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    We
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    Ebook268 pages4 hours

    We

    By Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mirra Ginsburg

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    Yevgeny Zamyatin's page-turning science fiction adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, We is the classic dystopian novel that became the basis for the tales of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Margaret Atwood, among so many others. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was at the beginning of the twentieth.

    In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier -- and whatever alien species are to be found there -- will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.


    One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful 1-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery -- or rediscovery -- of inner space...and that disease the ancients called the soul.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 15, 2015
    ISBN9780062446947
    Author

    Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

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    Reviews for We

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    • 4/5
      I was reading this book in the same course as I was reading "Brave New World." "Brave New World" did not hold my attention enough to read it fully. "We" did."We" is the narrator's letter of praise for his enlightened society, to be sent as cargo with a newly invented space craft to the other civilizations of the universe where the society intends to spread. Part of my preference for "We" over "Brave New World" was the dated feel of "Brave New World," and how We felt that much more estranged from society. As a dystopian novel "We" struck me as being both alien and sinister. The new ideal society feels like such an affront to our current ideas of freedom, and to hear it spoken of as such a grand and wonderful system by the narrator, coupled with knowledge that the narrator's intention is to bring this society to us. That there is no real "out" in this society as there was in "Brave New World" makes it hit that much harder.
    • 4/5
      I bought the audiobook earlier this year and Grover Gardner gave his typically excellent narration. However, I find science fiction sometimes difficult to process in audiobook form and after starting this I decided I did need to have a copy of the text, so I borrowed the Kindle book from the library. The Kindle edition turned out to be a different translation but it was close enough for my purposes. Of the two translations, I had a slight preference for Brown's but they were both good. I did also appreciate the foreword in the audiobook by Brown about the history of this book & how he came to doing this translation, more so after I had finished the book. This is the sort of thing I typically skip when reading but since it wasn't labelled as an introduction or foreword, I got 'tricked' into listening to itand am glad I did (though I do think it should have been labelled rather than being called 'chapter one'!).As for the book itself, I could see why the U.S.S.R. refused to publish it back in 1921 even though in the end the government, OneState, wins out over the 'counterrevolutionaries' in a somewhat heartbreaking ending. It is tempting to compare the fictional OneState to the old Soviet Union but in fact I feel that its attempt at creating perfect happiness (at the expense of freedom and imagination) could have arisen anywhere. And I found the question of which is preferable - happiness or imagination - extremely difficult to answer personally even when I felt the answer for society as a whole was clearly imagination. Of course, what I would like is to have both!! But that wasn't one of the options...
    • 4/5
      Some of this book was boring to me, but considering when it was written it makes it very impressive. I definitely prefer more modern dystopias, but I am glad that I read the book that basically begin one of my favorite genres of books.
    • 5/5
      A precursor and inspiration to most dystopian novels Zamyatin's We is a spectacular account of a future One State. In this One State order is the pinnacle of happiness and freedom equates to unhappiness. Everything and everyone in the One State operates on a schedule, there are no surprises, no one has a proper name (rather a letter followed by a number, determined it seems by gender) and little is left private (buildings are constructed mostly of glass). That is, until the main character (and author of the journal that makes up the book) D-503 meets I-330 and has his normal life turned on end. And as you can imagine things get interesting for D-503 from here.

