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    We: A Novel
    We: A Novel
    We: A Novel
    Ebook317 pages5 hours

    We: A Novel

    By Yevgeny Zamyatin and Margaret Atwood

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    The chilling dystopian novel that influenced George Orwell while he was writing 1984, with a new introduction by Margaret Atwood and an essay by Ursula Le Guin

    In a glass-enclosed city of perfectly straight lines, ruled over by an all-powerful “Benefactor,” the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState are regulated by spies and secret police; wear identical clothing; and are distinguished only by a number assigned to them at birth. That is, until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. He can feel things. He can fall in love. And, in doing so, he begins to dangerously veer from the norms of his society, becoming embroiled in a plot to destroy OneState and liberate the city.

    Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We was the forerunner of canonical works from George Orwell and Alduous Huxley, among others. It was suppressed for more than sixty years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, as well as a powerful, exciting, and vivid work of science fiction that still feels relevant today. Bela Shayevich’s bold new translation breathes new life into Yevgeny Zamyatin’s seminal work and refreshes it for our current era. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 2, 2021
    ISBN9780063068452
    Author

    Yevgeny Zamyatin

    Yevgeny Zamyatin was born in Russia in 1884. Arrested during the abortive 1905 revolution, he was exiled twice from St. Petersburg, then given amnesty in 1913. We, composed in 1920 and 1921, elicited attacks from party-line critics and writers. In 1929, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers launched an all-out attack against him. Denied the right to publish his work, he requested permission to leave Russia, which Stalin granted in 1931. Zamyatin went to Paris, where he died in 1937. Mirra Ginsburg is a distinguished translator of Russian and Yiddish works by such well-known authors as Mikhail Bulgakov, Isaac Babel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Editor and translator of three anthologies of Soviet science fiction, she has also edited and translated A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and History of Soviet Literature by Vera Alexandrova.

