We

By Yevgeny Zamyatin

We is an earth shattering dystopian novel that ruffled the feathers of the ruling elite of Russia when it was smuggled out of the country and published in English in 1924. It would not see publication in Russia until 1988. As a result of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s treatment over the novel he left Russia.
We is set in the twenty sixth century where a totalitarian government rules the world. Every citizen has all of their needs completely taken care of. But the price is a life without passion, creativity, or adventure. Cities are made of glass to aid the government’s surveillance of its people. Citizens are given numbers rather than names to discourage individuality. But resentment and anger seethe just beneath the surface of the citizenry’s polite veneer. It is time for someone to strike a blow for individuality and freedom. A fast paced adventure novel with a message that reverberated down through history.
Brave New World , Anthem , 1984 , and Player Piano all owe an enduring debt to We. Of writing Player Piano Kurt Vonnegut said “I cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World , whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We .”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781515445661

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. The son of a Russian Orthodox priest and a musician, Zamyatin studied engineering in Saint Petersburg from 1902 until 1908 in order to serve in the Russian Imperial Navy. During this time, however, he became disillusioned with Tsarist policy and Christianity, turning to Atheism and Bolshevism instead. He was arrested in 1905 during a meeting at a local revolutionary headquarters and was released after a year of torture and solitary confinement. Unable to bear life as an internal exile, Zamyatin fled to Finland before returning to St. Petersburg under an alias, at which time he began writing works of fiction. Arrested once more in 1911, Zamyatin was released and pardoned in 1913, publishing his satire of small-town Russia, A Provincial Tale, to resounding acclaim. Completing his engineering studies, he was sent by the Imperial Russian Navy to England to oversee the development of icebreakers in shipyards along the coast of the North Sea. There, he gathered source material for The Islanders (1918) a satire of English life, before returning to St. Petersburg in 1917 to embark on his literary career in earnest. As the Russian Civil War plunged the country into chaos, Zamyatin became increasingly critical of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, leading to his eventual exile. Between 1920 and 1921, he wrote We (1924), a dystopian novel set in a futuristic totalitarian state. Thought to be influential for the works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, We is a groundbreaking work of science fiction that earned Zamyatin a reputation as a leading political dissident of his time. With the help of Maxim Gorky, Zamyatin obtained a passport and was permitted to leave the Soviet Union in 1931. Settling in Paris, he spent the rest of his life in exile and deep poverty.

Book preview

Record One

An Announcement

The Wisest of Lines

A Poem

This is merely a copy, word for word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper:

"In another hundred and twenty days the building of the Integral will be completed. The great historic hour is near, when the first Integral will rise into the limitless space of the universe. One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the United State. A still more glorious task is before you: the integration of the indefinite equation of the Cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing Integral. Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words.

In the name of the Well-Doer, the following is announced herewith to all Numbers of the United State: Whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises, poems, manifestoes, odes, and other compositions on the greatness and the beauty of the United State.

"This will be the first cargo which the Integral will carry.

Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers!! Long live the Well-Doer!!!

I feel my cheeks bum as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent—to a straight line! For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!

I, D-503, the builder of the Integral, I am only one of the many mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to figures, 12

is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance; therefore I shall try to record only the things I see, the things I think, or, to be more exact, the things we think. Yes. we; that is exactly what I mean, and We, therefore, shall be the title of my records. But this will only be a derivative of our life, of our mathematical, perfect life in the United State. If this be so, will not this derivative be a poem in in itself, despite my limitations? It will. I believe it, I know it.

My cheeks still bum as I write this. I feel something similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It is I, and at the same time it is not I.

And for many long months it will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the feet of the United State.

Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am ready.

Record Two

Ballet

Square Harmony

X

Spring. From behind the Green Wall, from some unknown plains the wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of flowers. One’s lips are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one’s tongue over them. Probably all women whom I meet in the street (and certainly men also) have sweet lips today. This somewhat disturbs my logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of vapor!) I love, I am sure it will not be an error if I say toe love, only such a sky—a sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all our buildings. On such days one sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One sees these equations in everything, even in the most ordinary, everyday things.

Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the Integral is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working beam proudly swung its shoulder; and the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of unheard tarantellas. I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal non-freedom. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), then it means only one thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human 14

nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only consciously—

I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes—O-90, of course! In half a minute she will be here to take me for the walk.

