We: A Novel of the Future [Paperback]

Eugene Zamiatin (Author), Gregory Zilboorg (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2009

First published in the West in 1924, We is an adventurous story of the future nameless "numbers," the two-tenths of the world's population that survived the Great Two Hundred Years War. Their food is derived from petroleum, and they believe that their totally restricted existence under the watchful eye of the Benefactor is the ideal. They do not mourn the passing of the creative human spirit; indeed, they are hardly aware it ever existed. More than half a century later, We remains a strange and telling tragicomedy of love and death. The author, an acknowledged satirist in his own right, set the stage for Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a naval architect by profession and a writer by nature. His favorite idea was the absolute freedom of the human personality to create, to imagine, to love, to make mistakes, and to change the world. This made him a highly inconvenient citizen of two despotisms, the tsarist and the Communist, both of which exiled him, the first for a year, the latter forever. He wrote short stories, plays, and essays, but his masterpiece is We, written in 1920-21 and soon thereafter translated into most of the languages of the world. It first appeared in Russia only in 1988. It is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-utopia; a great prose poem on the fate that might befall all of us if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom. George Orwell, the author of 1984, acknowledged his debt to Zamyatin. The other great English dystopia of our time, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, was evidently written out of the same impulse, though without direct knowledge of Zamyatin’s We.
Clarence Brown is the author of several works on the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. He is editor of The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, which contains his translation of Zamyatin’s short story “The Cave,” and of Yury Olesha’s novel Enpy.
Clarence Brown is the author of several works on the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. He is editor of The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, which contains his translation of Zamyatin’s short story “The Cave,” and of Yury Olesha’s novel Enpy.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 239 pages
• Publisher: Transaction Large Print (December 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141281314X
• ISBN-13: 978-1412813143
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.5 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,790,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 79 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Depressing Dystopian Future May 31, 2003

By Jeffrey Leach HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Yevgeny Zamyatin, translator Clarence Brown tells us, had an enormous influence on George Orwell's seminal dystopian novel "1984." "We," written in 1924 as the turmoil of the Bolshevik revolution was in its final stages, definitely shares several similarities with Orwell's bleak novel. Most notable is the relationship between Zamyatin's protagonist, D-503, with a corrupting woman, a relationship that mirrors Orwell's Winston and Julia. But where Orwell was British, Zamyatin was Russian and writing in a time and place where dystopian visions were quickly becoming a reality. The author of "We" eventually left Russia forever (he actually wrote to Uncle Joe Stalin requesting permission to leave! What a brave soul!) and "We" did not appear in print in the Soviet Union until 1988. It is not difficult to see why: "We" is deeply subversive to totalitarian forms of government.

Zamyatin's novel, described in the Penguin edition as a "great prose poem," takes place in the twenty-sixth century in a geographical place unknown to the reader. The narrator of the story, the previously mentioned D-503, is writing down his experiences as part of a grand scheme to launch a rocket ship into outer space. D-503 is the chief mathematician of this project, named INTEGRAL, and the goal of the mission is to find life on other planets in order to bring them "elevation" through totalitarian government. The narrator's journal will accompany the rocket ship along with poems, letters, and other propaganda singing the praises of "OneState," which is the moniker of the ruling apparatus in D-503's world. OneState, with the mysterious "Benefactor" at the helm, rules with an iron fist through an intricate web of time management principles based on Frederick Winslow Taylor's contributions to the industrial revolution. At any given time of the day, millions perform the same functions at the same time. The only exceptions are sexual relations and a few hours of free time that D-503 hopes will one day be regimented as well. All of these activities take place behind the Green Wall, a barrier of glass that effectively separates the city from the countryside.

If you think Huxley and Orwell are bleak, Zamyatin's novel beats them hands down. The introduction to this version of "We" tries to stress that the book does have its humorous moments, but I found very little amusement in this story. People with numbers instead of names, uniforms as the only allowed apparel, the worship of technology not as a means of getting things done but as an example of desirable conformity, and death penalties for unplanned pregnancies all contributed to my sense of utter dread about the author's vision. This is a sad, dark tale about a possible future with little optimism. Zamyatin does include the obligatory revolutionary group, called MEPHI, personified in the form of a woman named I-330, who drinks alcohol, smokes cigarettes, and wears forbidden clothing on occasion. After a few encounters with I-330, D-503 becomes aware that he is suffering a "sickness," the symptoms of which are dreams and the discovery that he suddenly has a "soul." Regrettably, any hope offered by MEPHI and I-330 dissolves when the state takes the repressive measure of developing an operation that uses X-rays to melt imagination out of people's heads. By the time the conclusion of the story rolls around, hope is as distant as a ship on the horizon.

"We" is an unusual read. Things really start to take off when D-503 encounters the corrupt I-330. His awakening is often confusing to the reader. The ramblings of this mathematician make one wonder if he is really experiencing events or hallucinating them. I decided on the former because if his mind was not used to experiencing life outside of OneState it would follow that new sensations might produce a sense of bewilderment. It was enjoyable to see how the world came alive when D-503 experiences a bevy of colors and emotions; he starts to shout out his feelings, he cries, and he even daydreams on the job. While this sensory overload makes for difficult reading at times, it also makes for an engaging story.

