Tamizdat Project

To mark this year’s Banned Books Week, join Tamizdat Project at the New York Public Library!

On Thursday, October 8, we will be at the The New York Public Library to talk about tamizdat: manuscripts that were rejected, censored, or never submitted for publication at home, but smuggled across the Iron Curtain and printed abroad, often without the author’s knowledge or consent. In their talk, Yasha Klots, Valeria K. and Mark Lipovetsky will cover the history of tamizdat as a literary practice and a political institution from the Cold War era to the present. We will also present the Tamizdat Project as a public scholarship initiative and a small press dedicated to cultural displacement, texts that are banned in their home countries, and creative voices from the past that resonate in the present. Tamizdat Project titles will also be showcased!

Speakers:

Yasha Klots — founder of the Tamizdat Project, Associate Professor at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, author of “Tamizdat: Contraband Russian Literature in the Cold War Era” (Cornell, 2023; NLO, 2024), “Poets in New York: On City, Language, Diaspora” (NLO, 2026), and editor of “Why Are We Here? The First Russian Emigration Examines Itself (1920-1939)” (Tamizdat Project, 2026).

Mark Lipovetsky — professor of Slavic Languages at Columbia University and author of twelve monographs. His research includes Russian postmodernism and Soviet underground culture.

Valeria K. — Digital Humanities and data specialist at Stanford University Libraries and the Tamizdat Project, curator of our digital archives of banned books, including those published outside Russia and Belarus since 2014.

🗓 Thursday, October 8, 6:30–7:30 PM

📍 Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, New York Public Library, 7th Floor Event Center, 455 Fifth Avenue

🎟 Free and open to the public. Registration gives priority but doesn’t guarantee a seat. Doors open 30 minutes before the program, and a standby line forms at the same time.

Register here: https://events.leapevents.com/event/tamizdatprojectyashaklots/tag/nyplwebsite

Friends, we are very excited to introduce Sona Mnatsakanyan, who will be at the Tamizdat Project Book Corner at WHITE RABBIT'S BOOKS. International bookstore. Events. New York every Tuesday and Wednesday, 3 – 7 pm, to guide you through the variety of new and old titles we have prepared for you to check out!

Over 100 ”New Tamizdat” books published outside Russia and Belarus have just arrived at our bookstore and are waiting for you there, as well as at our online store. These include the newest titles by Meduza, Vidim Books, Babel Books Tel Aviv, Gutenberg, Hyperboreus, Editions Tourgueneff, Miane Nema, Rab-Rab Press, Esterum, Freedom Letters, Literature without Borders, and other publishers in exile. And we will soon expand our selection of English-language titles and add a new one – on immigrant New York!

Thank you, White Rabbit’s Books, for sharing your space with us, and Sona – for being there to spread the word about important books banned in their home countries!

And don’t forget to check out our upcoming events at the Tamizdat Project Book Corner as well!

Photo courtesy of Natalia Smirnova (Babel Books Berlin).

100 new books in the Tamizdat Bookstore!

https://store.tamizdatproject.org/

Order them online or buy them at our book corner in New York at WHITE RABBIT'S BOOKS. International bookstore. Events. New York.

Our new book, ”Why Are We Here? The First Russian Emigration Examines Itself (1920-1939),” edited by Yasha Klots, was a hit at the Prague Book Tower Пражская книжная башня — we sold all the copies we had there! It has now arrived in NYC and is available at the Tamizdat Project Book Corner at WHITE RABBIT'S BOOKS. International bookstore. Events. New York and online for ordering from our website (in the USA) or from Interbok (Sweden, EU) Books in Russian and other languages. You can also find it at Pushkin House (UK). More bookstores to follow! Links in the comments.

Announcing our fall events — from a conversation with Ainsley Morse on translation to a lecture on the Ukrainian refugee experience.

📌 “Why Are We Here? Essays on Exile (1920-1939)”

September 30, 7 pm, White Rabbit’s Books. WHITE RABBIT'S BOOKS. International bookstore. Events. New York

Book launch: Yasha Klots (editor) in conversation with Polina Barskova Polina Barskova.

Tickets: https://tamizdatproject.org/events/why-are-we-here-essays-on-exile-1920-1939-book-launch-30-9-2026/

📌 A Reading and Conversation with Sergey Lebedev

October 5, 7 pm, Hunter College CUNY Hunter College.

Sergei Lebedev, celebrated author of “The Lady of the Mine” and five other books translated into English, discusses the suppression of Russia’s authoritarian past and the current censorship machine being built by state officials.

RSVP: https://tamizdatproject.org/events/a-reading-and-conversation-with-sergei-lebedev-and-antonina-bouis-5-10-2026/

📌 Translation Reading and Conversation with Ainsley Morse Ainsley Morse

October 10, 7 pm, White Rabbit’s Books WHITE RABBIT'S BOOKS. International bookstore. Events. New York

Ainsley Morse, professor of Slavic literatures at the University of California San Diego, is the driving force behind Tamizdat Project’s English-language titles, including Abram Tertz’s “Pkhentz” (2024) and Linor Goralik’s “Exodus-22” (2025).

Tickets: https://tamizdatproject.org/events/translation-reading-and-conversation-with-ainsley-morse-10-10-2026/

📌 Vitaly Chernetsky. “Traumatic Rhymes. Contemporary Ukrainian Refugee Experience and the Cultural Legacies of the 1940s Displacement.”

November 19, 7 pm, Hunter College CUNY Hunter College

The lecture links theoretical reflections on narrative temporality and trauma with a literary-historical overview of the displacement theme in Ukrainian literature.

RSVP: https://tamizdatproject.org/events/vitaly-chernetsky-traumatic-rhymes-19-11-2026/

🔗 Links to all events are in our pinned stories. More events may be added to the schedule later. Looking forward to seeing you!

We’re at Пражская книжная башня / Prague book tower this weekend! We’ve brought all our titles and some merch. Meet us at booth 27. Can’t wait to see you!

📅 September 11–13
📍 Spojka Events, Pernerova 697/35, Praha 8
🎫 Free entrance

We made new merch to mark the release of our new book, “Why Are We Here?” — postcards and stickers in the style of postage stamps! You can find them at our booth at the Prague Book Tower this weekend, and they’ll be up on the website later.

When we started thinking about what merch would be most appropriate, we wanted something that captured the topic and spirit of the book — the first wave of the Russian emigration during the 1920s–1930s. Writers then stayed in touch by writing and mailing letters, from Paris to Prague to Berlin and elsewhere. So we thought: here is something physical you could also send, from city to city, from country to country. That’s how we landed on postcards and stamps.

The postcards are scans of the newspapers and journals that first published the essays in the book. As for the stamps — turns out you can’t just print those. So we made stickers instead!

You can buy the book at Prague Book Tower, at our book corner in Manhattan, or order it online — it’s had already arrived in the US. Link in bio!