Dear 0-! She always seems to me to look like her name, 0-. She is approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal Norm.

Therefore she appears round all over; the rose-colored O of her lips is open to meet every word of mine. She has a round soft dimple on her wrist.

Children have such dimples. As she came in, the logical flywheel was still buzzing in mv head, and following its inertia, I began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the machines and the dancers and all of us.

Wonderful, isn’t it? I asked.

Yes, wonderful . . . Spring! she replied, with a rosy smile.

You see? Spring! She talks about Spring! Females! . . . I became silent.

We were down in the street. The avenue was crowded. On days when the weather is so beautiful, the afternoon personal hour is usually the hour of the supplementary walk. As always, the big Musical Tower was playing the March of the United State with all its pipes. The Numbers, hundreds, thousands of Numbers in light blue unifs (probably a derivative of the ancient uniform) with golden badges on the chest—the State number of each one, male or female—the Numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping step. I, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of a powerful torrent: to my left, O-90 (if one of my long-haired ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago he would probably call her by that funny word, mine); to my right, two unknown Numbers, a she-Number and a he-Number.

Blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. Rays . . . . Do you picture it? Everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter. And the brass measures: Tra-ta-ta-tam . . . . Tra-ta-ta-tam . . . Stamping on the brassy steps that sparkle in the sun, with every step you rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights . . . . Then, as this morning on the dock, again I saw, as if for the first 15

time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelepipeds of the transparent dwellings, the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of Numbers. And it seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created all this. I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest the walls, the cupola, and the machines should fall to pieces.

Then without warning—a jump through centuries: I remembered (apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century, a thundering, many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals, billboards, trees, colors, and birds . . . . They say all this once actually existed!

It seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of myself and laughed aloud. A laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my ear from the right.

I turned. I saw white, very white, sharp teeth, and an unfamiliar female face.

I beg your pardon, she said, but you looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one but you. It is very flattering.

All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect (she may know that I am the builder of the Integral). In her eyes, nevertheless, and on her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried logically to explain my laughter.

It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago—

But why impassable? (What bright, sharp teeth!) One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows—all this existed before and consequently—

Oh, yes, it is clear, I exclaimed.

It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I had written down before the walk! Do you understand?

Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike—

Are you sure? I noticed her brows that rose to the temples in an acute angle—like the sharp comers of an X. Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right—she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now). To my left, O—, totally different, all made of circles with a childlike dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another . . . .

The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught the confusion in my eye, for she said with a sigh, Yes, alas!

I don’t deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice . . .

With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, Why, ‘alas’? Science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years—

Even the noses will—

Yes, noses! This time I almost shouted, Since there is still a reason, no matter what, for envy . . . Since my nose is button-like and someone else’s is—

Well, your nose is rather classic, as they would have said in ancient days, although your hands— No, no, show me your hands!

I hate to have anyone look at my hands; they are covered with long hair—a stupid atavism. I stretched out my hand and said as indifferently as I could,

Apelike.

She glanced at my hand, then at my face.

No, a very curious harmony.

She weighed me with her eyes as though with scales. The little horns again appeared at the corners of her brows.

He is registered in my name, exclaimed O-90 with a rosy smile.

I made a grimace. Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear 0-, how shall I say it? The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts—at any rate not the reverse.

At the end of the avenue the big bell of the Accumulating Tower 17

resounded seventeen. The personal hour was at an end. I-330 was leaving us with that S-like he-Number. He has such a respectable, and I noticed then, such a familiar, face. I must have met him somewhere, but where I could not remember. Upon leaving me I-330 said with the same X-like smile:

Drop in day after tomorrow at auditorium 112.

I shrugged my shoulders: If I am assigned to the auditorium you just named—

She, with a peculiar, incomprehensible certainty: You will be.

The woman had a disagreeable effect upon me, like an irrational component of an equation which you cannot eliminate. I was glad to remain alone with dear 0-, at least for a short while. Hand in hand with her, I passed four lines of avenues; at the next corner she went to the right, I to the left. O-timidly raised her round blue crystalline eyes.

I would like so much to come to you today and pull down the curtains, especially today, right now . . . .

How funny she is. But what could I say to her? She was with me only yesterday and she knows as well as I that our next sexual day is day after tomorrow. It is merely another case in which her thoughts are too far ahead.