      The language of the novel is quite striking, for an excellent example check out Ben Loory's review as he quotes the finest example. If you have any interest in dystopian novels this is an absolute must read.
    • 4/5
      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?"
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Not usually a genre I read (sci-fi/dystopian). But, I was compelled to read with a couple others (on Litsy), We , because it was supposed to be a precursor and/or inspiration for 1984, which I had recently finished reading. We was banned in CCCP until 1988 because of the novel's assumed criticism of the government. There's a lot of colorful and descriptive prose which at times felt very satirical. We seems to have influenced other works as well, not just 1984. I was somewhat reminded at times of Anthem by Ayn Rand while reading. My translation was the one by Clarence Brown; there has been several translated versions over the years and one may want to research (maybe by "looking inside the book" on amazon) before deciding on one to read.
    • 3/5
      We is a dystopian novel set in the far future. The hero, D-503, is a true believer in the all-encompassing state:"How pleasant it was to feel someone's vigilant eye lovingly protecting you from the slightest misstep. Sentimental as it may sound, that same analogy came into my head again: the 'guardian angel' as imagined by the Ancients. How much has materialized in our lives that they only ever imagined."When D-503 meets and comes under the influence of I-330, an underground dissident, his world begins to fall apart, as he questions life as he has always known it.This book was interesting to me as an intellectual challenge. I read it because it is on the 1001 list. It is historically important (it was the first book banned by the Soviet Union), and extremely influential on later novels, such as 1984. However, I never became immersed in the story, or felt as one with the characters, as I did in 1984, with Winston and Julia.
    • 5/5
      Published in 1924 this dystopian novel is now firmly fixed as a classic of 20th century literary science fiction ranking alongside George Orwell's [1984] and Aldous Huxley's [Brave New World]. [We] predates both these novels and while Huxley claimed not to have read it Orwell admitted that his idea of a modern dystopia was written following a reading of [We]. Curiously Huxley's stable, safe drug induced and happy[Brave New world] is much more like [We] than Orwell's claustrophobic shabby world of spies informers and shortages.Zamtatin's We is set in the far future and follows the near annihilation of the human race following the catastrophic 200 years war. The One State is ruled by the Benefactor; the inhabitants have numbers instead of names and live in a modern city almost entirely made of glass surrounded by the green wall that excludes the anarchic fecund world of nature. No privacy is required in a city whose inhabitants work and play according to a rigid timetable, everyone getting up at the same time and having the same hours of recreation. Within the timetable are generous amounts of sex days according to need and every number(person) has the right of availability to any other person on the production of a pink ticket; blinds can be lowered for 15 minutes while sexual intercourse takes place. Nothing is concealed from the guardians and it is a citizens duty to report any law breakers; conversations out of doors are carefully monitored. The story focuses on D-503 who has the misfortune to fall in love and suffer a mental breakdown; he is an important mathematician and builder of the INTEGRAL the first rocket ship designed to export the One State culture to other worlds. The object of his affection I-330 is the leader of an underground group who are intent on stealing the INTEGRAL to link up with the natural outside world.The One State is by no means an unhappy society; although it aims to eradicate individuality numbers like D-503 revel in its safety, its conformity, its productiveness and its feeling of companionability. The freedom of past civilizations is seen as disorganised wildness and in D-503's opinion does not compare to the harmonious, clean and carefree world in which he lives. D503's story is told in a series of records that he imagines he is writing for someone to read in the twentieth century and so he extolls the virtues of his society and the reader feels the poetry of the mathematically structured world of the future. D-503 is excited by his world and so his doubts and fears as he becomes a sick number (person) through his mental breakdown are scatter shots of the wildness that he fears.The ability to create a world that entices and fascinates the reader is a pre-requisite of much dystopian/science fiction writing, but to make the novel have literary merit the author has to go further. Zamyatin does this by his ambiguity about the merits of the One State and the reader asks himself the question: is all the conformity as bad as it first appears; seduced perhaps by some fine writing full of images that convey the beauty that D-503 sees in his world. The reader also is witness to the disintegration of this world through the thoughts of a man losing his grip on reality, what is real and what is not becomes a question that hovers over this book. The language is certainly dreamlike and perhaps a little druggy like the reflections in the glass that surround everything in the One State. The book has a feel and an atmosphere all of it's own and the writing would appeal to those who like the work of [[Cordwainer Smith]]I found myself re-reading parts of this novel in appreciation of its imagery and its flow, always a good sign. Here is D-503 falling in love and discovering his soul;The two of us walked along as one . Somewhere a long ways off through the fog you could hear the sun singing, everything was supple. pearly, golden, pink, red,. The whole world was one immense woman and we were in her very womb, we hadn't yet been born, we were enjoying ripening. And it was clear unshakeably clear, that all of this was for me: the sun, the fog, the pink, the gold - for me. I didn't ask where we were going, going, ripening, burgeoning and supple.As a dystopian science fiction novel it ranks along with the very best and so deserves 5 stars, as literature I suppose it is a four star read, hence my rating of 4.5 stars. (I will never think of a pink ticket in quite the same way again)
    • 4/5
      In this dystopian far future, people have become like cogs in a machine, identified by number rather than name, performing the same rote tasks at the same time every day, and believing that happiness only comes from giving up freedom.We is a Russian novel written in the 1920s in response to the two Russian revolutions, as well as to the author's experiences working in the Tyne shipyards and witnessing the collectivization of labor on a large scale. It is one of the earliest examples of the dystopian novel, and it influenced both George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. For readers interested in the history of dystopian literature, it is a must-read.However, it's a bit of a frustrating read, especially for readers more interested in a riveting story. Zamyatin writes in an almost poetic style, often bordering on the surreal, and it can be difficult at times to figure out exactly what is happening. (He also has an annoying quirk of letting his sentences trail off into ellipses.) When I find myself reading a book like this, one more concerned with words and images than sense and story, I read it almost like poetry. I just let the images flow over me and absorb what I can, without bothering to parse the story too much. That's why I'm hard put to describe the plot of We.The novel takes place in a city made entirely of glass and separated from the natural world by an immense glass wall. This in itself is an overwhelming image: a city bathed in sunlight, where everyone can see everyone else at almost all times, except for the once-weekly allowed sex visits when the blinds can come down. Zamyatin plays with this juxtaposition of the sunny, beautiful city as the place of oppression. When the winds and storms come, we sense that revolution is brewing, and when the mass flocks of birds break through, we know that the walls preserving this totalitarian regime are crumbling.While We lacks the coherent, straightforward plot we're used to in contemporary dystopias, and sometimes teeters on the edge of the absurd, it is still a powerful read. It's not difficult to spot the tropes that have been appropriated and expanded upon by later authors who tackled the dystopian form. I think it's always interesting to take a look at a genre's roots, if only to realize how old, but still powerful, these ideas are.Reading the classics (2014).
    • 5/5
      This classic novel is elegantly written (even in translation!), timeless in its message and so perfect in its assessment of what is often called "the human condition". I am so glad I read it. "We" is not "just another dystopian novel". Zamyatin captures the inability of humans to eliminate their soul, no matter how many generations of indoctrination have taken place. The story is told as a diary by the main character, who begins as a supporter of the United State. In his writing, D-503 (yes everyone is a number) explores the concept that individuality breeds discontent and therefore never results in happiness. To avoid this unhappy state, ones life must be circumscribed by specific rules, including how many times to chew your food, in order to attain a feeling of contentment. He meets someone who totally contradicts that message and, perhaps for the first time in his life, has to confront what it means to think and act for oneself. This is devastating and leads him to seek medical help. He discovers that the happiness he thought he shared with others is not real. Other members of society have similar difficulties and fears about suppressing their individualism. Everything blows up at the end. I won't reveal what happens, but it is an amazing novel. Unforgettable and absolutely at the top of my list of all-time favorites.
    • 4/5
      A great dystopian science fiction which condemns a mechanistic totalitarian society. D-503 is an ordinary cipher in the One State, until he meets the strangely attractive and rebellious I-330. His entire perception changes over the course of the book. Zamyatin uses mathematical language and symbology throughout, as well as curious ellipses and unfinished thoughts -- to show D-503's deteriorating(?) mindset as well as his relationships with other characters. The language is sparse ,but compelling. It's a very good effort from translator Natasha Randall.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      I am reading this book because Ursula K LeGuin, in one of her essays, mentioned its main character as one of the most memorable in all of her reading.

