We (Modern Library Classics)

Set in a future where people are known as Ciphers and everyone lives in vast glass and steel Panopticon-style cities, We is a book that's clearly influenced others writing in the SF genre (most notable, George Orwell's 1984).

It describes a strange dystopian society - each Cipher has a name designation consisting of letters and numbers and all live their lives open to the view of others, the only exception being when they engage in pink ticket permitted sexual activities. The main protagonist, D-503, is in charge of building a vast glass and steel space rocket, which the One State under the control of its Benefactor, plans to use to export their society's ideals to other planets.

D-503 is a man who lives for numbers and his love of the One State and the book is structured around his journals (each chapter being termed a 'Record'), which he's produced at the bequest of the One State, and which he hopes will be put into the rocket. Through these journals, we discover his sexual infatuation with I-390, a woman who introduces him to pleasures forbidden by the One State such as smoking and drinking and who puts on the strange dresses of the Ancients (people who died out in a 200 year war that led to the creation of the One State) and who D-503 gradually learns is involved with a resistance group determined to overthrow the One State.

Much of the text is devoted to D-503's inner turmoil as he struggles to come to grips with feelings that he's never experienced before and his terror at having his imagination and his desires stimulated by I-390. We also see the impact this has on his 'happy' triangular relationship with the poet R-13 and the woman, O-90, who loves him and wants only to have D-503's child.

I found it a difficult book to read. Zamyatin's engineering background means that maths plays a large part of D-503's thinking and is also one of the main devices used to structure the One State and for me, this was difficult to engage with. Zamyatin also makes use of the social techniques that were new and exciting at the time of writing, most notably Taylorism, which the One State puts to use in structuring its workforce and delineating their daily routine. Stylistically, I also found it to be frustrating, particularly in the way in which no-one seems capable of finishing a line of dialogue (mostly the characters end with ellipses). However, there are some genuinely chilling moments - most notably in the ceremonies that Zamyatin describes that bind the society together, e.g. the way in which people recite poetry before executions, the Bell Jar torture device and the bureaucracy around which the One State is built.

From the point of view of this being an important foundation stone within the SF genre, I think that this is an important book to read, albeit not one that people will necessarily find easy to enjoy.

A New Modern-translation of a Great Novel Everyone Should Read to Really Appreciate the Freedom we Have (2/2 people found this helpful)

A futuristic novel written in 1921 but that orbits around a fictional city (One State) that exists in the thirtieth century. Its author is the Russian revolutionary Yevgeny Zamyatin and its story has a mathematician (coded name D-303) who works as a cipher for the totalitarian government of One State, a society where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist (any resemblance to communism?). D-303 is working as a member of the team building the world's first rocket. His very brain-washed small world collapses as he met a woman coded name I-330 to whom he falls in love, an emotion that briefly makes him a free man.

Absolutely a recommended reading that had a great influence and served as an inspiration for later remarkable works in literature and music. A must Read, even if you read the previous translation you should consider reading this modern-translation which delivers far better the author insights.

I am he as you are he as you are me (7/7 people found this helpful)

and we are all together.

The Beatles' "I am the Walrus" provides some flavor of the atmosphere of the futuristic society found in Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian classic "WE". Written in the fledgling Soviet Union in 1920 "WE" had a direct influence n Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ayn Rand's Anthem. In fact, Rand's Anthem tracks "WE" so closely both as to plot and character development that one cannot help but think that Zamyatin's influence on Rand was significant, to say the least.

Zamyatin was born in 1884 and studied naval engineering as a young man. Like many young Russian intellectuals Zamyatin was something of a revolutionary. He was arrested and exiled more than once by the Tsar's secret police for revolutionary activities. During the First World War Zamyatin, by now a naval enginner was sent to England were he supervised the construction of icebreakers for the Russian navy. He returned to Russia upon the outbreak of the October 1917 revolution. Zamyatin turned to writing full time after the revolution. Although a Bolshevik, Zamyatin chafed at the increasing censorship the Bolshevik's imposed on artists and writers. In fact, WE was the first novel to be banned by the newly formed literary censorship board, GLAVLIT. WE was not officially published in Russia or the USSR until 1988. Not able to earn a living as a writer in the USSR, Zamyatin applied for an exit visa. Zamyatin was granted an exit visa and he emigrated to Paris, were he died a sick and poverty stricken man in 1937.

WE takes place in the twenty-sixth century a time in which a totalitarian regime has created an extremely regimented society where individual expression simply does not exist. All remnants of individuality have been stripped from its inhabitants including their names. Their names have been replaced with an alpha-numeric system. People are not coupled. Rather, each individual is assigned three friends with whom they can have intimate relations on a rigid schedule established by the state. Those scheduled assignations are the only times the shades in a citizen's glass houses can be closed. Apart from those hourly intervals everyone's life is monitored by the state. As in Orwell's 1984 language has been turned on its head. Freedom means unhappiness and conformity and the submission of individual will to the state means happiness.

D-503 is a mathematician. He is busily engaged working on the construction of a spaceship, the Integral, which will carry the wonderful benefits of "The One State" to those living on distant planets. He keeps a diary to provide a record of his feelings in the weeks before the launch. But into his perfectly well-structured life walks I-330. She evokes in D-503 feelings which he has long suppressed or never knew he had. He falls in love, can't sleep, and starts breaking rules and generally acting like most of us do today. But I-330 is a heretic, an individual who smokes, drinks, loves carnal knowledge and seeks nothing more but the dissolution of the One State. The next thing you know D-503 finds himself on the side of revolution. As the book reaches it climactic moments questions as to the failure or success of the revolution are answered.

WE was a fascinating book to read. Some of the language is a bit dated and Zamyatin's 1921 idea of what the future might look like has been outstripped by the reality the 20th and 21st-centuries. However, the underlying themes of conformity v. freedom and "the state" v the individual still have great contemporary significance that keeps WE as fresh as it was when originally written.

Some have said that WE represented Zamyatin's attack on the oppression of the Soviet system. I would have to disagree. The book was written in 1920 well before the Soviet regime consolidated enough power to be considered a totalitarian society. Further, even though WE contains some reference to the damage caused by regimes such as the fledgling USSR it also contains reference (looking back from the 26th-century) to societal ills caused by both capitalism and organized religion. As such, Zamyatin believed in equal opportunity when it came to instruments of oppression.

At the end of the day it seems that what Zamyatin valued most in society were those people will to play the role of heretic. It certainly was a trait he valued in artists. As he noted in an essay written in 1919:

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

Zamyatin was a heretic, a dreamer, and a rebel. WE is a worthy monument to a person who believed that the individual was more important than the state without regard to whether that state had `all life's answers'. WE should be enjoyed by anyone who has read and liked H.G. Wells (who influenced Zamyatin), Huxly, or Orwell. This is a book worth reading.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Reader Reviews:

One for serious students of SF and its history, more than for those looking for an easy read (0/0 people found this helpful)

A New Modern-translation of a Great Novel Everyone Should Read to Really Appreciate the Freedom we Have (2/2 people found this helpful)

I am he as you are he as you are me (7/7 people found this helpful)

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