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    Reviews for We

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    • 5/5
      Written in 1921 and published in 1924, "We", a stunning dystopian novel, was a sure precursor of both the "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and "1984" by George Orwell. People known as "numbers" (each having a number for a name); glass houses with curtains coming down only for a scheduled intimate hour; "Guardians" watching over everyone's move for any deviation from the norm - the norm being people with "faces not shadowed by things as insane as thoughts", with no idea about "that primitive state known as freedom" by "the ancients" - the protagonist (Number D-503) is fine with it all, happy actually... i.e. until, due to certain events and encounters he wakes up from this happy robotic slumber and starts to actually feel human (or having "developed a soul" - as a local doctor alarmingly diagnoses him). D-503 is not alone in this, he finally realizes! And he fully understands the danger of such a deviation in this society called "One State", with one and only "Benefactor" as a ruler. He records everything that is happening every day for this short period of his life. Somehow one thing leads to another: an incident prompts an "improper" thought, a flight of fancy, and, incredibly, the usual complacency and false happiness start taking the backseat. And to make matters more difficult - ahead looms the "Operation" that the State feels it must perform to prevent the "numbers" (citizens of the One State) from developing imagination that would lead to freedom of thought and all that it entails!..Events fly with unimaginable speed, as D-503 is seemingly inadvertently exposing the dystopian society in which he lives, while bringing up the memories of "the ancients" whose life was strewn with mistakes and wars and faults of all kinds, not perfect by any means, but human, not robotic as here in this society. The question of happiness is foremost. The denouement is expected and unexpected at the same time...Once in a while a book comes along that shakes your whole core. "We" was such a book for me. And to think that I have never heard of this author, until a friend on this site brought it to my attention! Eternally grateful... And to add to that - I agree with the friend reviewer that this book can be considered a masterpiece.
    • 5/5
      Written in the early 1920’s by Yevgeny Zamyatin, this is a book that was most certainly leveraged by George Orwell when he wrote 1984, and is every bit just as worthy of being considered a masterpiece. It tells the tale of an aeronautical engineer in the distant future who is joyfully living under a totalitarian regime so intrusive that even the sense of individuality has been removed from its citizens. They are part of “We,” referred to by numbers, living in glass apartments where all of their movements (with the exception of state-licensed sexual encounters) are visible to their neighbors. Their time is scheduled by the State, they attend State executions, and they dutifully report to have their imaginations excised in a precise brain operation. Then one day, he meets and falls for a woman who seems to operate a little bit outside of the rules, challenging his views of the world and himself.As Margaret Atwood so perfectly summarizes in the Introduction, “Zamyatin was writing WE in 1920-21, while the civil war that followed the Bolshevik-dominated October Revolution was still ongoing. Zamyatin himself, having been a member of the movement before 1905, was an Old Bolshevik (a group slated for liquidation by Stalin in the 1930s because they stuck to their original democratic-communist ideals instead of going along with Comrade Stalin’s autocracy) – but now that the Bolshevik’s were winning the civil war, Zamyatin didn’t like the way things were going. The original communal committees were becoming mere rubber-stampers for the power elite that had emerged under Lenin and would be solidified under Stalin. Was this equality? Was this the flowering of the individual’s gifts and talents that had been so romantically proposed by the earlier party?” While Zamyatin does not directly criticize the nascent Soviet State, its censors recognized its implication. While it was published in English in 1924, it would not be published in the Soviet Union until 1988. His writing style is a bit confusing at times, but the imagery he created and how accurately it foretold where his country was going (albeit in extrapolated form) was brilliant. Along the way he fuses elements of Christian allegory and mathematics, elements I liked. Most of all, though, in creating the extreme of this authoritarian regime, he asks questions about the individual’s role relative to the state, or collective. Like Jack London in The Iron Heel and Orwell in 1984, he understood the mechanics of power, and the lengths to which those in power will go to preserve it. It’s a dark and chilling read to say the least. This edition is blessed with the aforementioned introduction from Margaret Atwood, George Orwell’s 1946 review of the book, and Ursula Le Guin’s stunning article “The Stalin in the Soul” subtitled “Sketch for a Science Fiction Novel,” with the latter really standing out. Written over 1973-77 when the communists were in power in the Soviet Union, Le Guin comments on a different form of censorship in the West, that of the market, and how writers and artists bend to its will. “We are not a totalitarian state,” she writes, “we continue to be a democracy in more than name – but a capitalist, corporate democracy.” Of art she says “Unless it is something familiar rewarmed, or something experimental in form but clearly trivial or cynical in content, it is unsafe. It must be safe. It mustn’t hurt the consumers. It mustn’t change the consumers.” She further adds that as opposed to America, Russians “do believe in art, in the power of art to change the minds of men.” It’s a brilliant read, and I highly recommend getting an edition with this article.More quotes:On American optimism, this also from Le Guin’s article:“The recent fantasy bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a serious book, unmistakably sincere. It is also intellectually, ethically, and emotionally trivial. The author has not thought things through. He is pushing one of the beautifully packaged Instant Answers we specialize in this country. He says that if you think you can fly very fast, why, then you can fly very fast. And if you smile, all is well. All the world is well. When you smile, you just know that that man dying of gangrene in Cambodia and that starving four-year-old in Bangladesh and the woman next door with cancer will feel ever so much better, and they’ll smile too. This wishful thinking, this callous refusal to admit the existence of pain, defeat, and death, is not only typical of successful American writing, but also of Soviet writers who “succeeded” where a Zamyatin “failed” – the Stalin Prize winners, with their horrible optimism. Once you stop asking questions, once you let Stalin into your soul, you can only smile, and smile, and smile.”On Christianity:“And the merciful Christian God himself, who slowly roasted all who disobeyed Him in the flames of Hell – isn’t he an executioner, too? And what was greater: the number of Christians who were burned, or the number of people that Christians burned when their turn came? And yet – remember this: nevertheless, for centuries, the Christian God was glorified as the God of Love.”On freedom and happiness:“The man and woman in paradise were given a choice: they could either have happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness – there was no third option. Those blockheads chose freedom – and can you blame them? - but ended up spending the consequent centuries dreaming of shackles. Shackles – yes, shackles – that’s what all their ‘world sorrow’ was really about. And it went on like that for centuries! It wasn’t until we came along that humanity finally figured out how to return to our state of grace…”On individual rights:“Even among the Ancients, the more adult ones knew that the wellspring of rights is power – that rights are a function of power. So, on two sides of the scale, we have: a gram and a ton, “I” on one, and “We,” the One State, on the other. Isn’t it already clear? The presumption that “I” can have any “rights” with respect to the State is exactly like thinking a gram can equal a ton. From this, we have our regular distribution: the ton gets power and the gram gets duties. And the most natural path from obscurity to greatness: forget you’re a gram and feel the power of being one-millionth of a ton…”And:“In the ancient world, the Christians understood this, our only (though very imperfect) predecessors. They knew that humility is a virtue and pride, a sin. That WE comes from God, and I – from the devil.”On revolutions, dangerous thoughts in the Soviet Union of 1920:“There is no final revolution. Revolutions are infinite. Finality is for children: children are scared of infinity and ’t's very important that children can sleep at night…”
    • 4/5
      I never heard of it before. Reading it felt like what I imagine reading Neuromancer must be like to a cyberpunk fan who's read 100s of modern cyberpunk novels.
    • 4/5
      This is the dystopian novel that inspired Brave New World, Animal Farm, and 1984. This is a book about communism run rampart, where everything is dictated by numbers, even names of people.The world of the One State is ingeniously written, instead of Human Instinct being suppressed, it re-directs its citizens to hate those that the state hates, love what the state loves. It even manages to have poetry that is about the perfection of math. As a result, strong attachment towards others is to be a sickness.The story is written through a diary/journal type. Each day, entry. The Builder (D-503, everyone is a number in this world) of the ship Integral, whose mission is to travel to alien planets and convert those they find to the perfectness that is the One State, is targeted by I-330. She does this slowly, igniting human passions that are unknown by the builder.The book was written in 1920 - but feels modern. Women and men do different work, D-503 is disgusted with his neighbor who has "negroid" lips. But, for the most part, the society is equal - in that full transparency (both figuratively and literally). I'd have like to know more about the top of this world-is there an actual builder at the top, but we know what the Builder knows, and he, and his fellow citizens, are kept in the dark about how decisions are made.
    • 4/5
      Overall an interesting book. Unfortunately it didn't hold my attention very well and I'm sure that's just due to the plot. It was very well written, but maybe the way this dystopian society was so confirmed and VERY based on mathematical algorithms just didn't work for me. I like my dystopia's a little gritty and this was sterile to me.
    • 5/5
      We, written by Yevgeny Zamyatin and translated by Bela Shayevich, is a classic of dystopian literature yet also one that is still sometimes overlooked. I first encountered it in a Dystopian Literature course in the early 90s and it was the only work in the class that I had not at least heard of if not read. And, sadly, I was not in the minority.I found the translation here to be very good. I don't know Russian so I can't speak to that aspect, but I think Shayevich captured the flow and tone of the work as well as any translation I've read, and better than at least one of them. If you haven't read this novel, this is a good edition to grab. If you have read it and want to revisit it, this edition should please you.The novel itself aside, I found the additional pieces by Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, and Ursula K Le Guin make the work well worth adding to your library even if you have another edition. In particular, Le Guin's essay is excellent as a standalone essay, touching on several important topics as they relate to this novel.While the novel spoke to a very specific place and time, it still reverberates for today's reader. Likewise Le Guin's essay, written in the early 70s, could easily have been written for today's world. The essay is in one of her books if you want to read more of her nonfiction work.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 2/5
      This book was written between 1920 and 1921 but not published until 1924 – in English. The USSR authorities may have seen it as a commentary on themselves. I wonder why. To be fair, it’s hardly subtle. But this is the 1920s, and science fiction didn’t do subtle in those days. The idea of a unifying state state can hardly be said to be Zamyatin’s invention – insects beat him to it, for one thing – but certainly We influenced a number of later works, and even arguably created an entire subgenre. The problem with said subgenre, however, is that it magnifies the fears and sensibilities of the writer, without actually making any kind of cohesive argument either for or against the society described in the book. David Karp’s One is a good example: most Americans will read it as a dystopia, most Europeans with read it as a utopia. We‘s United State is a state regimented to the nth degree, to such an extent the plot is pretty much narrator D-503 discovering he has a “soul” and the changes in perspective and sensibility that wreaks on him. It’s triggered by his relationship with a woman who clearly is not a typical state drone, and even on occasion dresses up in “old-fashioned” clothing like dresses. Unfortunately, the book is all a bit over-wrought, with excessive use of ellipses, and references to “ancient times” that are clearly the time of writing, as if there were no history between the novel’s present and the 1920s. I can see how it’s a seminal and influential work, but it’s not an enjoyable read and I’d sooner stick to works without such fevered prose. Most certainly an historical document, and important in that respect, but don’t read it for pleasure.
    • 5/5
      Great story. I love the keywords for each record, and I smiled at all of the the running mathematical analogies (especially D's fear of and trepidation at the "irrational root").