      It's an ancestor of 1984 and Brave New World. As such, it's an interesting study in society and, coming from a Russian and written in 1920-1, was considered thoroughly blasphemous. It's a little heavy handed sometimes, but maybe all books of this type are... also, no one EVER finishes their sentences in this book. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what the heck anybody is talking about. Definitely not the easiest read. But I am enjoying it.
    • 2/5
      The cover of my copy of this book claims to be the most influential science fiction novel of the 20th century. I'm not convinced that's the case, unless it influenced Orwell and Huxley and Bradbury and claims vicarious influence through them, because let's face it: most people haven't even heard of this book. It is indeed a dystopia, where people have willingly sacrificed their freedom and individuality in the name of happiness. Everyone has a letter and number instead of a name. Everyone's actions are completely synchronized, down to each bite of food. All walls are transparent except during sex, which is restricted to certain hours of the day and only with a pre-approved coupon from your partner. When our protagonist, D503, meets the alluringly subversive I330, his world is turned upside-down. Unfortunately, the writing is kind of terrible. A good portion of the sentences end in ellipses, leading me to wonder if anybody in this world is capable of finishing a sentence. It leaves a whole bunch of stuff to inference. Maybe I'm just dense, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out what was going on. And then, after all that confusion, the ending still manages to be trite and predictable. There's a reason why 1984 and Brave New World are more famous than this one: their plots and philosophies, at least, are possible to follow. If you read only one dystopian novel this year, choose something else.
    • 4/5
      I read this in undergrad and truly enjoyed it. I also love Brave New World which is quite similar.  
    • 5/5
      I was hooked to this book by the end of the first chapter. It follows D-503, mathematician, as he keeps a journal destined to be sent up in a spacecraft full of propaganda concerning the greatness of One State. As with many novels depicting 'perfect societies' before and after it, the story revolves around realizing the importance of personal liberties and holding onto a sense of self, even when circumstances try to force the abandonment of these things in exchange for safety and predictability. This book caught my attention more than some other dystopian novels because of the way it was told. I loved the point of view and how protagonist D-503 struggles to keep his known reality in order as it continuously and ever more drastically falls apart. I related to this person, which may say some crazy things about me, but I can't help it. Have you ever thought you had something figured out, or thought something was going well, and then watched it crash and burn and stood in the wreckage and thought to yourself, "where did it all go wrong...?" Then you should read this book.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      This story of the thirtieth century is set in the One State, a society where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes the form of the diary of state mathematician D-503, who, to his shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: love for another human being. (Modern Library)..This says it better than I can.