It sometimes happens that the spark comes too early to the motor.

At parting I kissed her twice—no, I shall be exact, three times, on her wonderful blue eyes, such clear, unclouded eyes.

Record Three

A Coat

A Wall

The Tables

I looked over all that I wrote down yesterday and I find that my descriptions are not sufficiently clear. That is, everything would undoubtedly be clear to one of us, but who knows to whom my Integral will someday bring these records? Perhaps you, like our ancestors, have read the great book of civilization only up to the page of nine hundred years ago. Perhaps you don’t know even such elementary things as the Hour Tables, Personal Hours, Maternal Norm, Green Wall, Well-Doer. It seems droll to me, and at the same time it is very difficult to explain these things. It is as though, let us say, a writer of the twentieth century should start to explain in his novel such words as coat, apartment, wife. Yet if his novel had been translated for primitive races, how could he have avoided explaining what a coat meant? I am sure that the primitive man would look at a coat and think, What is this for? It is only a burden, an unnecessary burden. I am sure that you will feel the same, if I tell you that not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War.

But, dear readers, you must think, at least a little. It helps.

It is clear that the history of mankind, as far as our knowledge goes, is a history of the transition from nomadic forms to more sedentary ones. Does it not follow that the most sedentary form of life (ours) is at the same time the most perfect one? There was a time when people rushed from one end of the earth to another, but this was the prehistoric time when such things as nations, wars, commerce, different discoveries of different Americas still existed. Who has need of these things now?

I admit that humanity acquired this habit of a sedentary form of life not without difficulty and not all at once. When the Two Hundred Years' War had destroyed all the roads, which later were overgrown with grass, it was probably very difficult at first. It must have seemed uncomfortable to live in cities which were cut off from each other by green debris. But what of it? Man 19

soon after he lost his tail probably did not learn at once how to chase away flies without its help. I am almost sure that at first he was even lonesome without his tail; but now, can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself walking in the street naked, without clothes? (It is possible you go without clothes still.) Here we have the same case. I cannot imagine a city which is not surrounded by a Green Wall; I cannot imagine a life which is not surrounded by the figures of our Tables.

Tables . . . . Now even, purple figures look at me austerely yet kindly from the golden background of the wall. Involuntarily I am reminded of the thing which was called by the ancients Sainted Image, and I feel a desire to compose verses, or prayers, which are the same. Oh, why am I not a poet, so as to be able to glorify the Tables properly, the heart and pulse of the United State!

All of us and perhaps all of you read in childhood, while in school, that greatest of all monuments of ancient literature, the Official Railroad Guide.

But if you compare this with the Tables, you will see side by side graphite and diamonds. Both are the same, carbon. But how eternal, transparent, how shining the diamond! Who does not lose his breath when he runs through the pages of the Guide? The Tables transformed each one of us, actually, into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake up, millions of us at once. At the very same hour, millions like one, we begin our work, and millions like one, we finish it. United into a single body with a million hands, at the very same second, designated by the Tables, we carry the spoons to our mouths; at the same second we all go out to walk, go to the auditorium, to the halls for the Taylor exercises, and then to bed.

I shall be quite frank: even we have not attained the absolute, exact solution of the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen o’clock and from twenty-one to twenty-two, our powerful united organism dissolves into separate cells; these are the personal hours designated by the Tables. During these hours you would see the curtains discreetly drawn in the rooms of some; others march slowly over the pavement of the main avenue 20

or sit at their desks as I sit now. But I firmly believe, let them call me an idealist and a dreamer, I believe that sooner or later we shall somehow find a place in the general formula even for these hours. Somehow, all of the 86,400 seconds will be incorporated in the Tables of Hours.

I have had opportunity to read and hear many improbable things about those times when human beings still lived in the state of freedom, that is, in an unorganized primitive state. One thing has always seemed to me most improbable: how could a government, even a primitive government, permit people to live without anything like our Tables—without compulsory walks, without precise regulation of the time to eat, for instance? They would get up and go to bed whenever they liked. Some historians even say that in those days the streets were lighted all night, and all night people went about the streets.