      I was surprised at how much the story made me think of other stories, despite knowing before reading it that it has influenced a number of better known tales. The world of "We" is incredibly well constructed, and there are a number of jarring juxtapositions: the writing of a semi-surreptitious journal among the panopticon beehive that leaves almost no privacy; the sexual belonging of one's body to everyone except, apparently, one's self; the assignment of titles like Benefactor and Builder in a society that supposedly shuns class division and individual distinction; even the pacing of the story, from D's initial rational pursuit of his thoughts to the rapid and sometimes scattered, even fragmentary, narrative near the end.

      The story is a bit confusing at times. I had to re-read the incidents aboard the Integral, and I'm still not entirely clear what happened, though I think I got enough to understand how the ending plays out.
    • 4/5
      I was pleasantly surprised; all I really knew was that this was a dystopian novel that criticized the USSR (a mode that has grown more than a bit tiresome), and inspired 1984. Now, Orwell is a good writer, but his novels don't really bring out his best qualities; Zamyatin, however, is an excellent writer, and/or Clarence Brown is a wonderful translator. The ideas here are tedious at best (we should all embrace disorder and chaos!!!!), but as a work of literature, it's really solid: a nice plot, as well as very smart use of ellipsis, understatement, and irony. There's none of the technophilia or over description that (now) characterizes SF writing. Brown's introduction points out some of the cringeworthy scenes that really do feel like early SF at its worst; he doesn't point out this book's superiority over later work. That's a shame.

      Mostly, though, I couldn't help but wonder if it was possible to write a dystopia that did involved neither state oppression nor environmental/military devastation. 'Idiocracy' might have come close, but can one do it seriously? Because I'm much less worried about the state and the bomb than I am about individual idiots making idiotic individual choices that are 'free' but also destructive.
    • 3/5
      Zamyatin may have cleared way for other Dystopian novels, such as Brave New World and 1984... but criticizing Communism was not his only target; he was an equal opportunity satirist, taking aim at the "backwardness" of the provincial and the religious.

      The concept of "We" is based on the idea that "..if man's freedom is nil, he commits no crimes."
      Zamyatin takes this to an imaginative, and visually expressive conclusion.
    • 3/5
      Lots of interesting ideas. I like the idea of perfecting certain types of motions. It can be said to be both utopian and dystopian at the same time. Your utopia might be my dystopia. There is no final revolution, there is no perfect happiness. It's not a death sentence. It's a temporary setback. Fits in well with modern literature. Can't quite avoid the black and white notions that science fiction brings.
    • 3/5
      Challenging. The books cited as drawing from this work are significantly more accessible, which is probably why I am just getting around to reading We now.
    • 5/5
      The dystopic novel to bring them all together in darkness and bind them.This is an extraordinary work. predating Brave New World and 1984, by decades & describing accurately describing near-earth spaceflight from 1920s Russia!If you only want to read one of these works, I would start with this one. So happy The Folio Society shared it with us!
    • 4/5
      I think the main significance of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is the fact that it was published before either Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four and obviously influenced the authors of both those books. In this imagined world of the 26th century it is held that happiness and freedom are incompatible. This is a future where life is dictated by math, logic and rules. Imagination, emotion and dreams are frowned upon.Under constant surveillance, the people’s lives are tightly controlled. There is no individuality allowed. They exercise by marching to the state’s anthem, they live in glass houses where they can be observed at all times. There is no marriage and children are created in a lab and raised by the state. Sex is rationed and one can only draw the curtains in their home while engaging in this activity. While I found this all very interesting, I did not connect with the main character or become particularly engaged by the story.Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote this dystopian novel during a time of change in Russia, he had just come through a revolution and a new system was taking control. He, personally had run afoul of both the white Russians and later, the Communists. We takes a hard look at totalitarian government and the flaws of forcing people into a rigid way of living.
    • 2/5
      A millennia ago One State conquered the world, now they have designs on the rest of the Universe. They are building a spaceship called Integral and the chief engineer, D-503, is writing a journal that he is intending on taking with him on its maiden journey. Even in his privileged position he has to live in a glass apartment so he is constantly visible to the Bureau of Guardians, better known as One State’s secret police. He only has a moment of privacy when his state appointed lover, O-90, is permitted to visit him on certain nights. O-90 has other lovers, including the best friend of D-503, R-13 who performs as a One State sanctioned poet at public executions.

      Then one day, the safe predictable world that D-503 has known, changes in ways that he could never have conceived, and nothing can ever be the same again.

