diff --git a/Modules/zipimport.c b/Modules/zipimport.c
index ba449c0..9d4b633 100644
--- a/Modules/zipimport.c
+++ b/Modules/zipimport.c
@@ -803,6 +803,15 @@ read_directory(PyObject *archive_obj)
 
         if (flags & 0x0800)
             charset = "utf-8";
+        else if (!PyThreadState_GET()->interp->codecs_initialized) {
+            /* During bootstrap, we may need to load the encodings
+               package from a ZIP file. But the cp437 encoding is implemented
+               in Python in the encodings package.
+
+               Break out of this dependency by assuming that the path to
+               the encodings module is ASCII-only. */
+            charset = "ascii";
+        }
         else
             charset = "cp437";
         nameobj = PyUnicode_Decode(name, name_size, charset, NULL);