That I cannot understand. True, their minds were rather limited in those days. Yet they should have understood, should they not, that such a life was actually wholesale murder, although slow murder, day after day? The State (humanitarianism) forbade in those days the murder of one person, but it did not forbid the killing of millions slowly and by inches. To kill one person, that is, to reduce the individual span of human life by fifty years, was considered criminal, but to reduce the general sum of human life by fifty million years was not considered criminal! Isn’t it droll? Today this simple mathematical moral problem could easily be solved in half a minute’s time by any ten-year-old Number, yet they couldn’t do it! All their

Reviews for We

[pdcread · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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

[skavlanj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

More interesting for its innovations and influence than as a novel (it has several flaws), but entertaining nevertheless.

[hae1yu · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Good book and foundational for much of modern dystopia. While it was very original at the time, others have done it better - notably Brave New World and 1984 among others. It served as an unheeded warning against the totalitarian and equalitarian tendencies and tides of his time.

[missizicks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I thought this was an interesting allegory. I don't know much about the author, just that he fell out with the Russian Communist Party almost immediately after the October Revolution, and that this work was published the year before consolidation of the soviet states started, with 3 years to go before Stalin seized total power. Part of me read it as allegory and premonition of how the soviet experiment could go badly wrong, part of me was attracted by the simplicity of a society built on logic and mathematical principles, part of me felt sad for D-503. He came close to experiencing the fullness of life, but gave in to the cultural norm, because not feeling and not questioning is safer. I thought the characters were believable, and really liked the feistiness of I-330. It was quite sobering reading.

[wendyrey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excelent piece of early science fiction, without the sexism that permeates much of the genre.Please read this.

[wolfrising · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was incredibly moved by this book. Yes, the questions raised are profound (see 1984 and Brave New World), but it is the imagery, lyricism and cleverness of the writing that won me over. Having a mathematics and engineering background, I particularly appreciated the discernment to these details by the translator, Mirra Ginsburg.

[stilton_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Orwell himself reviewed "We" for "Polemic" in January 1946 and judged it "not a book of the first order, but ... certainly an unusual one". "It has a weak and episodic plot", he went on, and in this respect was not the equal of "Brave New World", but "it has a political point which the other lacks." Ultimately, says Orwell, Zamyatin's "intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism" makes his book "superior to Huxley's." (Orwell's complete review is reprinted in volume four of the Penguin "Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters", maybe elsewhere too.)I read We mainly to see what the fuss was about. It's enjoyable.

[ttaisi5editor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An amazing book; its political dimensions outweigh its sci-fi aspects, and the story certainly seems to prefigure Orwell's "1984" in interesting ways.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although it came before the others, Zamyatin's dystopian fiction sits somewhere between "Brave New World" and "1984." The British works were both, arguably, more accessible texts, and better received at the time of their publication; Russian interference blocked Zamyatin's work from a wider audience for a long period.Personally, I found "We" hard going. It was a rewarding read, but the prose too clouded in obfuscations to be truly enjoyable; I feel that a simpler, more direct style of writing would have better suited the story.

[dlsmithies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The blurb on the back says this inspired Orwell's '1984', and the family resemblance is striking. Both as a novel and as a scathing critique of Stalinism, this is a brilliant book. I was gripped from start to finish, although I thought the opening chapters were the best. It's a really quick read, only a couple of hundred pages. Highly recommended.

[lostcheerio · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The book has as its obvious shelfmates Anthem by Ayn Rand and 1984 by George Orwell, but it is more lyrical, more hysterical, more stream-of-consciousness. I suppose Orwell's prose is stronger and Rand is certainly more direct, but I actually loved its dreamy and confusing style, and didn't mind not knowing what the hell was going on a lot of the time. It seemed more true that a journal entry from this future world, with its strange premises and priorities, would read as confusing and boggling to me. Sometimes I didn't know which end was up, and it almost felt like the narrator was writing blind. I think that was intentional and masterful. One of the best and most convincing aspects of the book was that the narrator didn't always seem in control.This book begins with the narrator not only a willing part of this world without individuals, but an enthusiastic supporter of these ideas. He isn't grimy and hopeless about it all (ahem, Winston Smith?); he's a cheerleader for the system. Of course, it all goes terribly awry. It occurred to me as I was comparing those three books that the oppressive, dystopian system never seems to break down for these people because of acquisition of material wealth. It doesn't break down because they don't like being told what pants to wear either. These characters, denied property, denied privacy, denied choice, do not rebel to get their own TV or to get their own bank account or their own window shades. They rebel to get their own girl. It's always love that breaks the system down, that sends the main character tangentially off, destroying himself to be alone with the woman he loves. Interesting. I wonder if that is really true. Maybe it just makes good books, to say that people will give up fortunes but not give up a mate. We'd have a harder time cheering for the grey little cog in the machine, who breaks out of his place so he can triumphantly and emotionally buy a Corvette. Love makes a good novel. But is that really how it would work? The characters in We are allowed to bed whoever they want -- they just have to register and receive a "pink coupon" to make it happen. Would people really bring the world down around their ears just to reinstate monogamy?