      I couldn’t quite get on with this for a few reasons. The plot didn’t really move that fast, even though it is a short tome, and the characters feel as flat and two dimensional as the glass walls that they are continually viewed through. I can see where Orwell and Huxley got their inspiration from though as this is brutally chilling at times with the all-pervasive state intrusion and levels of control that are frankly terrifying. Not bad, but for me didn’t have that extra something that 1984 has. 2.5 stars
    • 3/5
      A Book With A One-Word TitleThose who have read 1984 will find Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel We familiar, although it is actually precedes both. Like 1984, it takes place in a totalitarian regime, the One State, that suppresses individuality, brutally if necessary, in favor of an ordered life controlled by scientific dictates. People no longer have names; they have alpha-numeric representations and are known as numbers. Life in the One State has been reduced to a schedule all numbers follow, the Table of Hours, which determines the proper time for all activity: eating, sleeping, sex - even the two hours of free time required due to an inability to solve the problem of happiness. The One State is headed by a Big Brother-like Benefactor, an all-powerful man who personally executes non-conformists.D-503, the narrator, is the lead builder of the Integral, a rocket ship destined for other inhabited planets whose populations lag behind the One State in their evolution toward reasoned life. He sets out to document what he sees and thinks leading up to the launch as an ode to the One State, but ends up documenting the challenges all totalitarian states face in subordinating individual will to the collective good. At its core, his journal is an unwitting jeremiad against uniformity, against suppression of man's natural desires and needs.As with other science fiction I've read (see my review of Ender's Game, for example), We is a book more concerned with philosophical ideas than character development and language. While there are brilliant expositions on human nature, such as the reduction of happiness to the formula bliss divided by envy, and unfreedom being man's natural desire, these are overshadowed by the writing style. D-503 continually breaks off mid-thought, leaving the reader to interpret, or more often anticipate, the meaning of his ellipses. His descriptions of action are often confusing and it's unclear whether he is describing actual or imaginary events. There are also too many coincidental occurrences where he encounters, in a city of millions, the exact character needed to advance the plot, whether that is O-90, the woman who loves him, I-330, his femme fatale, or several others who represent competing sides in the One State's battle for control.We is not necessarily a complex story, although it contains multiple Biblical references that can be outside mainstream knowledge. There is also a shadow organization, MEPHI, which I associated with Mephistopheles, the Devil's advocate in Faust (although this may just be my mistaken interpretation). I think you should read any introductory material first (something I usually forgo to avoid spoilers or being prejudiced by a summary of the story). My copy had an excellent introduction that focused on Zamyatin's experiences in post-Revolution Russia which provided an illumination on the factors influencing the novel.
    • 4/5
      I was reading this book in the same course as I was reading "Brave New World." "Brave New World" did not hold my attention enough to read it fully. "We" did."We" is the narrator's letter of praise for his enlightened society, to be sent as cargo with a newly invented space craft to the other civilizations of the universe where the society intends to spread. Part of my preference for "We" over "Brave New World" was the dated feel of "Brave New World," and how We felt that much more estranged from society. As a dystopian novel "We" struck me as being both alien and sinister. The new ideal society feels like such an affront to our current ideas of freedom, and to hear it spoken of as such a grand and wonderful system by the narrator, coupled with knowledge that the narrator's intention is to bring this society to us. That there is no real "out" in this society as there was in "Brave New World" makes it hit that much harder.
    • 3/5
      This probably qualifies as a Book I Should Have Read Already. I'm not sure if I'd heard of it before seeing John Allen Paulos recommend it as having the best explanation of entropy he'd read.I'd read that Orwell claimed he hadn't read this and I suspect that is probably true , given the history of the book. I have no idea as to the quality of the original language writing, but the translated version is very well written, or composed, ...or translated. Zemyatin was rather brilliant. The transition of D-503 through the book, to the conclusion I won't spoil (because I generally do not spoil fiction with any synopsis for other readers). I didn't make many notes, but I did ask in a note if the use of "idiotic" so much has significance. I don't know if it was.As to that definition... Paulos might be a very good mathematics writer, and I am a mechanical engineer who is not, but who has taken a few thermodynamics classes as an undergrad and graduate student, and ... well ..., I think Zemyatin, through his character I-330, was wrong. I'll leave it to the reader of this "review" to find out why and form your own opinion.
    • 4/5
      “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “We”: both have constant surveillance of the individual, though through different means. Both have the protagonist discovering a class in society that is free, but powerless. Both have state control over passion, albeit in rather different ways. But “1984” (the new title) is rather turgid though. “We” by contrast is actually a lot of fun, I rather prefer it of the two; it's not afraid in places to be a bit silly and it's vision of the future is somehow inspired, with their transparent dwellings and privacy granted only for your allotted hour of sex with your pre-selected partner. If one sees a figure jerking about, and one sees strings attached to its hands and feet and leading upward out of sight, one would "infer" a "manipulator" entirely internal to the figure's movements- a puppeteer. Likewise, if one saw an opinion-herd trotting this way and that, inferring that the beasts were being directed passively (even if the 'puppeteer' in this case were simply the other beasts) wouldn't be an extra "assumption", would it?Dystopias like "Nineteen Eighty-Four", “We” and “Brazil” make me wonder: sure, my opinions of a book or movie or person or whatever, and my political and spiritual commitments, my romantic infatuations, and so on, feel like they're "according to my own lights, which provide an adequate explanation for my reactions". And what else does one have to go by? Well, one thing one has to go by is the capacity for critique, the ability, perhaps the fate, to see one's own 'freedom' as a paradox.It feels as though some are merely rattling their sabres by criticising the minor flaws of a masterpiece, like complaining about the way the napkins are folded in an exquisite restaurant. Surely the stately style and sketchy characterisation perfectly suit the novel's vision of a grey, authoritarian world? Or am I simply crediting Zamyatin with more subtlety than he deserves? In any case, I think the content of “We” is sufficiently high enough to excuse any clumsiness of style. Granted, it's refreshing to re-evaluate even the greatest work of art, but why butcher a sacred cow just to have some gristle to chew over? Anyway, I must be off; the clocks are about to strike thirteen.
    • 1/5
      Well, Ursula K. Le Guin apparently liked it... guess there's no accounting for taste. Poorly written, so metaphorical as to be nearly illegible.
    • 4/5
      For fans of dystopian and/or science fiction, I consider this a must-read. Zamyatin's multi-sensory metaphors and stilted prose transport the reader immediately to his totalitarian, mechanized future. The One State is a rational world of clear, solid planes of glass, where the subjugation of nature within its walls allows ciphers (humans) to travel the predictable axes of obligation. There is so much depth and brilliant commentary within Zamyatin's words, the story is intriguing, and his writing through the voice of an increasingly unreliable mathematician narrator is wholly unique.
    • 4/5
      Dystopian novel, narrated by a human identified only by a number (D-503) who lives in a totalitarian state with very strict rules regarding what and when you can do, in which citizens are completely indoctrinated and do not want anything else. D-503 falls in love with another "number", which is proven to be a revolutionary that tries to fight the state and organize a revolution. In the end the revolution fails, and the states invents an operation to remove completely feeling from people thus making them closer to machines. The main character is caught and any emotion is removed from him. Hope is still there though as the state is represented only by a town surrounded by wilderness and other humans which live outside. Has a dystopian atmosphere given by many details like houses make completely out of glass, idea that liberty is unhappiness, omnipresence of mathematics and others. Overall a good and interesting book, with a bit outdated style and setting (technological surveillance is not present at all for example as book was written beginning of 20th century.
    • 5/5
      I never knew this book existed until recently. It goes to show, one thing, or book, leads to another - always :)
    • 5/5
      We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, is a classic on a par with 1984 and Brave New World, yet few have ever heard of it. The style is a unique mixture of mathematics and poetry, with the main character, D-503, so entwined in the totalitarian mindset that he even describes his lover geometrically. I am a retired teacher and mathematician and I blog about the real math I find in the sci-fi I read. Up to now, that has involved a few lines here and there and not in every story. This novel makes up for that scarcity. Philosophy is embedded here as well, leading to Zamyatin’s saying, “There are two forces in the world, entropy and energy. One tends toward blissful peace, to happy equilibrium, and the other toward destruction of equilibrium, toward tortuously constant movement.” Zamyatin seems to favor energy, a consciously anti-Zen decision. D-503 associates dangerous instability, both emotional and political, with the square root of minus one. This may be the most significant, but not the only, symbolic treasure hidden in this story. The square root of minus one, of course, is “I”.
    • 5/5
      Fucking awesome.
    • 4/5
      So many of the classic dystopian sf novels were so clearly influenced by a fear of a totalitarian, communist regime. Well, Zamyatin actually lived in one, and it shows. I don't really know how I didn't know about this book until so recently. I was in utter awe of it at the beginning, until I started to get impatient with the character I-330, and the protagonist's relationship with her. The shadowy/secretive/manipulative femme fatale who seems to maybe be pulling far more strings than you first realize, who reels in the starry-eyed narrator who is just helpless, helpless in her wake... It was just so done, so overly familiar as to feel cheap. To be fair, this was written in 1921, so it almost certainly predates all those other novels who were directly or indirectly ripping We off. It's not Zamyatin's fault that I came to this book so late in the game.

