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Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937)

Author of We

79+ Works 8,980 Members 222 Reviews 32 Favorited

About the Author

Zamyatin studied at the Polytechnic Institute in St. Petersburg and became a professional naval engineer. His first story appeared in 1908, and he became serious about writing in 1913, when his short novel A Provincial Tale (1913) was favorably received. He became part of the neorealist group, show more which included Remizov and Prishvin. During World War I, he supervised the construction of icebreakers in England for the Russian government. After his return home, he published two satiric works about English life, "The Islanders" (1918) and "The Fisher of Men" (1922). During the civil war and the early 1920s, Zamyatin published theoretical essays as well as fiction. He played a central role in many cultural activities---as an editor, organizer, and teacher of literary technique---and had an important influence on younger writers, such as Olesha and Ivanov. Zamyatin's prose after the Revolution involved extensive use of ellipses, color symbolism, and elaborate chains of imagery. It is exemplified in such well-known stories as "Mamai" (1921) and "The Cage" (1922). His best-known work is the novel We (1924), a satiric, futuristic tale of a dystopia that was a plausible extrapolation from early twentieth-century social and political trends. The book, which directly influenced George Orwell's (see Vol. 1) 1984, 1984, was published abroad in several translations during the 1920s. In 1927 a shortened Russian version appeared in Prague, and the violent press campaign that followed led to Zamyatin's resignation from a writers' organization and, eventually, to his direct appeal to Stalin for permission to leave the Soviet Union. This being granted in 1931, Zamyatin settled in Paris, where he continued to work until his death. Until glasnost he was unpublished and virtually unknown in Russia. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

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Series

Works by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We (1921) 8,446 copies
The Dragon: Fifteen Stories (1966) 162 copies
L'inondation (1929) 46 copies
Teken van leven (1980) 22 copies
The Fisher of Men (1978) 16 copies
Cartas a Stalin (1990) 12 copies
Seul (1990) 9 copies
Attila the Hun (1979) 6 copies
A godforsaken hole (1988) 6 copies
Russie (1996) 5 copies
Les insulaires / province (1983) 4 copies
ICS 4 copies
Le Fléau de Dieu (2006) 4 copies
The Cave 3 copies
Racconti (2021) 3 copies
Sever (1993) 2 copies
Navala Apelor 2 copies
Province (2013) 1 copy
Elektrik (2015) 1 copy
A casa del diavolo (2012) 1 copy
Le Métier littéraire (1984) 1 copy
Spotkanie 1 copy
Nós 1 copy
Сказки 1 copy
The Cave 1 copy
God 1 copy
In provincia (1990) 1 copy
Сочинения (1988) 1 copy
La Caverne (2017) 1 copy

Associated Works

75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World's Literature (1961) — Contributor — 297 copies
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (2005) — Contributor — 223 copies
Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic (1990) — Contributor — 152 copies
The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire (1965) — Contributor — 125 copies
The Utopia Reader (1999) — Contributor — 112 copies
Great Soviet Short Stories (1962) — Contributor — 77 copies
1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution (2016) — Contributor — 35 copies
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (2011) — Contributor — 30 copies
14 Great Short Stories By Soviet Authors (1959) — Contributor — 15 copies
Skaz: Masters of Russian Storytelling (2014) — Contributor — 5 copies
Russische Käuze (1968) — Contributor — 2 copies
7 Novel Dystopian Collection — Contributor — 1 copy
Yevgeny Zamyatin - We [radio play] (2004) — Original author — 1 copy
ロシア短篇24 (現代の世界文学) (1987) — Contributor — 1 copy

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We by Zamiatin in Fans of Russian authors (August 2011)

Reviews

This is just one very short story but honestly I couldn't totally figure out if it's part of a collection or anything... Anyways this was just not for me. It was very weird and not in the way I enjoy. I can't really put my finger on why but I just didn't like it. Kind of felt like a weird dream. Meh.
½
 
Flagged
ZetaRiemann | Apr 4, 2024 |
Poetry about math in a dystopian future.
 
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trrpatton | 213 other reviews | Mar 20, 2024 |
This is my second read of this early modern dystopian classic, written in the early years of the new Soviet Union, but almost immediately banned, then smuggled out and published in the West in 1924 - so we are now marking the centenary of its free publication. The writing style is quite brutalist - ironically, like Stalinist architecture - with the characters having serial numbers not names, and being described as looking like the letters of the alphabet in their serial numbers. The writing is also minimalist, with characters described in terms of angles and lines and simple colours - a lot of white and yellow, with true beauty being found only in the action of machines and the pure logic and simplicity of mathematical operations ("only the four rules of arithmetic are steadfast and eternal. And it is only the code of morals that resides within these four rules that is great, steadfast, and eternal").

The philosophy of the One State and its Benefactor is that happiness can only be achieved by absolute unanimity as though each individual is a cell of one body. The main character D 503 is chief builder of a rocket called the Integral, through which the Benefactor aims to spread his version of happiness to other planets, as the newspaper says: "YOU ARE CONFRONTING UNKNOWN CREATURES ON ALIEN PLANETS, WHO MAY STILL BE LIVING IN THE SAVAGE STATE OF FREEDOM, AND SUBJUGATING THEM TO THE BENEFICIAL YOKE OF REASON. IF THEY WON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WE BRING THEM MATHEMATICALLY INFALLIBLE HAPPINESS, IT WILL BE OUR DUTY TO FORCE THEM TO BE HAPPY. BUT BEFORE RESORTING TO ARMS, WE WILL EMPLOY THE WORD".

Eventually, the One State decides the only way to true uniform "happiness" is through a medical operation to excise the imagination from human brains, which seems to actually lead to the creation of machine conglomerations of people - though these chapters are very unclear and I found myself rather confused at what was going on for a sizable chunk of the book, which is why, despite its powerful overall message about the dangers of mindless collectivism, I don't think it is anywhere near as effective as a dystopian novel as is Orwell's 1984.
… (more)
 
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john257hopper | 213 other reviews | Feb 29, 2024 |
I don't read a lot of science fiction, but this one is a classic. Like Doctor Zhivago it was banned in Russia, smuggled out, and published in Europe.

Zamyatin's book is a dystopian satire of life in Russia after the revolution. It is set 600 years in the future, in the land of One State, where the citizens are happy because they have no freedom. Where there is no freedom there is no crime. People live and work in glass buildings. There is no envy because everyone is equal, a cell in the collective organism of the One State.

The narrator is D-503, a mathematician and the builder of the Integral. His life is mathematically predictable, and therefore happy, until he meets I-303, falls in love and discovers the remnants of a soul. Can they escape the repression of the One state?

Zamyatin's book was the precursor of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was first published in 1921, in the early years of the revolution. It is well worth reading, and not just because it is the first satire on totalitarianism. Zamyatin has a sense of humour and a lightness of touch. Apparently he had synaesthesia, so the book is swamped in colour, odour and texture. He eliminates unnecessary words by recruiting old words for new functions. When you read that a functionary's eyes "javelined", you know just what Zamyatin means.

Highly recommended 4.5*
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½
 
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pamelad | 213 other reviews | Feb 21, 2024 |

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