Zamyatin, Evgeny

(Soviet/Russian, 1884–1937)

Zamyatin was born in Lebedyan, and studied naval architecture in St Petersburg. He began writing following his imprisonment and subsequent deportation for taking part in the unsuccessful Revolution of 1905. A senior literary figure after the 1917 Revolution, his writing made him suspect and he emigrated to Paris around 1930. Begin with his only novel, We (1920–1), a futuristic account of a totally regulated society which influenced Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). The story's doomed lovers embody irrational urges towards which the state is hostile. Zamyatin's picture of stagnation under a benevolent dictator was taken as an allegory of Stalinism and the book remained long unpublished in the Soviet Union. Dragon (1966) is a collection of his short stories, which range from social satires to the science fiction of ‘The Most Important Thing’.

George Orwell, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley. See RUSSIA  DH