We

By Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mint Editions

We (1924) is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Written between 1920 and 1921, the novel reflects its author’s growing disillusionment with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War. Smuggled out of the country, the manuscript was translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg and published in New York in 1924.

In a series of diary entries, D-503, an engineer in charge of building the spaceship Integral, reflects on life in the One State. In this totalitarian society, people live within glass structures under direct, constant surveillance by the Benefactor and his operatives. When he is not working on the Integral, D-503 visits with his state-appointed lover O-90 and spends time with his friend R-13, a poet who reads his works at executions. On a walk with O-90, D-503 meets a free-spirited woman named I-330, who flirts with him and eventually convinces him to transgress the rules he has followed his whole life. Although he plans to turn her over to authorities, he cannot bring himself to betray her trust, and begins to have dreams for the first time in his life. Struggling to balance his duty to the state with his strange new feelings, D-503 moves closer and closer to the limits of law and life.

This edition of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We is a classic of Russian literature and dystopian science fiction reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Release date: Mar 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781513278766

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 1

AN ANNOUNCEMENT—THE WISEST OF LINES—A POEM

This is merely a copy, word by 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. A 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 load which the Integral will carry.

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

I feel my cheeks are burning 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, 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 shall, therefore, 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 itself, despite my limitations? It will. I believe, I know it.

I feel my cheeks are burning 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 2

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 men certainly also), have today sweet lips. This disturbs somewhat 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 steam!) I love, I am sure it will not be an error if I say we 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 into the very blue depth of things. One sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One sees them 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 an unheard Tarantella. I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, of this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is a 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 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 herself will be here to take me for the walk.

Dear O—! She always seems to me to look like her name, O—. She is approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal Norm. Therefore she appears all round; 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 fly-wheel was still buzzing in my 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 with all its pipes, the March of the United State. 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 the 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 which 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 time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelopipeds 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, bill-boards, 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, in 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 motivate 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 wrote 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 which rose to the temples in an acute angle,—like the sharp corners 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, made all of circles with a child-like 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 my confused 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 say in the 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, Ape-like.

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 O-, 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 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.

The woman had upon me a disagreeable effect, like an irrational component of an equation which you cannot eliminate. I was glad to remain alone with dear O-, 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 3

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 some day 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 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 were rushing 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 humanity acquired this habit of a sedentary form of life not without difficulty and not 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 seemed uncomfortable to live in cities which were cut off from each other by green debris. But what of it? Man 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 clad with a Green Wall; I cannot imagine a life which is not clad with 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 not I a poet, so as to be able properly to glorify the Tables, 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 united powerful 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 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 even for these hours, a place in the general formula. 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, an unorganized primitive state. One thing has always seemed to me the most improbable: how could a government, even a primitive government, permit people to live without anything like our Tables,—without compulsory walks, without precise

Reviews for We

[clara53_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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…”

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[verkruissen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[pomo58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[iansales_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[octoberdad · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[runningbeardbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[billycongo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[sarcher-3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[kcshankd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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!

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[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.

[weeturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[razinha-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“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.

[neuroklinik · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Well, Ursula K. Le Guin apparently liked it... guess there's no accounting for taste. Poorly written, so metaphorical as to be nearly illegible.

[saresmoore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[vladmihaisima · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[reneepaule · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I never knew this book existed until recently. It goes to show, one thing, or book, leads to another - always :)

[drardavis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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”.

[encephalical · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fucking awesome.

[greeniezona · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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!

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A seminal science fiction work of a totalitarian society. Very enjoyable and easy to see the massive impact it has had on subsequent works.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[valerieandbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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...