Evgeny Zamyatin

Drawing of Yevgeny Zamyatin by Boris Kustodiev, 1923.

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин sometimes translated into English as Eugene Zamyatin) (February 1, 1884 – March 10, 1937) was a Russian author, most famous for his novel We, a story of dystopian future which influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Zamyatin also wrote a number of short stories, in fairy tale form, that constituted satirical criticism of the Communist regime in Russia. While he was initially a supporter of the regime, the hopes of Zamyatin and many of his fellow socialists were not realized by the new government. Zamyatin turned to his literature in order to register his protest. He used the dystopian novel to demonstrate the difference between the glowing promises of ideology and its bitter practice.

Biography

Zamyatin was born in Lebedian, Russia, two hundred miles south of Moscow. His father was a Russian Orthodox priest and schoolmaster and his mother a musician. He studied naval engineering in St. Petersburg from 1902 until 1908, during which time he joined the Bolsheviks. He was arrested during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and exiled, but returned to St. Petersburg, where he lived illegally before moving to Finland in 1906, to finish his studies. Returning to Russia he began to write fiction as a hobby. He was arrested and exiled a second time in 1911, but amnestied in 1913. His Ujezdnoje (A Provincial Tale) in 1913, which satirized life in a small Russian town, brought him a degree of fame. The next year he was tried for maligning the military in his story Na Kulichkakh. He continued to contribute articles to various socialist newspapers.

After graduating as a naval engineer, he worked professionally at home and abroad. In 1916, he was sent to England to supervise the construction of icebreakers at the shipyards in Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne and Wallsend. He wrote The Islanders satirizing English life, and its pendant, A Fisher of Men, both published after his return to Russia in late 1917.

Zamyatin around 1919

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 he edited several journals, lectured on writing and edited Russian translations of works by Jack London, O. Henry, H. G. Wells and others.

Zamyatin supported the October Revolution, but opposed the system of censorship under the Bolsheviks. His works were increasingly critical of the regime. He boldly stated: "True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics." This attitude caused his position to become increasingly difficult as the 1920s wore on. Ultimately, his works were banned and he wasn't permitted to publish, particularly after the publication of We in a Russian emigré journal in 1927.

Zamyatin was eventually given permission to leave Russia by Stalin in 1931, after the intercession of Gorki. He settled in Paris, with his wife, where he died in poverty of a heart attack in 1937.

He is buried in Thiais, just south of Paris. Ironically, the cemetery of his final resting place is on Rue de Stalingrad.

We

We (Мы, written 1920-1921, English translation 1924) is Zamyatin's most famous and important work. The title is the Russian first person plural personal pronoun, transliterated phonetically as "Mwe." It was written in response to the author's personal experiences with the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, as well as his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, working in the Tyne shipyards at nearby Wallsend during the First World War. It was at Tyneside that he observed the rationalization of labor on a large scale.

History and influence

The novel was the first work banned by Glavlit, or the Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press, the new Soviet censorship bureau, in 1921, though the initial draft dates to 1919. In fact, a good deal of the basis of the novel is present in Zamyatin's novella Islanders, begun in Newcastle in 1916. Zamyatin's literary position deteriorated throughout the 1920s, and he was eventually allowed to emigrate to Paris in 1931, probably after the intercession of Maxim Gorky.

The novel was first published in English in 1924, but the first publication in Russia had to wait until 1988, when it appeared alongside George Orwell's 1984. Orwell was familiar with We, having read it in French, reviewing it in 1946; it influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aldous Huxley reportedly claimed that he did not read We before writing Brave New World, although Orwell himself believed that Huxley was lying.

Plot summary

The story is told by the protagonist, "D-503," in his diary, which details both his work as a mathematician and his misadventures with a resistance group called the Mephi, who take their name from Mephistopheles. He has started a diary as a testament to the happiness that One State has discovered, hoping to present it to the extraterrestrial civilizations which The Integral, the spaceship he designed, will visit. However, as the novel progresses, his infatuation with I-330, a rebellious woman in league with Mephi, starts to take over his life. He starts to lose his initial dedication to the utopian One State, and his distinction between reality and dreams starts to fade. By the end of his story, he has almost been driven to madness by inner conflicts between himself and his society, or imagination and mathematic truths.

