALI

The Biennale of Dissent’s book collection held at the Ca’ Foscari University Library (BALI — Ca’ Bernardo) is composed of 199 volumes (books and magazines) in several Western languages (such as Italian, English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, etc.) and Central and Eastern European languages (such as Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, etc.).

The collection includes many titles of the most prominent Russian, Central and Eastern European writers (at home, as well as in emigration) and/or dissidents, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Václav Havel, Josef Škvorecký, Ivan Dziuba, Iosif Brodski, Zdena Salivarová, Czesław Miłosz and many others.

The books were published by major Western publishing houses, such as Alfred Knopf, Penguin Books, Éditions du Seuil, Meulenhoff Nederland, Laterza, Edizioni Paoline, Jaca Book, etc. The collection also features works issued by publishing houses founded in the West by Russian, Central and Eastern European émigrés, including 68 Publishers^[1], Smoloskyp^[2], Index^[3], Khronika Press.^[4]

Some of these émigré publishing initiatives benefited, directly or indirectly, from the covert book-distribution programmes supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These programmes were coordinated through intermediary organizations, such as the Free Europe Committee (FEC), whose Publications and Special Projects Division (PSPD) oversaw person-to-person and mailing secret-book operations across the Iron Curtain (Reisch; Sowiński, Cold War Books and Overseas Mechanism).

The collection also includes some noteworthy book series, such as “Writers from the Other Europe,” edited by the American writer Philip Roth and published by Penguin in London between 1976 and 1983, as well as tamizdat editions of magazines and literary journals banned in the Eastern Bloc, such as the Soviet Khronika zashchity prav v SSSR [Chronicle of the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR] or the Ukrainian underground journal Ukraïns’kii visnik [The Ukrainian Herald].

Most of the items in this collection belong to one of the four categories of tamizdat described above. Some volumes, however, are not tamizdat in the strict sense of the term. This is the case, for example, with books written and published in the West by Western authors. Nonetheless, they were included in the Biennale of Dissent’s exhibition because they were connected in various ways to cultural and literary dissent in the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, or to related debates. Among the volumes that do not fall within the category of tamizdat are biographies of Soviet, Central and Eastern European dissidents (such as André Martin’s Vladimir Bukovskij. Il contestatore and Sakharov et le combat pour les droits de l’homme en U.R.S.S.), as well as scholarly studies devoted to Soviet, Central and Eastern European writers and scientists (such as Brian Keith-Smith’s Johannes Bobrowski and Giovanni Codevilla’s Stato e Chiesa nell’Unione Sovietica).

Nonetheless, all the books showcased at the Biennale of Dissent, and consequently in this digital exhibition, shared one important feature: they had served, in one way or another, as instruments of the cultural Cold War.

Books in the Cultural Cold War

The exhibition Libri, Riviste, Manifesti was organized in 1977, a pivotal year for the international human-rights agenda.^[5] That year, Italy was the stage of two important initiatives which promoted the defence of human rights in the USSR and its satellite countries: the Second Session of the International Sakharov Hearings (Rome, 25–28 November 1977) and the Biennale of Dissent (Venice, 15 October – 17 November 1977). The Biennale’s commitment to supporting Soviet and Eastern European dissidents and émigré artists was clearly stated on many occasions by the President of the Venetian cultural institution, Carlo Ripa di Meana:

[…] the world of culture cannot remain indifferent to, for example, the growing emigration of artists and intellectuals from the Eastern countries; to the difficulties (including imprisonment) that well-known international artists and intellectuals often encounter; to the suppression of numerous works; to the circumstances in which samizdat editions become necessary to circulate poetry and fiction.— Ripa di Meana, News from the Biennale

However, to fully understand the symbolic and material meaning and value of the Biennale’s book exhibition (in Bourdieu’s sense of the term), it must be situated within the broader transnational socio-cultural, geo-political and historical context of the so-called “cultural Cold War” (Scott-Smith and Krabbendam), a period during which books were frequently deployed as ideological weapons (Reisch).