Without this Russian pioneer's groundbreaking work, the dystopian genre may never have gotten off the ground. Zamyatin's "We" is not an easy book to read and understand, but it is an essential work that I should have read years ago instead of allowing it to languish on my bookshelf. Moreover, the author makes his narrator a cheerful advocate of OneState's authoritarian rule, a viewpoint that other dystopian novels fail to do and which makes "We" even more of a unique read. For fans of utopian and anti-utopian literature, Yevgeny Zamyatin's book is time well spent.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of Dystopian Trilogy April 3, 2000

By Christopher D. Helmkamp

Format:Paperback

Zamyatin's WE, like Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984, is a classic science-fiction novel that unmasks the chilling realities of the erosion of individuality. What makes Zamyatin's account more compelling, however, is that he wrote the novel from within the fledgeling Socialist state of 1920's Russia (it wasn't even published there until 1988). Therefore, Zamyatin can lay claim to a firsthand understanding of the fallacies of the Soviet collective unlike the eccentric British intellectuals Orwell and Huxley. Although Zamyatin's language, at times, is a bit peculiar by nature, this Twentieth Century Classics translation is perhaps the easiest to understand, as the translator shied away from word use that would not register smoothly in the mind of a contemporary English reader. If you have read Brave New World or 1984, you will certainly want to compliment them by reading this excellent masterpiece in 20th century European literature!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Clear Case of the Apprentice Surpassing his Master July 20, 2006

By J C E Hitchcock

Format:Paperback

This book was written in 1920 and immediately banned by the Soviet authorities. (This was four years before Lenin's death and the start of Stalin's ascent to power. The Trotskyite idea that the pre-Stalinist Soviet Union was a free socialist Utopia, which permitted freedom of thought and artistic expression, is a myth).

It is, of course, easy to see why the book fell foul of the Leninist regime. The Soviets might not have taken offence at a dystopian novel if it had been set in a reactionary capitalist society like the one featured in Jack London's "The Iron Heel". "We", however, is set several centuries in the future in a totalitarian state known as OneState. (The preferred rendition of the translator Clarence Brown). OneState is an immense city state, cut off from the outside world by a glass wall. It is ruled by an all-powerful dictator known as the Benefactor, with the aid of a secret police known as the Guardians. Citizens are known as "Numbers"; they do not have personal names but rather a series of numbers preceded by a letter (consonants for men, vowels for women). Thus the hero of the story is known as D-503 and the heroine I-330. Their lives are controlled by a Table of Hours which dictates what every Number should be doing at any given time; certain hours are for work, others for sleep, others for recreation. (The Table is based upon the theories of the American management expert Frederick Winslow Taylor, which suggests Zamyatin's satire may have been targeted at capitalism as well as Soviet Communism). All buildings are made of glass to allow the regime more easily to monitor the activities of their occupants. Political dissent and disobedience to orders are punishable by death.

The state ideology is a form of perverted rationalism. The state proclaims that it is run on rational, scientific principles; by obedience to these principles and to the dictates of the Benefactor, its people can obtain supreme happiness. Freedom is equated with misery and a lack of freedom with happiness. The Numbers are told that they are living in a perfect society and no further political change is necessary or desirable. The revolution which led to the creation of OneState is the Final Revolution. This may be a reference to the official Soviet doctrine that Socialism was a transitional phase which, at some unspecified date in the future, would be replaced by Communism, the final and perfect stage of mankind's political evolution.

The Benefactor, in his wisdom, has decided that, if there are inhabitants on other planets, they too should receive the benefit of his political philosophy, and so has decreed the construction of a spaceship named INTEGRAL (always spelt in capital letters) which will be used to spread the Gospel according to OneState throughout the cosmos. D-503 is the chief engineer on this project, and at first he is a loyal Number who unquestioningly accepts the benefits of OneState and the rule of the Benefactor. The novel charts the course of his disillusionment with the official state ideology after he falls in love with a rebellious young woman, I-330. She is a member of an underground dissident group, the Mephi, who are struggling to overthrow the system, and as the group achieve some successes and the façade of unity starts to crack, the regime is forced to take coercive measures, including an operation to remove the imagination, in order to retain control.

George Orwell was familiar with "We", and cited it as an influence on his own "1984", which in many ways parallels it. (There are also some similarities with the other great British dystopian novel, "Brave New World", although there is no evidence that Aldous Huxley knew Zamyatin's work). The Benefactor equates to Big Brother, D-503 to Winston Smith, I-330 to Julia. In some ways, Zamyatin's vision of the future is as chillingly prescient as Orwell's. One reviewer complains of "We" that "it is a bland description of an impossible world: Glass tenements, marching queues of citizens, copulation tickets, forced surgery, schoolchild indoctrination, assemblies, a single ruler, pre-decided elections, gas chambers, etc.". I would like to ask that reviewer exactly what is so impossible about Zamyatin's imagined world; in the course of the twentieth century all but one of those predictions came true somewhere in the world (and not only in totalitarian states). The one exception is copulation tickets; perhaps that is what the twenty-first century holds in store for us.

I do not, however, regard "We" as being in the same class as "1984". Orwell, both in that novel and more generally, was a master of clear, lucid prose. The language of "We" is anything but. Much of it is written in a disjointed, hallucinatory style, which often makes it difficult to follow. Unlike "1984" and "Brave New World", both of which were third-person narratives, "We" is told in the first person, being the text of a journal kept by D-503, although at times the narrative is closer to the "stream of consciousness" technique than to a series of journal entries. Some have described "We" as a prose poem, a description from which I would not dissent. This style of poetic prose, however, did not strike me as appropriate to a work of science-fiction or a novel of ideas dealing with mankind's future. If Orwell did learn from Zamyatin, this was a clear case of the apprentice surpassing his master.