Utopian Society

The Utopian Society depicted in We is called One State, a glass city led by the Benefactor (in some translations also known as The Well Doer) and surrounded by a giant Green Wall to separate the citizens from nature. The story takes place after the Two Hundred Year's War, a war that wiped out all but 0.2 percent of Earth's population. The 200 Years War was a war over a rare substance never mentioned in the book, as all knowledge of the war comes from biblical metaphors; the objective of the war was a rare substance called "bread" as the "Christians gladiated over it"—as in countries fighting conventional wars. However, it is also revealed that the war only ended after the use of superweapons, after which came a time when grass grew over old streets and buildings crumbled.

All human activities are reduced to mathematical equations, or at least attempted to. For sexual intercourse, numbers (people) receive a booklet of pink coupons which they fill out with the other number they'd like to use on a certain day. Intercourse is the only time shades are allowed to be lowered. It's believed pink coupons eliminate envy.

Every single moment in one's life is directed by "The Table," a precursor to 1984's telescreen. It is in every single residence, and directs their every waking instant. With it, every person eats the same way at the same time, wakes at the exact same time, goes to sleep at the exact same time, and works at the exact same time. The only exception are two required "Free Hours" in which a Number might go out and stroll down a street, or work, or write a diary or the like. According to D-503, he is proud to think that someday there will be a society in which the Free Hours have been eliminated, and every single moment is catalogued and choreographed.

Society places no value on the individual. Names are replaced by numbers. In one instance, ten numbers are incinerated while standing too close to the rockets of the Integral during tests. With pride, D-503 writes that this did not slow down the test in any way.

The Benefactor is the equivalent of Big Brother, but unlike his Orwellian equivalent, the Benefactor is actually confirmed to exist when D-503 has an encounter with him. An "election" is held every year on Unanimity Day, but the outcome is always known beforehand, with the Benefactor unanimously being reelected each year.

Allusions/references to other works

The numbers of the main characters—O-90, D-503 and I-330—are almost certainly derived from the specification of the Saint Alexander Nevsky, Zamyatin's favorite icebreaker, whose drawings he claimed to have signed with his own special stamp. However, other interpretations have been put forward, including one suggestion that the numbers are a Bible code.

The names are also related to characters' genders. Males' names begin with consonants and end with odd numbers, females' with vowels and even numbers.

Additionally, the letters corresponding with the numbers are directly related to various characteristics of that specific character. For example, the character O-90, D-503's most common sexual partner and female friend in the beginning portion of the novel, has very round and simple physical and mental characteristics. Such relationships between name letter and character exist throughout the entirety of the novel.

Furthermore, in the novel, D-503 mentions how the irrationality of square root -1 bothers him greatly. It is known that in math, this number is represented by the letter i. But, the most ironic and one of the greatest satirical symbols in the novel is the fact that One State thinks it is perfect because it bases its system on math even though math itself has irrationality in it. The point that Zamyatin tries to get across to the Communist leaders is that it is impossible to remove all the rebels against a system and he even says this through (ironically) I-330: "There is no one final revolution. Revolutions are infinite."

References to Mephistopheles are allusions to Satan and his rebellion against Heaven in the Bible. The Mephi are rebels against what is considered to be a perfect society. The novel itself could also be considered a criticism of organized religion given this interpretation.

Literary significance and criticism

We is a futuristic dystopian satire, generally considered to be the grandfather of the genre. It takes the totalitarian and conformative aspects of modern industrial society to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state that believes that free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizens' lives should be controlled with mathematical precision based on the system of industrial efficiency created by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Among many other literary innovations, Zamyatin's futuristic vision includes houses, and indeed everything else, made of glass or other transparent materials, so that everyone is constantly visible. Zamyatin was very critical of communism in Russia and his work was repeatedly banned.