      Because this was written in the 1920's it is pretty fascinating for that reason alone. Written by a brilliant man about the future in the words of a mathematician, the book is a diary and is written in such a fashion that thoughts are not always complete. It is also a love story as well as a story of rebellion from the collective good. I think there is much symbolism in the story and one would benefit from reading this book several times.
    • 5/5
      Provocative insight into the human psyche and the frightening tolerance of human beings to allow a limit upon their individual freedom by an oppressive state. The author creates a world where the state comes first and the people are completely subordinated to the state. While the state is ruled by a governing elite that appear enforce the will and power of the government upon the people, there seems to be no shocking limit to what the people will endure in service to the state. All sense of individuality have been removed from the people, such as names, the choice of sexual partners, food, et al. As the state seeks to expand its ever increasing hold over the people, a revolutionary medical procedure has been developed which will strip the people of their individuality. Adults have no problem subjecting children to the medical procedure but when it is their time for the procedure, chaos and anarchy breaks within the state out by a select few who resist the attempt. The author wrote this book prior to a number of similar books, such as "1984", and is heralded as a visionary. A must read for anyone who loves and understands the concept of freedom. The fictional world created by the author's view was most likely deemed "not possible" at the time of its writing as it was published to protest the events developing within Communist Russia. However, when this book is read today and one considers the technical advances of medicine and the unprecedented loss of freedom on a worldwide scale, the fictitious future envisioned by the author seems to be on the verge of becoming a reality!
    • 3/5
      This is a very weird book. It's written in a very strange fashion that almost seems like the ravings of a madman or like someone trapped in a dream. Like its descendants "Brave New World" and "1984," "We" is a chilling tale of a "utopia" that tries to make people act as close to machines as possible, culminating in a lobotomy of the imagination. Having a "soul" is considered an illness, and for D-503, the protagonist whose journal we are reading, everything changes when he meets the intoxicating and enigmatic woman I-330.Since we are only seeing this world through D-503's journal, we get only tantalizing hints of what this glass utopian world looks like, and D-503 seems incapable of writing a complete, coherent sentence of dialogue. I don't know if that's just the style of the author or partially a problem with translating from Russian, but it was a bit frustrating trying to understand what was going on. "1984" and "Brave New World" are much more accessible to a modern audience, and while I recommend reading "We" at least once, because it is an interesting style and there's some lovely imagery in it, I did not enjoy myself enough to read it again.
    • 3/5
      It was really interesting but I'm kinda confused which is why I can't give it a higher rating. I really loved the writing style and D-503 was such an interesting character.
    • 3/5
      I know that this book is often-cited as Orwell's inspiration for '1984' leading to 'Brave New World' by Huxley ... and I see the parallels, but this book lacked the boldness and maybe some of the clarity found in other dystopian classics.