[stillbeing · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those amazing books that took a lot of hunting but well worth it. I've leant it out to a few people now and they've all felt the same - disturbing.

[flissp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this because I heard somewhere that George Orwell read this before writing 1984 and I was intrigued. I enjoyed it, and you can see how it influenced Orwell, but it just didn't have the same impact on me that 1984 did, when I read it the first time at 15. Maybe this is because I had no idea when I read it what to expect from 1984 and I found the book incredibly disturbing. But I also think that the characters in 1984 strike closer to the bone - they're more believable, and consequently, the story becomes more shocking. Whilst reading "We", all the characters seemed like cartoons for me (an effect, partly, of the way Zamyatin has his central character describe everyone and also of his writing style, which, I hasten to add, I did like) and consequently, less disturbing. However, this remains an enjoyable book as well as being very amusing. It is also, if nothing else, interesting as a predecessor to 1984 and in it's parallels and extrapolations from the communist Russia of the time.

[1morechapter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book preceded and heavily influenced both 1984 and Brave New World. People have no names, just letters and numbers. They plan on going on to other planets to compel others to adopt their mathematically-minded happiness. Emotions aren’t allowed. They live in glass apartments. Everything ‘human’ is discouraged. But. . . a rebel faction is present in and outside ‘the wall.’ Will those inside the wall learn to be truly human?Side note: A few weeks ago I saw the movie Equilibrium starring Christian Bale, and it surely had to be influenced by this novel. If you’re interested in the dystopian genre, it’s a must-see.

[clong_818048 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This a really interesting book that should be required reading for fans of 1984 and Brave New World (and that's pretty much all of us, right?). It is a powerful depiction of a dystopian future in which individuality has been eliminated, and people are numbers (there are no "I"s, just "We"). The language is very direct, and there are humorous moments to break the bleak tone. I found interesting echoes of Dostoevsky, especially in the impulsive romantic entanglements that drive much of the storyline. In retrospect it is astonishing how many aspects of the totalitarian Soviet regime are predicted accurately in this book written so soon after the Bolshevik revolution.

[yapete · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The original distopian novel (before Brave New World and 1984). Beautifully written. (Note: I read this in German)

[john257hopper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was important conceptually, as the precursor of Brave New World and 1984. As such, it deserves a significant place in world and Russian literature. It is easy to see why it was banned in the Soviet Union, with the unanimous elections in chapter 24 and the Benefactor sounding like Stalin, even though the latter had not yet acquired power at the time the book was written. However, as a story I found this dull. It takes place in a dream-like atmosphere, making the action difficult to follow, and draining some of the force from the potentially powerful ideas. As nameless numbered ciphers - a powerfully frightening idea - the characters lack the human believability of Winston Smith and Julia in 1984. The twist in the ending made me doubt what had happened anyway, though was very like the more brutally straightforward end of 1984.

[magadri-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is the great-grandaddy of all dystopian lit. 1984 is ALMOST a complete rip-off (though it is definitely good on it's own) of this book. If you liked 1984, you will without a doubt like We.