This perspective is particularly relevant given that many of the tamizdat editions exhibited on that occasion appear among the titles distributed to Eastern Bloc countries through the Publications and Special Projects Division’s (PSPD) covert book-distribution programmes, which were funded by the FEC (HILA and OSA).

The main purpose of Tamizdat@Ca’Foscari is to provide a transnational historical and socio-cultural interpretation of the Biennale of Dissent by emphasizing the international significance of the exhibition Libri, Riviste, Manifesti, Fotografie, Videotapes, Samizdat. The project aims to address a gap in the existing historiography of the Biennale of Dissent by bringing renewed attention to its comparatively understudied exhibition of tamizdat and samizdat.^[6]

Showcasing the Tamizdat at the Biennale of Dissent (1977)

In 1977, under the direction of Carlo Ripa di Meana, the Biennale del dissenso culturale nei paesi dell’est [Biennale of Cultural Dissent in the Eastern European Countries], known as the “Biennale del dissenso” [Biennale of Dissent], was held in Venice. The event was divided into nine sections: visual arts; music; cinema; theatre; mass media, communications, books and samizdat;^[7] literature and poetry; history; religion and scientific research.

The Biennale’s programme hosted three different main exhibitions:

1. La nuova arte sovietica: una prospettiva non ufficiale [The New Soviet Art: a Non-Official Perspective], dedicated to the unofficial visual arts of the USSR and Eastern Europe (Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, etc.);
2. Grafica cecoslovacca: Undici anni di ricerca, 1965–1975 [Czechoslovak Graphic Art: Eleven Years of Research, 1965–1975], devoted to Czechoslovak underground graphics; and
3. Libri, Riviste, Manifesti, Fotografie, Videotapes, Samizdat [Books, Journals, Posters, Photographs, Videotapes, Samizdat], an exhibition dedicated to a wide photographic, audio, video and literary documentation that testified to the different forms of expression of cultural dissent produced clandestinely in the Eastern bloc (samizdat, magnitizdat),^[8] as well as in the Western one (tamizdat), including also a few Western works.

In an open letter published in The New York Review on 15 September 1977, Carlo Ripa di Meana responded to journalist Furio Colombo’s article “Italy: The Politics of Culture” (published in the same magazine on 14 September 1977). In his reply, the President of the Venice Biennale described the exhibition of Soviet and Eastern European clandestine publications (samizdat and tamizdat) in the following terms:

The book exhibition will primarily focus on samizdat editions from different countries, as well as on those specialized books, magazines, and newspapers which are published abroad in their original language, or in translation, by people who still consider themselves a part of the culture of a country where, for one reason or another, they do not live. Translations of books from Eastern European countries that are commercially published throughout the world will be on sale at this exhibition. We hope that the American publishers of these translations will take part, along with those in the United States and Europe who publish the works of Eastern European authors in their original language.— Ripa di Meana, News from the Biennale

The archival holdings of the Biennale of Dissent preserved at the Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts (ASAC, Porto Marghera — Venice) contain only a limited number of documents relating to the exhibition Libri, Riviste, Manifesti, Fotografie, Videotapes, Samizdat. The general programme of the Biennale of Dissent includes only a brief description of the different types of printed materials featured in the exhibition:

The Books and Samizdat exhibition, which opens November 15th, will be divided into four sections: — Translated books on the market; — Books in the original languages of Eastern European countries published abroad; — Magazines and newspapers; — Samizdat.^[9]— ASAC, Programma della Biennale

The same document also stated that, once the exhibition had ended, the collection of books would be donated by the publishers to the Ca’ Foscari University Library:

Exhibitors [at the Biennale of Dissent’s Book exhibition] have been asked to leave their books at the Venice University Library, which in turn has promised to organize another exhibition at its premises at a later date. Special collaboration will be made with the university’s Institute of Slavic Studies to ensure that students are present during the exhibition and provide explanations to visitors. […] Over 300 Italian and foreign publishers have so far been invited to participate in the exhibition with their books.^[10]— Ibidem

