Underground Religious Samizdat in the Soviet Period: An Eyewitness Account. An Interview with Pavel Rogovoy

Abstract

During the Soviet period, samizdat (the underground 
press) was not limited to political or literary texts. Religious samizdat also existed as a significant phenomenon. Believers printed and circulated religious literature for themselves and likeminded people under near-underground conditions, relying on secrecy, concealment, and various informal strategies to evade state control. To shed light on how these practices were organized, the editorial team of the “Orthodoxia” journal spoke with a direct participant in these events, Pavel Rogovoy, who was one of the leading figures of underground Orthodox samizdat in the Soviet era and the general director of the “Palomnik” publishing house