      Despite this familiar dynamic, there is much that is thrillingly unique about this book. In particular, I enjoyed D-503 (the protagonist)'s relationship to mathematics. Also, We focuses much less on the political structures and powers that be than on the emotional turmoil of coming to throw off one's own beliefs and understand the world anew.

      Glad I finally found and read this book!
    • 4/5
      A seminal science fiction work of a totalitarian society. Very enjoyable and easy to see the massive impact it has had on subsequent works.
    • 3/5
      We is a dystopian novel set in the far future. The hero, D-503, is a true believer in the all-encompassing state:"How pleasant it was to feel someone's vigilant eye lovingly protecting you from the slightest misstep. Sentimental as it may sound, that same analogy came into my head again: the 'guardian angel' as imagined by the Ancients. How much has materialized in our lives that they only ever imagined."When D-503 meets and comes under the influence of I-330, an underground dissident, his world begins to fall apart, as he questions life as he has always known it.This book was interesting to me as an intellectual challenge. I read it because it is on the 1001 list. It is historically important (it was the first book banned by the Soviet Union), and extremely influential on later novels, such as 1984. However, I never became immersed in the story, or felt as one with the characters, as I did in 1984, with Winston and Julia.
    • 4/5
      Not usually a genre I read (sci-fi/dystopian). But, I was compelled to read with a couple others (on Litsy), We , because it was supposed to be a precursor and/or inspiration for 1984, which I had recently finished reading. We was banned in CCCP until 1988 because of the novel's assumed criticism of the government. There's a lot of colorful and descriptive prose which at times felt very satirical. We seems to have influenced other works as well, not just 1984. I was somewhat reminded at times of Anthem by Ayn Rand while reading. My translation was the one by Clarence Brown; there has been several translated versions over the years and one may want to research (maybe by "looking inside the book" on amazon) before deciding on one to read.
    • 4/5
      I bought the audiobook earlier this year and Grover Gardner gave his typically excellent narration. However, I find science fiction sometimes difficult to process in audiobook form and after starting this I decided I did need to have a copy of the text, so I borrowed the Kindle book from the library. The Kindle edition turned out to be a different translation but it was close enough for my purposes. Of the two translations, I had a slight preference for Brown's but they were both good. I did also appreciate the foreword in the audiobook by Brown about the history of this book & how he came to doing this translation, more so after I had finished the book. This is the sort of thing I typically skip when reading but since it wasn't labelled as an introduction or foreword, I got 'tricked' into listening to itand am glad I did (though I do think it should have been labelled rather than being called 'chapter one'!).As for the book itself, I could see why the U.S.S.R. refused to publish it back in 1921 even though in the end the government, OneState, wins out over the 'counterrevolutionaries' in a somewhat heartbreaking ending. It is tempting to compare the fictional OneState to the old Soviet Union but in fact I feel that its attempt at creating perfect happiness (at the expense of freedom and imagination) could have arisen anywhere. And I found the question of which is preferable - happiness or imagination - extremely difficult to answer personally even when I felt the answer for society as a whole was clearly imagination. Of course, what I would like is to have both!! But that wasn't one of the options...