Further evidence of this donation is preserved in the records of the Ca’ Foscari Historical Archives [fig. 1]. At a meeting of the Academic Senate held on 28 October 1977, Rector Feliciano Benvenuti informed the Senate of a letter sent to Sergio Corradini, Director of the General Library, by Professor Gianfranco Dogliani. In addition to teaching English literature at Ca’ Foscari, Dogliani had been appointed curator of the exhibition Libri, Riviste, Manifesti, Fotografie, Videotapes, Samizdat for the Biennale of Dissent. In his letter, he outlined a proposal to donate the books exhibited at the Biennale to the Ca’ Foscari University Library.

Although Corradini clarified that the matter was still “at a purely informal and exploratory stage” (Ca’ Foscari Historical Archives, Minutes of the Academic Senate 418), the matter was nevertheless discussed by the Academic Senate. During the debate, Giuseppe Mazzariol, Professor of Contemporary Art History and a member of the Biennale’s Board of Directors, explained that the “books of dissent” — which he estimated at 2,200 volumes — would be donated by the publishing houses participating in the exhibition. He further emphasized the relevance of the collection for Ca’ Foscari, where Slavic languages and literatures were taught and studied.

The Rector expressed his support for the proposal but stressed the need to appoint a special commission to evaluate and select the works of greatest interest to the University (Ca’ Foscari Historical Archives, Minutes of the Academic Senate 417). The commission, established during the same meeting, consisted of the deans of the Faculties of Foreign Languages and Literatures and of Humanities; Professor Lionello Lanciotti, President of the Library Commission; Professor Vittorio Strada, Director of the Russian Seminar; and Professor Sergio Corradini, Director of the General Library (Ivi, 418).

Unfortunately, the archival record is incomplete. The minutes of the General Library for the years 1977–1979 are missing from the holdings of the Ca’ Foscari Historical Archives (Minutes of the General Library meetings), and no documentation relating to the meetings of the Special Commission appointed by the Academic Senate to select the books donated by the Biennale has survived. As a result, the university archives provide little additional evidence for reconstructing the history of this book collection and the circumstances of its acquisition by Ca’ Foscari.

Nonetheless, meticulous research in the catalogue and among the holdings of the Ca’ Foscari University Library (BALI, Ca’ Bernardo) has made it possible to reconstruct the composition of this historic book collection donated by the Biennale. The first volume in which the author identified the Biennale of Dissent donation stamp [fig. 2] was, not coincidentally, a rare copy of the first Italian edition of Varlam Shalamov’s Kolymskie rasskazy [Kolyma Tales], translated by Piero Sinatti and published by Savelli in 1976 under the title Kolyma: Trenta racconti dai lager staliniani.

The publication of this work sparked a lively intellectual debate in Italy. Among those who engaged with Shalamov’s work was Primo Levi, whose reflections appeared in the review “Dai Lager di Stalin.” The significance of Shalamov’s writings and their Italian reception would also be discussed by the Polish émigré intellectual Gustaw Herling-Grudziński and by Sinatti himself (Herling-Grudziński and Sinatti, Ricordare, raccontare).^[11]

The (Digital) Catalogue of the Exhibition

From 24 June to 30 September 2026 a selection of tamizdatpublications from the ‘Biennale77 collection’ will be available at two locations within the Ca’ Foscari Library System:

— BALI-CFZ (Dorsoduro 1392, Fondamenta Zattere, Venezia)
— BALI-Ca’ Bernardo (Dorsoduro 3199, Calle Bernardo, Venezia)