Legacy

Writing in 1967, Mirra Ginsburg commented:

Like Bulgakov and like Babel, Zamyatin gives us a glimpse of what post-revolutionary Russian literature might have become had independence, daring, and individuality not been stamped out so ruthlessly by the dictatorship. The Russian reader – and by the same token, the Russian writer – was deprived of the work of these rich and germinal writers, and the effects, alas, are sadly evident.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union's vengeance, however, against Zamyatin for sending his novel We to the West for publication was remembered by Soviet poets and writers long after the writer's death. This is why it was 1957 before another Soviet writer took the risk of doing so again. In that year, when he handed the manuscript to his novel Doctor Zhivago over to an emissary from billionaire Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Boris Pasternak said: "You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad."

Even though Pasternak was accordingly subjected to State-organized character assassination, ostracism, and blacklisting almost identical to what had been experienced by Zamyatin, Pasternak's decision to publish Doctor Zhivago in the West also helped him to win the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Not surprisingly, many other Soviet dissidents after Pasternak would also go on to both use and expand upon the ideas and tactics pioneered by the author of We. For example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was Christianizing Zamyatin's attacks against State-enforced conformity when he wrote, in his 1973 Letter to Soviet Leaders:

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and willing participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot submit. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render unto him what is God's – that is a sacrifice we dare not make.

In the same year, Solzhenitsyn responded to the KGB's seizure of a hidden manuscript of The Gulag Archipelago, his nonfiction exposé of the Soviet secret police, the Soviet concentration camps, and the role of Vladimir Lenin in setting up both, by ordering his publisher in France to publish the whole book immediately. This resulted, as with Zamyatin, in Solzhenitsyn's departure from his homeland.

As part of last Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's reformist policies of glasnost and perestroika, Zamyatin's writing began to again be published legally in his homeland in 1988.

Even since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Zamyatin's many denunciations of enforced conformity and groupthink, as well as his belief that writers and intellectuals have a duty to oppose the calcification and entropy of human thought has meant that his writings continue to have both readers and admirers.