    Book preview

    We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

    Introduction

    Margaret Atwood

    I didn’t read Zamyatin’s remarkable novel, WE, until the 1990s, many years after I’d written The Handmaid’s Tale. How could I have missed one of the most important dystopias of the twentieth century, and one that was a direct influence on George Orwell’s 1984—which was a direct influence on me?

    Perhaps I missed it because I was an Orwell reader but not an Orwell scholar, and a science fiction reader but not a science fiction scholar. When I did finally come across WE, I was amazed by it. And now, reading it again in this fresh, intense translation by Bela Shayevich, I am amazed all over again.

    So much in WE seems prophetic: the attempt to abolish the individual by merging all citizens with the State; the surveillance of almost every act and thought, in part through the charming giant pink ears that quiveringly listen to every utterance; the liquidation of dissenters—in Lenin’s writing of 1918, liquidation is metaphorical, but in WE it’s literal, as those to be liquidated are in fact transformed into liquid; the erection of a border wall that serves not just to prevent invasion but to keep citizens inside; the creation of a larger-than-life, all-knowing, all-wise Big Brotherish Benefactor who may be simply an image or a simulacrum—all these details foreshadowed things to come. So did the use of letters and numbers rather than names: Hitler’s extermination camps had not yet engraved numbers on their inhabitants, and we of this age had not yet become the fodder for algorithms. Stalin had yet to forge the cult of his own personality, the Berlin Wall was decades in the future, electronic bugging had not been developed, Stalin’s show trials and mass purges would not take place for a decade—yet here is the general plan of later dictatorships and surveillance capitalisms, laid out in WE as if in a blueprint.

    Zamyatin was writing WE in 1920–21, while the civil war that followed the Bolshevik-dominated October Revolution was still ongoing. Zamyatin himself, having been a member of the movement before 1905, was an Old Bolshevik (a group slated for liquidation by Stalin in the 1930s because they stuck to their original democratic-communist ideals instead of going along with Comrade Stalin’s autocracy)—but now that the Bolsheviks were winning the civil war, Zamyatin didn’t like the way things were going. The original communal committees were becoming mere rubber-stampers for the power elite that had emerged under Lenin and would be solidified by Stalin. Was this equality? Was this the flowering of the individual’s gifts and talents that had been so romantically proposed by the earlier Party?

    In his 1921 essay I Am Afraid, Zamyatin said: True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics. In this he was a child of the Romantic movement, as was the Revolution itself. But the diligent and reliable officials, having seen which way the Lenin–Stalinist wind was blowing, were already busying themselves with censorship, issuing decrees about preferable subjects and styles, and pulling out the unorthodox weeds. This is always a dangerous exercise in totalitarianism, since weeds and flowers are likely to change places in the blink of an autocrat’s eye.

    WE can be viewed in part as a utopia: the goal of the One State is universal happiness, and it argues that since you can’t be both happy and free, freedom has to go. The rights over which people were making such a fuss in the nineteenth century (and over which they continue to make such a fuss now) are viewed as ridiculous: if the One State has everything under control and is acting for the greatest possible happiness of everyone, who needs rights?

    WE follows a long line of nineteenth-century utopias that also proposed recipes for universal happiness. So many literary utopias were written in the nineteenth century that Gilbert and Sullivan created an operatic parody of them called Utopia, Limited. A few highlights are Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race (a superior human race lives underneath Norway, with an advanced technology, inflatable wings, reason over passion, and females who are bigger and stronger than males); News from Nowhere by William Morris (socialist and equal, with arts and crafts, artistic clothing, and every female a Pre-Raphaelite stunner); and A Crystal Age by W. H. Hudson, in which people not only have beauty and artistic clothing, but are rendered happy, like the Shakers, through having no interest in sex whatsoever.

    The later nineteenth century was obsessed with the woman problem and the new woman, and not a single utopia—and then not a single dystopia—could refrain from tinkering with existing conventions concerning sex. Nor could the U.S.S.R. Its early attempts to abolish the family, to raise children collectively, to allow instant divorce, and, in a few cities, to decree it a crime for a woman to refuse to have sex with a male Communist (nice try, guys!) created such a farcical and shambolic misery that Stalin backpedaled furiously in the ’30s.

    But Zamyatin was writing in the early, fermenting period, and it is this cluster of attitudes and policies that WE satirizes. Though people live in literal glass houses, with all of their actions transparent, they lower their blinds modestly for the hour of sex, booked in advance via pink ticket and duly recorded by an older woman in the foyer of each apartment building, according to regulations. But though everyone has sex, only women who meet certain physical specifications are allowed to have children: eugenics was considered progressive at this time.

    As in Jack London’s 1908 novel, The Iron Heel—a dystopia hoping for a utopian future—and also in Orwell’s 1984, the driving forces of dissent in WE are female. D-503, the male protagonist, begins as a dedicated member of the One State, preparing to send a rocket into the universe with the aim of sharing the One State’s recipe for perfect happiness with worlds unknown. Dystopian characters are prone to journal-writing, and D-503 intends his journal for the universe. But soon the plot thickens, and so does D’s prose. Has he been dipping into Edgar Allan Poe in his more lurid moments? Or the German Gothic Romantics? Or Baudelaire? Possibly. Or his author has.

    The cause of this emotional disruption is sex. If only D could stick to his scheduled sexual appointments and his pink tickets! But he cannot. Enter I-330, an angular, individualistic secret bohemian and alcohol-drinking dissident who seduces him in a hidden love nest and leads him to question the One State. She is in sharp contrast to O-90, a round, compliant woman who’s forbidden to have children because she’s too short, and who is D’s registered pink-ticket sexual partner. O can stand for a circle—completion and fullness—or for an empty zero, and Zamyatin chooses both. At first we think O-90 is a nullity, but when she becomes pregnant despite the official veto, she surprises us.