[cbjames_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We became the first book to be banned by the Soviet censorship bureau, Glavlit. Mr. Zamyatin was not able to emigrate until 1931 when he arrived in Paris, some seven years after his novel had been published in English. We may have been the model for Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; Mr. Huxley claimed not to have read the novel but George Orwell declared him a liar over this point. Mr. Orwell began work on his classic novel 1984 just a few months after reading We and never denied it's influence on his own novel. We was not published in Russia until 1988.So is this a history lesson or a book review?The pleasure contemporary readers will find in reading We is equal parts literary and historical. Whenever science fiction makes a prediction about the future, be it utopian or dsytopian, it affixes a sell by label to itself. Sooner or later, it will become at least slightly dated. While it can remain both entertaining and enlightening on a literary level, it will also become a piece of historical interest. This is the case with We. It's easy to spot We's influence on George Orwell. In We, a mathematical genius called D-503 is working on the first interplanetary space craft called the Integral. The One State, where D503 lives, controls every aspect of its citizens' lives, down to the hour of each day-- rest, work, even the daily hour of free time are all controlled by the One State. During his hour of free time D-503 meets a woman, I-330, who tries to convince him to join her in a revolt against the state. I-330 takes D-503 to places he would not have considered before, like the other side of the Green Wall which separates the One State from the wilderness that was civilization before a series of wars destroyed all but a small percentage of humanity. Contact with I-330 leads D-503 to begin dreaming which is a sign of mental instability in a world determined to find a way to surgically eliminate imagination from the human mind. In the One State, logic is all that matters.Because D-503 is writing We as a confessional and because he often states how shocked he is at his own behavior in retrospect, the reader knows that his romance with I-330 will not end well. If you've spotted just how similar We and 1984 are, and you remember how things turn out for Julia, the love interest in George Orwell's novel, then you know what to expect. So is there more to reading Yevgeny Zamyatin's We than finding a greater understanding of George Orwell's 1984? Are there literary rewards to be found along with the historical ones? Try this passage from early in the novel when D-503 reads a poem by the great poet R-13:...I had been taking pleasure in a sonnet called "Happiness." I think I'm not mistaken if I say that it is a thing of rarity in its beauty and depth of thought. Here are the first four lines:Forever amorous two-times-twoForever amalgamated in passionate fourThe hottest lovers in the world--Inseparable two-times-twoAnd it continues on about all this--about the wisdom and the eternal happiness of the multiplication table. Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down. The multiplication table existed for centuries before R-13 but it was only R-13 who managed to find a new El Dorado in the virgin thicket of digits. Indeed: is there a place where happiness is wiser, more cloudless, than in this miraculous world? Steel rusts; the ancient God created an ancient human capable of mistakes--and, therefore, He made a mistake Himself. The multiplication table is wiser, more absolute than the ancient God: it never--you understand-- it never makes mistakes. And there is nothing happier than digits, living according to the well-constructed, eternal laws of the multiplication table. Without wavering, without erring. The truth is one, and the true path is one; and this truth is two-times-two, and this true path is four. And wouldn't it be absurd, if these happily, ideally multiplying pairs started to think about some kind of freedom, by which I clearly mean-- about making a mistake?I'd say that's pretty good. Logic prevails. Happiness lies in predictable, mathematical order. Poets and mathematicians to not invent, do not imagine. Instead they simply discover what is already there, reveal what is true. Freedom is a mistake. On the other hand, we can't help but look at We historically, because we know how important two plus two is in George Orwell's 1984 where the state can force even mathematics to bend to its will and become two plus two equals five.

[ben_a_11 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A dystopia of a Taylorized, rationalized totalitarian future, told from the perspective of an adherent of the OneState, and the designer of that tyranny's signature achievement, the spaceship Integral. It's in Russian, so what do I know, but the prose as translated is both ironical and poetical: "The gods had become like us, ergo we've become like gods." Recommended.

[altheaann · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really wish I'd had the opportunity to read this book back at the age of 12 or 13 or so, when I discovered 1984 and Brave New World. I enjoyed reading this book now - but I would have been passionate about it then.

Either way, this ranks up there with the best of the classic dystopian novels. It's an incisive indictment of totalitarian states, filled with black humor and disturbing tragedy.