At CFZ a selection of fifteen items from the BALI’s tamizdat collection — including books and magazines — is on display. Among the books included in this selection are three volumes from the "Writers from the Other Europe" series, edited by Philip Roth and published by Penguin between 1976 and 1983: Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera, A Dreambook of Our Time by Tadeusz Konwicki, and This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski; and three books by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn also published by Penguin: Matryona's House and Other Stories, Cancer Ward, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The selection also includes books and magazines dedicated to Czechoslovakia, including: the volume written by Jiří Pelikán and published by Coines on the Prague Spring, Qui Praga: cinque anni dopo la primavera; a collection of documents from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, edited by Pelikán himself, on the political rehabilitation processes in Czechoslovakia (1949–1968) – Zakázany Dokument. (Zprava komise ÚV KSČ o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu 1949-68) – and a key historical document mapping the illegalities and persecutions of the communist party in Czechoslovakia – Zpráva dokumentacni komise K 231 – first published in Belgium in Czech language in 1973, in the edition exhibited here and edited by Otakar Rambousek and Ladislav Gruber; and a volume edited by Jiří Maria Veselý and František Staudek, published in Italian by Jaca Book, on the Czechoslovak resistance in Italy during the Second World War, La resistenza cecoslovacca in Italia (1944-1945).Among the documents in this selection is also a collection of documents edited by the Moscow Helsinki Group on human rights violations in the USSR, published by Khronika Press in 1977, Sbornik dokumentov obščestvennoj gruppy sodejstvija vypolneniju Chel'sinskich soglašenij. Vypusk vtoroj; a volume of the journal Khronika zaščity prav v SSSR on human rights violations in the USSR, compiled by the editors of Khronika Press, directed by Valerii Chalidze; and one issue of the first Ukrainian samizdat literary journal Ukrainskyi visnyk (Ukrainian Herald) –founded in 1970 and edited by Viacheslav Chornovil until his arrest in 1972– published in English translation in 1977 – Dissent in Ukraine – as well as a reprint in Ukrainian of the first two issues of the journal – Ukrainskyi visnyk – both published by the tamizdat publishing Smoloskyp. Among the magazines, the selection also contains an issue of the tamizdat magazine of Czechoslovak emigration – Svědectví – founded by Pavel Tigrid in the United States in 1956.

On display at CFZ — 15 of 15 covers supplied

Laughable Loves

Milan Kundera

Penguin Books · 1974

A Dreambook of Our Time

Tadeusz Konwicki

Penguin Books · 1976

This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen

Tadeusz Borowski

Penguin Books · 1976

Matryona's House and other Stories

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Penguin Books · 1977

Cancer Ward

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Penguin Books · 1973

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Penguin Books · 1977

Zpráva dokumentacni komise K 231

Otakar Rambousek; Ladislav Gruber

Rosseels Printing Co · 1973

Zakázany Dokument. (Zprava komise ÚV KSČ o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu 1949-68)

Jiří Pelikán

Europa Verlag · 1970

Qui Praga: cinque anni dopo la primavera. (L'opposizione cecoslovacca parla)

Jiří Pelikán

Coines · 1973

Sbornik dokumentov obščestvennoj gruppy sodejstvija vypolneniju Chel'sinskich soglašenij. Vypusk vtoroj

Unknown

Khronika Press · 1977

La Resistenza cecoslovacca in Italia 1944-45

Jiří Maria Veselý; František Staudek

Jaca Book · 1975

The Ukrainian Herald (Issue 6). Dissent in Ukraine.

Ukraïns'kij Visnik journal

Smoloskyp · 1977

Chronika zaščity prav v SSSR (vypusk 12)

Khronika zashchity prav v SSSR journal

Izdatel'stvo Chronika · 1975

Svědectví (1977 n. 54)

Svědectví journal

Pont de Lodi · 1977

Ukraïns'kij visnik. Zachaljavnij zurnal z Ukraïni (Vypusk I-II 1970)