      Probably worth the read from a purely literary perspective, especially if you love classic dystopian and sci-fi literature.
    • 4/5
      We has left me with general impressions more than with definite ideas - I think I probably need to read it again to get more out of it.

      The most striking impression is that of the glass buildings and the green glass-filtered twilight in which the numbers of the One State pass their orderly, centrally controlled lives. The almost complete lack of privacy and unending scrutiny by neighbours, or even passers-by in the street, strikes me as more horrific than the surveillance by Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four

      Lots of other images: the Tablet of Hours (smartphones and electronic organisers?); "coitus permits"; the regimented citizens marching in unison along the glass pavements; the massive Art Deco (in my mind) spaceship, The Integral; the glass Wall enclosing the city of the One State and the surrounding jungle, pressed up against it: chaos awaiting its inevitable entry into the ordered system precariously maintained by the Benefactor; the robotic numbers who have undergone the Operation (reminding me somewhat of the Scanners in Scanners Live in Vain from The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith).

      It took me a while to read this one, not because of any difficulties with the book itself, but because I was simultaneously reading another rather hefty tome. Next time, I think I will concentrate on We and see I get more of Zamyatin's meaning.
    • 5/5
      When you're trying to create a compelling dystopia for the reader (or for yourself, or whoever man), it strikes me, there are no easy choices. Do you go for lazy accessibility, a la Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where everybody's kind of aaaaalmost a lower upper middle class British technocrat only with the sexual mores that we know all those lower upper middle class British technocrats would adopt for their own if they thought they were either attractice or iconoclastic enough to get away with it? Do you go for radical camp, like George Orwell in 1984, where psychological plausibility takes second place to totalitarian gothic? (Many of us will have seen that thing that points out how Airstrip One is a fever dream but London 632 After Ford is already here.)Or do you take the path less chosen, the face less boottrod, the hole of obstacle golf less played? Zamyatin, whose status as the major source for both Huxley and Orwell is so obvious as to be beyond dispute (a feat in itself! though Huxley did deny it) gives us a disjointed, inaccessible, but oh-so-real insider's view of a thousand-year reich where simultaneously all that is solid is melting into air (fittingly, given that humans are "numbers") through the eyes of one of its more brilliant and poetic denizens (D-503 he gets the chance to be because he's the designer of the spaceship, the Integral, through which the One State is going to enslave the other planets of the galaxy. This state, conceived at the beginning of the Soviet era, still needs people in such creative genius roles; I suspect that if it ever actually comes to this kind of frank totalitarianism the invasion fleet'll be built by a million sleepy dudes screwing together a billion widgets). It's an extraordinary book and I have no idea how to review it except to say that I read it like a tone-diary of fears and curiosity-never-stamped-out and the tender shoots of humanity, protected anxiously by tender humans not even equipped to realize that their actions constitute rebellion (but none the less subject to liquidation for that).Our one right is the right to punishment. What is the last number? Horrifying and heady thoughts, and this book's full of 'em. It's psychologically real--a veritable Gormenghast in the gleaming machine of our more awful possibilities as a planet--and for that, from outside the bad future with no bad future brain, it's hard to follow where Zamyatin goes at times. I didn't always understand what kind of neural bloodflowers were bursting forth from D-503's head, but I will always remember this book and you should too.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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?
    • 5/5
      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.