[souloftherose · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is an early dystopian novel, possibly one of the earliest and certainly an inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. In fact, I was surprised how closely the plot of 1984 follows the plot of We.D-503 is our narrator and the head of the great Integral project of OneState. In OneState people are given numbers rather than names and every hour of the day has an allocated activity. As a background to D-503's narration, the Integral is being developed, something like a spaceship or rocket that will be able to fly to other planets so that the inhabitants of those planets can also share in the beauty that is OneState. OneState, it seems, has decided that it is best for humanity to have happiness rather than freedom. In fact, it believes that happiness lies in having no freedom. D-503 starts off as an enthusiastic supporter of OneState but when he meets and becomes enthralled by the rebellious female I-330, he becomes more and more confused about what he believes. The novel is described as a prose poem and I have to confess that I felt like I struggled with the prose at times. I read the 1993 translation by Clarence Brown, published by Penguin Classics but I found a couple of reviews that preferred the 2006 translation by Natasha Randall so this may partly have been due to the translation I was reading. I think there is probably a lot more to this short novel than I picked up on from my slightly rushed first read. Zamyatin uses a lot of mathematical imagery that I would like to think about more deeply on a reread. I think 1984 would probably get my vote for the better book but We is certainly worth reading if you want to understand the background to Orwell's book."I shall attempt nothing more than to note down what I see, what I think - or, to be more exact, what we think (that's right: we, and let this WE be the title of these records). But this, surely, will be a derivative of our life, of the mathematically perfect life of OneState, and if that is so, then won't this be, of its own accord, whatever I may wish, an epic?"

[trueneutral · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the earliest dystopian novels and, while I didn't really like it all that much (because of the writing style), I don't regret reading it. It's one of the sources of inspiration for Orwell's 1984 and the story is very similar. I loved 1984, but We is written in a completely different style, read somewhere that it is described as a prose poem. It's written as the diary of one D-503 (they get numbers in the OneState) that goes through a lot of psychological turmoil throughout the book becoming more and more confused and delirious after meeting the rebel woman I-330. He starts having a "soul" and suffers from "imagination", things that have been banished in the OneState - which is built on the premise that humanity needs to be happy and it can only achieve that through the lack of freedom and by living and thinking only according to rigorous mathematical concepts.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

D-503 lives in a perfect world, the One State, where everyone lives for the whole collective and there is no individual freedom. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is a record of the diary of D-503, a mathematician who is living and working in this apparent Utopia. However the cracks appear and it becomes clear that this is really a Dystopia. Dystopia is utopia's polarized mirror image. While using many of the same concepts as utopia—for example, social stability created by authoritarian regimentation—dystopia presents these ideas pessimistically. Dystopia angrily challenges utopia's fundamental assumption of human perfectibility, arguing that humanity's inherent flaws negate the possibility of constructing perfect societies, except for those that are perfectly hellish. Fictional dystopias like the one in We present grim, oppressive societies.Zamyatin skillfully has his protagonist slowly discover the true nature of his world and his own being. The changes begin with discoveries like that of irrational numbers: "This irrational root had sunk into me, like something foreign, alien, frightening, it devoured me--it couldn't be comprehended or defused because it was beyond ratios." (p 36) The world of D-503 is two centuries in the future and much of the thinking of the "Ancients" has been lost but all is not forgotten, unfortunately what is remembered is treated mainly with disdain as superstitious nonsense. It does not belong in the perfect world of the One State.D-503 realizes he is more than a mathematician, he is a poet, and "Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus, but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down. " (p 59). But he has his doubts. He meets I-330, a temptress who defies the rules, and he finds her appealing. Their relationship reminded me of the myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden. The story told by D-503 in his diary is a tragedy for him, but not necessarily for the state in which he exists. This reader found the logic of his journey appealing even while the symbols and references of the author were often mysterious and elusive. The novel was most effective in its portrayal of the atmosphere, the feeling of what it was like to live in the collective world of the One State. In this Zamyatin showed the way for Huxley , Orwell, Bradbury and others who followed him in establishing the twentiety-century Dystopian literary tradition.

