05/19/2026
Dear friends, Tamizdat Project needs your help! Today, on May 19 — exactly one year since our charity book auction and fundraising campaign “Manuscripts Don’t Burn 2025” — we are launching a crowdfunding campaign to support our work over summer, including several new books.
At the moment, we do not have any institutional funding to continue what we do best, such as research and publishing. This is why we decided to ask for your help. You can donate online through “BetterWorld,” our campaign platform: https://tamizdatproject.betterworld.org/campaigns/support-tamizdat-project
Your donations, however large or small, will go towards supporting the following areas of our overall mission as a public scholarship and nonprofit organization:
Publishing — Help us publish several new titles, including English-language or bilingual editions by Mykola Bazhan, Viktor Shklovsky, Sasha Skochilenko, and a new English translation of Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem” accompanied by emigre responses to this iconic tamizdat publication, as well as a volume of essays on exile.
Public scholarship — Help us maintain and expand our online archives documenting the history of tamizdat and censorship from the Cold War to the present.
Library — Help us curate and develop our collection of over 3,000 banned books from the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.
Video and social media content — Help us share stories about banned books, censorship, exile, and cultural displacement — through oral history interviews, event recordings, and social media.
Bookstore — Help us keep offering a hand-picked selection of banned books and emigre editions through our online store and our Book Corner in NYC, as well as through partnerships with American libraries.
Over the next two weeks, we'll be sharing more information about how your donations can make a difference to our work, e.g. by posting excerpts from books we have committed to publish in 2026. Stay tuned!
For four years, Tamizdat Project has been run by a small team of enthusiastic professionals who now need your support to continue our joint endeavor. We rely on those like you who share our mission. Every donation matters — small numbers lead to big sums! Thank you for being part of it.
Donate here: https://tamizdatproject.betterworld.org/campaigns/support-tamizdat-project
