A short life of the author
Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) was born on 1 February 1884 in Lebedyan, Tambov Province, Russia. He was a Bolshevik who became disillusioned with the revolution. He was a naval engineer who supervised the construction of Russian icebreakers in England during World War I.
Life and Career
My (We, written 1920–1921, first published in English translation 1924) — narrated by D-503, a mathematician in the One State, a totalitarian society enclosed in a glass city where citizens live according to the Table of Hours and are surveilled by the Bureau of Guardians — was the first modern dystopian novel. It was never published in the Soviet Union during Zamyatin’s lifetime; it was smuggled out and published abroad.
The novel directly influenced Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) — Orwell reviewed the novel and acknowledged its influence.
After We was published abroad, Zamyatin was persecuted by Soviet literary authorities. In 1931, with Maxim Gorky’s help, he was permitted to emigrate. He died in Paris in 1937.
Major Works and Themes
Zamyatin wrote about freedom, individuality, and the dangers of rationalized totalitarianism. We is the ur-text of the dystopian genre.
Key Works
- We (1924)
Collecting Zamyatin
The first English translation (Dutton, 1924) is the primary collected form for Western collectors — the novel was first published in English, not Russian. It brings $500–$2,000 in fine condition. Zamyatin died in 1937.