    Much has been written about the difference between I-cultures and We-cultures. In an I-culture such as the United States, individuality and personal choice are almost a religion. No accident there: America was initiated by Puritans, and in Protestantism it’s the individual soul vis-à-vis God that’s important, not membership in a universal Church. Puritans were big journal-writers, recording every spiritual blip and bleep: you have to believe in the high value of your soul to do that. Find your voice is a mantra in North American writing schools, and that means your unique voice. Free speech is taken to mean you can say anything you like.

    In We-cultures, on the contrary, why do you need that kind of voice? It’s belonging to a group that’s valued: one should act in the interests of social harmony. Free speech means you can say anything you like, but what you like will naturally be constrained by the effects it may have on others, and who will decide that? The we will. But when does a we become a mob? Is D’s description of everyone going for a walk in unified lockstep a dream or a nightmare? When does the so-harmonious, so-unified we become a Nazi rally? This is the cultural crossfire we are caught in today.

    Any human being is surely both: an I, special, discrete; and a We, part of a family, a country, a culture. In the best of worlds, the We—the group—values the I for its uniqueness, and the I knows itself through its relationships with others. If the balance is understood and respected—or so we fondly believe—there need not be a conflict.

    But the One State has upset the balance: it has tried to obliterate the I, which nonetheless stubbornly persists. Hence poor D-503’s torments. D’s arguments with himself are Zamyatin’s arguments with the emerging conformity and voice-stifling of the early U.S.S.R. What was happening to the bright vision held out by the utopias of the nineteenth century, and indeed by Communism itself? What had gone so wrong?

    When Orwell wrote 1984, Stalin’s purges and liquidations had already happened, Hitler had come and gone, the extent to which a person could be reduced and distorted by torture was known, so his vision is much darker than Zamyatin’s. Zamyatin’s two heroines are staunch, like Jack London’s, whereas Orwell’s Julia capitulates and betrays almost immediately. Zamyatin’s character S-4711 is a secret service operative, but his number gives away his alter ego. 4711 is the name of a cologne that originated in the German city of Cologne, which in the year 1288 staged a successful democratic revolt against Church and State authorities and became a Free Imperial City. Yes, S-4711 is actually a dissident, bent on revolt. Whereas in 1984, O’Brien pretends to be a dissident, but is actually a member of the State police.

    Zamyatin holds out the possibility of escape: beyond the Wall is a natural world where there are free barbarian human beings, covered with—could it be fur? For Orwell, no one in the world of 1984 can leave that world, though he does permit a distant future in which this society no longer exists.

    WE was written at a particular moment in history—the moment when the utopia promised by Communism was fading into dystopia; when, in the name of making everyone happy, heretics would be accused of thoughtcrime, disagreement with an autocrat would be equated with disloyalty to the Revolution, show trials would proliferate, and liquidation would become the order of the day. How could Zamyatin have seen the future so clearly? He didn’t, of course. He saw the present, and what was already lurking in its shadows.

    Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead, says Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. WE was a warning to its own place and time—one that was not heeded because it was not heard: the diligent and reliable officials took care of that. The courses were not departed from. Millions and millions died.

    Is it also a warning to us, in our time? If it is, what sort of warning? Are we listening?

    Log 1

    BRIEF:

    Announcement. The Wisest Line. An Epic.

    I am simply copying down the announcement that appeared in today’s One State Gazette word for word:

    IN 120 DAYS, CONSTRUCTION OF THE INTEGRAL WILL BE COMPLETE. THE GLORIOUS, HISTORIC HOUR WHEN THE FIRST-EVER INTEGRAL WILL BLAST OFF INTO OUTER SPACE IS NIGH. SOME THOUSAND YEARS AGO, YOUR HERO ANCESTORS VICTORIOUSLY SUBJUGATED ALL OF EARTH TO THE ONE STATE. YOUR CONQUEST WILL BE EVEN GREATER, FOR YOU WILL INTEGRATE THE INFINITE EQUATION OF THE UNIVERSE WITH THE ELECTRIC, FIRE-BREATHING POWER OF OUR GLASS INTEGRAL. YOU WILL ENCOUNTER UNFAMILIAR BEINGS ON ALIEN PLANETS WHO MAY YET LIVE IN SAVAGE STATES OF FREEDOM, AND YOU WILL SUBJUGATE THEM TO THE BENEFICENT YOKE OF REASON. IF THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WHAT WE BRING THEM IS MATHEMATICALLY INFALLIBLE HAPPINESS, WE WILL BE IMPELLED TO FORCE THEM TO BE HAPPY. BUT WE WILL TRY WORDS BEFORE RESORTING TO WEAPONS.

    IN THE NAME OF THE BENEFACTOR, LET IT BE KNOWN TO EVERY NUMBER OF THE ONE STATE:

    ALL THOSE CAPABLE OF DOING SO ARE HEREBY REQUIRED TO PRODUCE TREATISES, EPIC POEMS, MANIFESTOS, ODES, OR ANY AND ALL OTHER WRITINGS CELEBRATING THE BEAUTY AND MAGNIFICENCE OF THE ONE STATE.

    THESE WILL BE THE INTEGRAL’S FIRST CARGO.

    ALL HAIL THE ONE STATE, ALL HAIL THE NUMBERS, ALL HAIL THE BENEFACTOR!

    I write this and feel: my cheeks are burning. Yes: to integrating the profound equation of the Universe. Yes: to uncurving the coil of savagery, toward the asymptote, along the tangent—setting it straight: for the line of the One State is straight. Ours is the supreme, divine, exact, and wise straight line—the wisest of all lines . . .

    I am D-503, Builder of the INTEGRAL. Just one of the One State’s mathematicians. Accustomed to numbers, it is beyond the powers of my pen to fabricate the music of assonance and rhyme. I will simply try to record what I see and think—or, more precisely, what we think (yes, we—and in fact, WE will be the title of my contribution). But if these texts are to be derived from our life, from the mathematically perfected life of the One State, won’t they, in spite of me, be, of themselves, an epic poem? Yes: I believe and know this.