Major works

• Uezdnoe (Уездное), 1913 – "A Provincial Tale" (tr. Mirra Ginsburg, in The Dragon: Fifteen Stories, 1966)
• Na kulichkakh (На куличках), 1914 – A Godforsaken Hole (tr. Walker Foard, 1988)
• Ostrovitiane (Островитяне), 1918 – "The Islanders" (tr. T.S. Berczynski, 1978) / 'Islanders' (tr. Sophie Fuller and Julian Sacchi, in 'Islanders and the Fisher of Men, 1984)
• Mamai (Мамай), 1921 – "Mamai" (tr. Neil Cornwell, in Stand, 4. 1976)
• Lovets chelovekov (Ловец человеков), 1921 – 'The Fisher of Men' (tr. Sophie Fuller and Julian Sacchi, in Islanders and the Fisher of Men, 1984)
• Peshchera (Пещера), 1922 – 'The Cave' (tr. Mirra Ginsburg, Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1969) – The House in the Snow-Drifts (Dom v sugrobakh), film adaptation in 1927, prod. Sovkino, dir. Fridrikh Ermler, starring Fyodor Nikitin, Tatyana Okova, Valeri Solovtsov, A. Bastunova
• Ogni sviatogo Dominika (Огни святого Доминика), 1922 (play)
• Bol'shim detiam skazki (Большим детям сказки), 1922
• Robert Maier (Роберт Майер), 1922
• Gerbert Uells (Герберт Уэллс), 1922 [H.G. Wells]
• On Literature, Revolution, and Entropy, 1924
• Rasskaz o samom glavnom (Рассказ о самом главном), 1924 – "A Story about the Most Important Thing" (tr. Mirra Ginsburg, in The Dragon: Fifteen Stories, 1966)
• Blokha (Блоха), 1926 (play, based on Leskov's folk-story "Levsha", translated as The Left-Handed Craftsman)
• Obshchestvo pochotnykh zvonarei (Общество почетных звонарей), 1926 (play)
• Attila (Аттила), 1925–27
• My: Roman (Мы: Роман), 'We: A Novel' 1927 (translations: Gregory Zilboorg, 1924; Bernard Guilbert Guerney, 1970, Mirra Ginsburg, 1972; Alex Miller, 1991; Clarence Brown, 1993; Natasha Randall, 2006; first Russian-language book publication 1952, U.S.) – Wir, TV film in 1982, dir. Vojtěch Jasný, teleplay Claus Hubalek, starring Dieter Laser, Sabine von Maydell, Susanne nAltschul, Giovanni Früh, Gert Haucke
• Nechestivye rasskazy (Нечестивые рассказы), 1927
• Severnaia liubov' (Северная любовь), 1928
• Sobranie sochinenii (Собрание сочинений), 1929 (4 vols.)
• Zhitie blokhi ot dnia chudesnogo ee rozhdeniia (Житие блохи от дня чудесного ее рождения), 1929
• 'Navodnenie', 1929 – The Flood (tr. Mirra Ginsburg, in The Dragon: Fifteen Stories, 1966) – Film adaptation in 1994, dir. Igor Minayev, starring Isabelle Huppert, Boris Nevzorov, Svetlana Kryuchkova, Mariya Lipkina
• Sensatsiia, 1930 (from the play The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur)
• Dead Man's Sole, 1932 tr. unknown
• Nos: opera v 3-kh aktakh po N.V. Gogoliu, 1930 (libretto, with others) – The Nose: Based on a Tale by Gogol (music by Dmitri Shostakovich; tr. Merle and Deena Puffer, 1965)
• Les Bas-Fonds / The Lower Depths, 1936 (screenplay based on Gorky's play) – Film produced by Films Albatros, screenplay Yevgeni Zamyatin (as E. Zamiatine), Jacques Companéez, Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak, dir. Jean Renoir, starring Jean Gabin, Junie Astor, Suzy Prim, Louis Jouvet
• Bich Bozhii, 1937
• Litsa, 1955 – A Soviet Heretic: Essays (tr. Mirra Ginsburg, 1970)
• The Dragon: Fifteen Stories, 1966 (tr. Mirra Ginsburg, reprinted as The Dragon and Other Stories)
• Povesti i rasskazy, 1969 (introd. by D.J. Richards)
• Sochineniia, 1970–88 (4 vols.)
• Islanders and the Fisher of Men, 1984 (tr. Sophie Fuller and Julian Sacchi)
• Povesti. Rasskazy, 1986
• Sochineniia, 1988 (ed. T.V. Gromov)
• My: Romany, povesti, rasskazy, skazki, 1989
• Izbrannye proizvedeniia: povesti, rasskazy, skazki, roman, pesy, 1989 (ed. A.Iu. Galushkin)
• Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1990 (ed. E. Skorosnelova)
• Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1990 (2 vols., ed. O. Mikhailov)
• Ia boius': literaturnaia kritika, publitsistika, vospominaniia, 1999 (ed. A.Iu. Galushkin)
• Sobranie sochinenii, 2003–04 (3 vols., ed. St. Nikonenko and A. Tiurina)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Kern, Gary (ed.). Zamyatin's We: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ardis, 1988. ISBN 978-0882338040
• Pearce, Joseph. Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile. Ignatius Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1586174965
• Shane, Alex M. The Life and Works of Evgenij Zamjatin. University of California Press, 1968. ISBN 978-0520011649
• Zamyatin, Yevgeny, and Mirra Ginsburg (trans. and ed.). A Soviet Heretic: Essays. University of Chicago Press, 1970. ISBN 0226978656
• Zamyatin, Yevgeny, and Mirra Ginsburg (trans. and ed.). The Dragon: Fifteen Stories. Random House, 1967. ASIN B0007DWN78

External links

All links retrieved May 4, 2026.

• Zamyatin Evgeny Ivanovich (1884-1937)
• Freedom and Happiness (Review of ‘We’ by Yevgeny Zamyatin) The Orwell Foundation
• Guide to the classics: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We inspired Orwell and influenced the Western imagination The Conversation
• Yevgeny Zamyatin Find a Grave

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