AlexG's Full Review: Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin and Clarence Brown - We
Evgeniy Zamyatin's "We" is a portrayal of the authoritarian state, the Single State, which suppresses freedom in the name of happiness. "We" is also an attack on the socialist regime which was emerging in Soviet Russia--this is why the novel was never published in the Soviet Union.
Zamyatin begins the novel by telling us about the lives of citizens of the Single State. They wear uniforms and are known by number instead of name. They live in a completely glass city, so that there is almost no privacy. They are permitted to have sex only on certain days and only with advance notification. They follow the Hour Schedule which tells them what to do at a particular time of the day. There is a single dictator, the Benefactor, who has a powerful police force, the Guardians.
The novel is written in the form of a diary. In the beginning, D-503 (the person who keeps the diary, and arguably the protagonist of the novel) writes his notes to show the inhabitants of the other worlds how great and happy the Single State is. D-503 is one of the builders of the INTEGRAL--a space ship intended to make the whole universe like a Single State by way of mechanization.
Later D-503's diaries change. D-503 meets a woman, I-330, who influences him to a great extent. D-503 starts to get dreams at night, feel the presence of his soul in his body--something unnatural in the Single State. Eventually D-503 joins the revolutionary movement against the Single State. He is discovered and appears before the Benefactor who makes him change faith back to the Single State.
Though the novel is primarily a satire of the Soviet socialist regime, it is important to note that the structure of the Single State has little resemblance to the Soviet Russia of the early 1920's (when the book was written). As a matter of fact, this was the time when a certain measure of free enterprise and even free speech was permitted. However, Zamyatin turned out to be very good in predicting the future. By the end of the 1920s the novel had more and more resemblance to the Stalinist regime, and thus became more relevant. "We" is a satire not of the time when the book was written, but of what was yet to come. The book proved Zamyatin's perspicacious vision of the future.
Reading the novel, it is hard to imagine that it was written 80 years ago. The novel looks very contemporary. One can see that from the opening page, which starts with an excerpt from the "State Gazette". All media sources in the Soviet Union belonged to the State. The Benefactor (a great resemblance to the general secretary of CPSU, no matter who he was) tells all numbers of the Single State that the creation of INTEGRAL is almost over. In a related story, the leaders if the Communist party for years were telling people that communism was just around the corner. The purpose of INTEGRAL is to make all people from other worlds live like the citizens of the Single State. The communist party's goal was to spread communism around the world.
The tendency towards the full enslavement of man by the state was quite characteristic of the Soviet regime even at its early stage. To many, however, it seemed a temporary thing caused by civil war and destruction. Zamyatin was one of the very few who saw the permanent danger of the regime. It did not take centuries for many Single State's characteristics to become a reality in the Soviet Union.
Finally, while More's, Bacon's, Morris's, etc. utopias were nothing more than their visions, and in some cases predictions of the future, Zamyatin was, perhaps, the first person whose Single State's world came close to a reality. How close?! As close as nobody, neither before Zamyatin, nor after (Huxley, Orwell) could get.
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