(Translated by Gregory Zilboorg. “One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. LibriVox recording of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The novel takes the form of the diary of state mathematician D-503, who, to his shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: love for another human being.Īt once satirical and sobering, We speaks to all who have suffered under repression of their personal, economic, and cultural freedom. When I returned to Moscow after a summer journey, the entire affair concerning my novel We was already finished : it had been decided that the publication of excerpts from We in the Prague journal Volya Rossii was my act, and all the appropriate resolutions in regard to this 'act' had already been passed. The reality that dawns on the reader is that this seeming fiction is all-too real in our times. The son of a Russian Orthodox priest, Zamyatin lost his faith in Christianity at an early age and became a Bolshevik. To come to understand its features and markings is the benefit of the dystopian genre. Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin, sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire. But the collectivism is of a recognizable type, one that threatens every society in all times. Written in 1921 by the Russian revolutionary Yevgeny Zamyatin, this story of the thirtieth century is set in the One State, a society where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist.Īlthough fiction, it is a story informed by the war communism of the Soviet Union, and was of course completely banned in Russia.

Dick, Ayn Rand ( Anthem), and Stanislaw Lem, We is a classic of dystopian science fiction ripe for rediscovery. ” -George OrwellĪn inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984 and a precursor to the work of Philip K. Smuggled out of the country, the manuscript was translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg and published in New York in 1924. Written between 19, the novel reflects its authors growing disillusionment with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War. “ intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism - human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself - makes superior to Huxley’s. We (1924) is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Zamyatin yevgeny