    Book preview

    We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

    First Entry

    I shall simply copy, word for word, the proclamation that appeared today in the One State Gazette:

    The building of the Integral will be completed in one hundred and twenty days. The great historic hour when the first Integral will soar into cosmic space is drawing near. One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subdued the entire terrestrial globe to the power of the One State. Yours will be a still more glorious feat: you will integrate the infinite equation of the universe with the aid of the fire-breathing, electric glass Integral. You will subjugate the unknown beings on other planets, who may still be living in the primitive condition of freedom, to the beneficent yoke of reason. If they fail to understand that we bring them mathematically infallible happiness, it will be our duty to compel them to be happy. But before resorting to arms, we shall try the power of words.

    In the name of the Benefactor, therefore, we proclaim to all the numbers of the One State:

    Everyone who feels capable of doing so must compose tracts, odes, manifestoes, poems, or other works extolling the beauty and the grandeur of the One State.

    This will be the first cargo to be carried by the Integral.

    Long live the One State, long live the numbers, long live the Benefactor!

    I write this, and I feel: my cheeks are burning. Yes, to integrate the grandiose cosmic equation. Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to a tangent—an asymptote—a straight line. For the line of the One State is the straight line. The great, divine, exact, wise straight line—the wisest of all lines.

    I, D-503, Builder of the Integral, am only one of the mathematicians of the One State. My pen, accustomed to figures, does not know how to create the music of assonances and rhymes. I shall merely attempt to record what I see and think, or, to be more exact, what we think (precisely so—we, and let this We be the title of my record). But since this record will be a derivative of our life, of the mathematically perfect life of the One State, will it not be, of itself, and regardless of my will or skill, a poem? It will I believe, I know it.

    I write this, and my cheeks are burning. This must be similar to what a woman feels when she first senses within herself the pulse of a new, still tiny, still blind little human being. It is I, and at the same time, not I. And for many long months it will be necessary to nourish it with my own life, my own blood, then tear it painfully from myself and lay it at the feet of the One State.

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

    Second Entry

    Spring. From beyond the Green Wall, from the wild, invisible plains, the wind brings yellow honey pollen of some unknown flowers. The sweet pollen dries your lips, and every minute you pass your tongue over them. The lips of all the women you see must be sweet (of the men, too, of course). This interferes to some extent with the flow of logical thought.

    But the sky! Blue, unblemished by a single cloud. (How wild the tastes of the ancients, whose poets could be inspired by those absurd, disorderly, stupidly tumbling piles of vapor!) I love—I am certain I can safely say, we love—only such a sterile, immaculate sky. On days like this the whole world is cast of the same impregnable, eternal glass as the Green Wall, as all our buildings. On days like this you see the bluest depth of things, their hitherto unknown, astonishing equations—you see them even in the most familiar everyday objects.

    Take, for instance, this. In the morning I was at the dock where the Integral is being built and suddenly I saw: the lathes; the regulator spheres rotating with closed eyes, utterly oblivious of all; the cranks flashing, swinging left and right; the balance beam proudly swaying its shoulders; the bit of the slotting machine dancing up and down in time to unheard music Suddenly I saw the whole beauty of this grandiose mechanical ballet, flooded with pale blue sunlight.

    And then, to myself: Why is this beautiful? Why is dance beautiful? Answer: because it is unfree motion, because the whole profound meaning of dance lies precisely in absolute, esthetic subordination, in ideal unfreedom. And if it is true that our forebears abandoned themselves to dance at the most exalted moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), it means only one thing: the instinct of unfreedom is organically inherent in man from time immemorial, and we, in our present life, are only consciously. . . .

    I will have to finish later: the annunciator clicked. I looked up: O-90, of course. In half a minute she’ll be here, for our daily walk.

    Dear O! It always seems to me that she looks exactly like her name: about ten centimeters shorter than the Maternal Norm, and therefore carved in the round, all of her, with that pink O, her mouth, open to meet every word I say. And also, that round, plump fold on her wrist, like a baby’s.

    When she came in, the flywheel of logic was still humming at full swing within me, and I began, by sheer force of inertia, to speak to her about the formula I had just established, which encompassed everything-—dance, machines, and all of us.

