Difference between revisions of "Magnitizdat (USSR)"

[[Category:USSR]]

[[Category:USSR]]

Magnitizdat was the unofficial practice of (re-)recording uncensored music or speech onto cassette tapes, which were then redistributed throughout the Soviet Union. The term ''Magnitizdat'' is etymologically composed of two words – ''magnit'' (derived from Russian ''magnitifon'' [tape-recorder]) and ''izdat'' (meaning ‘to publish’) and was exploited in the early 1960s onwards to record ''avtorskaia pesnia'' (poetic songs by Bards) and later, rock music. Alongside the growing consumerist culture and technological developments within the Soviet Union, ''Magnitizdat'' became the natural replacement of ''Roentgenizdat'' – the adequately cheap x-ray disks and temporary solution to unofficial post-war music recording. As Kolya Vasin suggests - ‘Enterprising young guys ran around the streets of our town with show boxes filled with recordings ‘on the bones,’ but their time would not last long […] the era of tape recorders began.’ <ref>Igor Buser, Mark Linnik and Dmitry Zaitsev, Soviet Rock: 25 years in the underground + 5 years of freedom (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990) [Account by Kolya Vasin], p. 31</ref>

Magnitizdat was the unofficial practice of (re-)recording uncensored music or speech onto cassette tapes, which were then redistributed throughout the Soviet Union. The term ''Magnitizdat'' is etymologically composed of two words – ''magnit'' (derived from Russian ''magnitifon'' [tape-recorder]) and ''izdat'' (meaning ‘to publish’) and was exploited in the early 1960s onwards to record ''avtorskaia pesnia'' (poetic songs by Bards) and later, rock music. Alongside the growing consumerist culture and technological developments within the Soviet Union, ''Magnitizdat'' became the natural replacement of ''Roentgenizdat'' – the adequately cheap x-ray disks and temporary solution to unofficial post-war music recording. As Kolya Vasin suggests - ‘Enterprising young guys ran around the streets of our town with show boxes filled with recordings ‘on the bones,’ but their time would not last long […] the era of tape recorders began.’ <ref>Igor Buser, Mark Linnik and Dmitry Zaitsev, Soviet Rock: 25 years in the underground + 5 years of freedom (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990) [Account by Kolya Vasin], p. 31</ref>