Ukraïns'kij Visnik journal

Smoloskyp · 1971

At Ca’ Bernardo a selection of ten items (books) is on display. The selection includes The selection of books on display at the BALI-Ca’ Bernardo includes some tamizdat published in various languages, including: the Italian edition of Mysli vrasplokh [Thought unaware] by Abram Terts (aka Andrei Siniavskii), published by Jaca Book in 1977 with the title Pensieri Improvvisi; the first Italian edition of Varlam Shalamov’s Kolymskye rasskazy [Kolyma tales], published by Savelli in 1976 with the title Kolyma: Trenta racconti dai lager staliniani; the Italian edition of Andrei Amal’rik’s Nezhelannoe puteshestvie v Sibir' [Involuntary journey to Siberia] – Viaggio involontario in Siberia – published by Coines in 1971; the Ukrainian edition of a collection of writings by Mykola Rudenko – Ja vil'nij: Poema, Istorija chvorobi, Scodennik kandidata v sizofreniki – published by the tamizdat publishing house of the Ukrainian emigration Smoloskyp; the Czech translation of Nadezhda Mandel'shtam’s memoir Vospominania, published by the tamizdat publishing house Index in 1975 with the title Konec naděje; the Czech edition of Vladimíra Čerepková’s book Ztráta řeči, published by Index in 1973; the Czech edition of Jaromír Hořec ‘s work Půlnoční Jam Session and Vratislav Blažek’s work Mariáš v Reykjaviku, both published by the Czech tamizdat publishing house Index; the first edition of the memoirs of Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva – Only One Year – published by Penguin in 1971; and the white book of the trial against Leonid Pliushch, who was confined to a psychiatric hospital because of his human rights activism in the USSR, published in French by Éditions du Seuil in 1976 with the title L'affaire Pliouchtch.

On display at Ca’ Bernardo — 10 of 10 covers

Pensieri improvvisi

Abram Tertz (Andrei Sinyavsky)

Jaca Book · 1977

Ztráta řeči

Vladimíra Čerepková

Index · 1973

Konec naděje

Nadezhda Mandelstam

Index · 1975

Kolyma : Trenta racconti dai lager staliniani

Varlam Shalamov

Savelli · 1976

Only One Year

Svetlana Alliluyeva

Penguin Books · 1971

Ja vil'nij: Poêma, Istorija chvorobi, Scodennik kandidata v sizofreniki

Mykola Rudenko

Smoloskyp · 1977

L'affaire Pliouchtch

Tania Mathon; Jean-Jacques Marie

Éditions du Seuil · 1976

Půlnoční Jam Session

Jaromír Hořec

68 Publishers · 1977

Mariáš v Reykjaviku

Vratislav Blažek

68 Publishers · 1975

Viaggio involontario in Siberia

Andrei Amalrik

Coines · 1971

All other titles in the BALI tamizdat collection (174 items) will be available for consultation in the BALI reading room (Ca’ Bernardo). The covers of the tamizdat books and magazines have been digitized and archived and linked to the Ca’ Foscari Libraries SearchWorks catalogue (CerCa’). As a result, the digital catalogue of Tamizdat@Ca’Foscari can also serve as a reference tool and interactive guide to the Biennale of Dissent’s tamizdat and tamizdat-related resources available at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. By clicking on a book or magazine cover, users are redirected to the Tamizdat@Ca’Foscari’s catalogue record, where they can access the complete bibliographic data of the item, including the link to the Ca’ Foscari library system, where is possible to find book shelfmark and location.

Browse the full catalogue of 199 volumes →

The Dataset

The Tamizdat@Ca'Foscari collection draws on several sources, principally the library catalogue. Separate records of the books once donated to the library were gathered back and structured into a single dataset, helping us to see a bigger picture and trace the shape of the Biennale of Dissent's exhibition. Visualization of this data scales our vision and knowledge of the underlying process, revealing the networks behind the collection and the relations between authors, publishers, and other collaborators. Graphs built from the data provide us with insightful statistics, while the map charts the geography of tamizdat.

Notes

Bibliography

Archival Sources