[birdbrian-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Author Yevgeny Zamyatin took part in two Russian Revolutions, hoping to overthrow the abusive and excessive Czarist system. He had joined the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), and believed Lenin's promises of a more equitable society, where labor controlled the means of production. By 1920, he tried to remain hopeful, but it was becoming apparent that the country was going in the wrong direction. Three long years since the Revolution had not moved anyone closer to a "workers' paradise"; if anything, it had seen the development of more severe censorship, martial law, and police state surveillance. Across town from Zamyatin's flat, Joseph Stalin was contemplating delicate political maneuvers which would make him the uncontested dictator of the USSR in five years' time. Zamyatin couldn't have known about that, but he knew something was amiss, so he picked up his pen and began writing We. Along with George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, this 1921 novel is the least-known of the triumvirate of big 20th century dystopian tales. It has a special credibility for being not only the first of the three written, but also the only one composed by someone who was actually living in a police state. This gives the work an immediacy which the other two lack. Whereas 1984 and Brave New World only point to a faroff England which might one day be, We bears the imprint of the Soviet society Zamyatin inhabited daily. It is the story of a mathematician (D-503) on staff with the space agency of the One State. It shares plot elements with 1984, in that D-503 starts off an apathetic but essentially pliant tool of the state. He has an emotionless association with lifepartner O-90, and an arm's-length friendship with propaganda publisher R-13, but these accessories fail to bring any pleasure or purpose to his life. Entertainment in the One State consists of political functions and state-arranged prostitution with an assortment of joyless partners. Along comes (what else?) a woman and shakes everything up. I-330 is unlike anybody D-503 has ever met before. She's so full of life, so luminary in an otherwise drab and gray oppressive world. What makes her different? Same as the Julia character in 1984: she's got critical thinking skills, she believes there is more to life than the monolithic State, and she harbors a spark of rebellion in her. She's part of an underground resistance called the "Mephi". The parallels with 1984 are very strong here. D-503 and I-330 enjoy a brief romance, during which he becomes aware of the stifling true nature of the State. He starts to share her dream of what an alternative world, a better world could be, but before he can act on it, the State discovers them and intervenes. D-503 is broken... not with torture as in 1984, but with a lobotomy. Just as Winston Smith is induced to sacrifice Juliet to preserve himself, We closes with the execution of unrepentant I-330.Did Orwell rip off Zamyatin? The paths of influence are unmistakable, but no. The two works bring very different strengths to the table. Orwell examines the political mechanisms of tyrrany. His entire exploration of the interaction between Inner Party, Outer Party and Proles is brilliant; as is the balance of power between Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia; the Inner Party's use of the Trotsky-like scapegoat Emmanuel Goldstein; the manipulation of language to political ends in "newspeak"; and O'Brein's dissertation on the history of Oligarchical Collectivism. These are all Orwell's own, and they make 1984 the powerful work it is. We, on the other hand, examines totalitarian life on a much more personal level- as one might expect from an author with Zamyatin's life experiences. D-503 lives his life mechanically, with the resignation of the completely disempowered. He looks for somebody or something at which to target his anger, but the problem is everywhere; he's entrapped within a comprehensive and interlocking political/economic/social/academic system, with no hope for escape. His loveless partnership with O-90 sucks the life out of him, but he can't be angry at her; her life is as bad as his. His job holds diversionary value for him, but he isn't free to explore his own interests; he serves at the pleasure of the State, and is only valued as a tool to further State aims. The recreational prostitution available to him has no element of personal connection, desire, or conquest. In truth, it's a sort of disguised duty, because once he declines partaking in the sexual bread-and-circus any more, it raises suspicion. Zamyatin was probably as intellectually able as Orwell to explore the political science of the One State, but he doesn't, because he is interpreting his own life experiences through D-503, and unlike Orwell, he has the credibility to do so. In fact, one testament to the truth and authenticity of this novel is the official Soviet response to its printing: Zamyatin had the good sense to know We couldn't be printed in the USSR, so he had it smuggled to Czechoslovakia. When the book became a minor sensation in the West in 1921, Zamyatin was harassed by the NKVD (secret police) and suffered numerous career setbacks. His timing was good though, in that We was first published years before Stalin consolidated power through a series of purges and showtrials, beginning in 1934. If Zamyatin had still been around in '34, there is little doubt he would have been rounded up and tried with other dissidents, and then worked to death in a gulag camp. As it is, he was able to get his friend Maxim Gorky to personally appeal to Stalin, to allow him [Zamyatin] to leave the country. He emigrated to Paris in 1931, and We remained contraband literature in Russia until 1988.If you have an interest in dystopian literature, this book is not to be missed. Personal note: one of my college admission essays was about We.

[aylin1-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dystopia in a "Utopian" society where everyone is happy because there is no longer anything to worry about. Portends the mindset of Stalinist Russia. Everything is perfectly harmonized and calculated- almost. This story is set in that thought-provoking grey margin.

[herschelian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nightmarish vision of the future which influenced Huxley's "Brave New World"

[ocgreg34 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A Russian masterpiece about a utopian society and those willing to rebel against it.

[louiserb_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Unlike the bleak environment that Orwell portrays, We is colorful and wonderous, full of enthusiasm for the New World Order - in parallel to the hopes and desires of the new Soviet Union - but at what cost taht belief?