:"In the Soviet Union dissenting [[Baptist|Baptists]] led the way with detailed accounts of religious trials and appeals for religious freedom. From the early 1960s onwards ''samizdat'' materials from such groups kept a records of their situation as [[Nikita Khrushchev|Khruschev's]] anti-religious campaign led to the imprisonment of many who refused to ally with the officially recognised Baptist establishment. In subsequent years this records became increasingly detailed, with long verbatim records of trials, conversations with officials, accounts of the fate of young children taken from their parents, details of prison terms and details on several believers killed by the authorities. All this set an example to other religious groups, as a small number of [[Orthodox Church|Orthodox]] priests and activists entered the ''samizdat'' arena in the late 1960s, closely followed by the Catholics of [[Lithuania]]."<ref>Anderson, John. ''[https://books.google.sk/books?id=d9GuCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT65 Christianity and democratisation : From pious subjects to critical participants]''. Manchester; New York, NY : Manchester University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7190-7738-8, chpt. 3 ("The Catholic 'third wave': undermining authoritarianism") (online version retrieved 2019-08-19)</ref>
The mere possession of samizdat materials could be considered as something dirty or subversive, and could split friends apart for the fear of being ratted out to the police, or if one didn't rat out a friend, they too would be subject to arrest.
Samizdat underground media were instrumental in accelerating the collapse of the communist regimes in the Eastern bloc.<ref name=Downing/> One of the most famous samizdat publications is ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'', and its author, [[Alexander Solzhenitsyn]], has been eulogized as the Writer who destroyed an Empire.<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/opinion/solzhenitsyn-soviet-union-putin.html</ref>
* [https://www.vons.cz/documents Anthology of Czech samizdat periodicals]
[[Category:Russian History]]
[[Category:Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Anti-Communism]]