    Marvelous, isn’t it? I asked.

    Yes, marvelous. O-90 smiled rosily at me. ‘It’s spring."

    Well, wouldn’t you know: spring . . . She talks about spring. Women . . . I fell silent.

    Downstairs, the avenue was full. In such weather, the afternoon personal hour is used for an additional walk. As always, the Music Plant played the March of the One State with all its trumpets. The numbers walked in even ranks, four abreast, ecstatically stepping in time to the music—hundreds, thousands of numbers, in pale blue unifs,* with golden badges on their breasts, bearing the State Number of each man and woman. And I—the four of us—but one of the innumerable waves in this mighty stream. On my left, O-90 (if this were being written by one of my hairy ancestors a thousand years ago, he probably would have described her by that funny word mine); on my right, two numbers I did not know, male and female.

    Blessedly blue sky, tiny baby suns in every badge, faces unshadowed by the insanity of thoughts . . . Rays. Do you understand that? Everything made of some single, radiant, smiling substance. And the brass rhythms: Ta-ta-ta-tam! Ta-ta-ta-tam! Like brass stairs gleaming in the sun, and every step taking you higher and higher, into the dizzying blue. . . .

    And again, as this morning at the dock, I saw everything as though for the first time in my life: the straight, immutable streets, the glittering glass of the pavements, the divine parallelepipeds of the transparent houses, the square harmony of the gray-blue ranks. And I felt: it was not the generations before me, but I—yes, I—who had conquered the old God and the old life. It was I who had created all this. And I was like a tower, I dared not move an elbow lest walls, cupolas, machines tumble in fragments about me.

    Then—a leap across the centuries, from + to − I remembered (evidently an association by contrast) —I suddenly remembered a picture I had seen in a museum: one of their avenues, out of the twentieth century, dazzlingly motley, a teeming crush of people, wheels, animals, posters, trees, colors, birds. . . . And they say this had really existed—could exist. It seemed so incredible, so preposterous that I could not contain myself and burst out laughing.

    And immediately, there was an echo—laughter—on my right I turned: a flash of white—extraordinarily white and sharp teeth, an unfamiliar female face.

    Forgive me, she said, but you looked at everything around you with such an inspired air, like some mythical god on the seventh day of creation. It seems to me you are sure that even I was created by you, and by no one else. I am very flattered. . . .

    All this—without a smile; I would even say, with a certain deference (perhaps she knew that I am the Builder of the Integral). But in the eyes, or in the eyebrows—I could not tell—there was a certain strange, irritating X, which I could not capture, could not define in figures.

    For some odd reason, I felt embarrassed and tried, in a rather stumbling manner, to explain my laughter to her logically. It was entirely clear, I said, that this contrast, this impassable abyss between the present and the past . . .

    But why impassable? (What white teeth!) A bridge can be thrown across an abyss. Just think: drums, battalions, ranks—all this has also existed in the past; and, consequently . . .

    But of course! I cried. (What an astonishing coincidence of ideas: she spoke almost my own words, the words I had written down before our walk.) You understand, even ideas. And this is because nobody is ‘one,’ but ‘one of.’ We are so alike. . . .

    She: Are you sure?

    I saw her eyebrows raised to her temples at a sharp angle, like the pointed horns of an X, and again I was confused. I glanced right, left, and . . .

    On my right—she, slender, sharp, stubbornly pliant, like a whip, I-330 (I could see her number now); on my left—O, altogether different, all curves, with that childish fold on her wrist; and at the other end of our row, a male number I did not know—strange, doubly bent somehow, like the letter S. All of us so different . . .

    That one on the right, I-330, seemed to have intercepted my flustered glance, and with a sigh she said, Yes. . . . Alas!

    Actually, this alas was entirely appropriate. But again there was that something in her face, or in her voice. . . . And with a sharpness unusual for me, I said, No reason for ‘Alas.’ Science progresses, and it is obvious that, if not now, then in fifty or a hundred years . . .

    Even everyone’s noses . . .

    Yes, I almost shouted, "noses. If there is any ground for envy, no matter what it is . . . If I have a button-nose and another . .

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