    I write this and feel: my cheeks are burning. This must be what a woman feels when she first senses the pulse of a new little being inside her, tiny and blind. What I’m writing is me and, at the same time, it’s not me. For the many months ahead, this little being will feed on my vital juices, my blood—then, I will tear it away from myself in agony and lay it at the feet of the One State.

    But I am ready—just like every, or almost every, one of us. Yes, I am ready.

    Log 2

    BRIEF:

    Ballet. Quadratic Harmony. X.

    Spring. Honey-yellow pollen from some flower beyond the Green Wall blows in from the wild, invisible plains. This sweet dust dries out your lips so you have to keep licking them—meaning that probably, every passing woman’s lips must also be sweet (and man’s, too, of course). This somewhat interferes with logical thinking.

    But the sky! Blue and unblemished by even a single cloud (the Ancients had such strange tastes! Their poets found inspiration in those disorderly, thick-witted piles of loitering vapor). I love—and I’m sure I can say this for all of us—we love a sterile, immaculate sky like today’s, which makes the whole world look like it’s made of the same immortal, shatterproof glass as the Green Wall and all of our other structures. On days like this, you can see everything down to its bluest depth, things you’ve never noticed before suddenly reveal their essential algebraic formulations—even the things you’re used to seeing every day.

    Example: this morning, at the hangar where we are building the INTEGRAL, I was suddenly drawn to the machines. The spheres of the regulators spinning with eyes closed, in sweet oblivion; the cranks a-twinkle, bowing left and right; the balance beam with a proud swagger in its swinging shoulders; the slotting machine bouncing its bit in time with the soundless music. I was suddenly overtaken by the beauty of this grand mechanical ballet glittering in the weightless, pale blue sunlight.

    Then I asked myself: why is this beautiful? Why is this dance beautiful? Answer: because the movements are unfree. The deeper teaching of this dance lies in its absolute aesthetic bondage, its ideal unfreedom. And if it’s true our ancestors were moved to dance during the most exalted moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), there’s only one conclusion: the instinct for unfreedom has been an organic part of human nature since the beginning of time, and we, in our current way of life, are only now consciously . . .

    I’ll finish later: the intercom is clicking. I lift my eyes—it’s O-90, of course. In half a minute, she’ll be here: it’s time for our walk.

    Darling O! I’ve always thought that she looks like her name: she’s about ten centimeters short of the Maternal Norm, which makes her every curve that much rounder—the pink O of her mouth, open to my every word. Also: the rounded, plump fold on her wrist, just like a small child’s.

    When she came in, the flywheel of logic was still whirring inside me, so, out of inertia, I began to explain the formula I’d just come up with, unifying all of us and dancing and machines.

    Amazing, isn’t it?

    Yes, amazing. O-90 smiled at me rosily. Spring!

    There she goes again, Spring . . . I tell her one thing, and she’s . . . women . . . I fell silent.

    Downstairs. The avenue was crowded: when the weather’s like this, we usually use our afternoon Personal Hour for extra walking. As always, the Music Factory was piping the March of the One State with all of its horns. Hundreds—no, thousands of numbers exuberantly stepped to the beat in orderly rows of four. Their blue-gray unifs* had golden badges on their chests that were inscribed with each of their numbers. And I—we, the four of us—we were just one of the countless ripples in this mighty torrent. On my left, O-90 (if one of my hairy ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago, he would have probably referred to her with that ridiculous word my), and on my right, two numbers I didn’t know, male and female.

    A divinely blue sky, tiny baby suns shining in every badge, faces unclouded by the insanity of thoughts . . . Rays of sun—you know? Everything made of the same smiling, radiant matter. And the brass bleating, Tra ta ta tum, tra ta ta tum, like brass stairs blasted with sunlight, leading you upward, higher and higher, into the dizzying blue . . .

    And then, just like this morning at the hangar, I started seeing everything as though I were seeing it for the first time: the invariably straight streets, the glass of the pavements spraying up sunlight, translucent structures—celestial parallelepipeds, gray-blue numbers marching in fours—all unified in quadratic harmony. A feeling came over me as though it hadn’t been whole generations but I—me—who had vanquished the old God, the old way of life, like I was the one who created all this, and, like a tower, didn’t dare to even move my elbow so I wouldn’t shatter the walls, the cupolas, the machines . . .

    Then, from one moment to the next, I leapt through the centuries: from + to −. I suddenly recalled (ostensibly through association by contrast)—a painting I’d seen in a museum: a twentieth-century street, the deafeningly vibrant, chaotic riot of people, wheels, animals, posters, trees, colors, birds . . . and they say that that’s how it really was back then, that all of that was real and possible. It seemed so improbable to me now, so unbelievable, I couldn’t contain myself and burst out laughing.

    Immediately, an echo—laughter—rang out from my right. I turned my head: the white, extraordinarily white and sharp teeth of an unfamiliar woman’s face beamed directly into my eyes.

    I’m sorry, she said. But you had such an inspired look on your face, like you were a mythical god on the seventh day of Creation. You seemed sure that I, too, was your handiwork. What can I say, I’m quite flattered . . .

    She said all of this without a smile, and, I would even say, with a certain reverence (maybe she knew that I was the Builder of the INTEGRAL), but, at the same time, there was also some kind of inexplicable, irritating X factor to her—in her eyes, or maybe her eyebrows—I can’t put my finger on it or assign it any numerical value.

    For some reason, I was embarrassed, and, fumbling, I started to try to logically justify why I had laughed.

    It is perfectly clear that the contrast, the unbridgeable chasm between the worlds of yesterday and today—

    But why unbridgeable? (What white teeth!) You can always build a bridge. Just picture it: drums, battalions, columns—they had all of those back then, too—and therefore—

    So, yes: clearly! I cried (what an incredible coincidence of thought: she was using almost the exact same words—repeating what I had written just before this walk). "Listen: we even have the same thoughts. Because today, nobody

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