The Novel that Influenced a Century of Dystopias

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We

In 1924, Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote a dystopian novel called We, which influenced countless dystopian authors, especially George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Zamyatin (1884-1937), a Russian author, was a popular figure in Russian society until the Soviet Revolution. He was increasingly pushed out of the literary scene before writing We.

Dystopia and We’s Influence

In the preface to his wonderful anthology of dystopian stories, Brave New Worlds (Dystopian Stories) (2012), John Joseph Adams writes:

The roots of the word dystopia—dys- and -topia—are from the Ancient Greek for “bad” and “place,” and so we use the term to describe an unfavorable society in which to live. . . . In a dystopian story, society itself is typically the antagonist; it is society that is actively working against the protagonist’s aims and desires. This oppression frequently is enacted by a totalitarian or authoritarian government, resulting in the loss of civil liberties and untenable living conditions.

We wasn’t the first influential dystopian story of the twentieth century. Earlier works include E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1908) and Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908).

But We captures the ruthless elements of totalitarianism in ways that especially resonate with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Kurt Vonnegut noted that We and Brave New World influenced his novel, Player Piano (1952): “I cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.” Huxley denied that his novel was influenced by We, but Orwell thought so.

Another notable dystopian novel owes a profound debt to We—Karin Boye’s Kallocain (1940). Sandwiched between Huxley and Orwell, Boye’s novel failed to achieve the fame of Orwell or Huxley, but it deserves to be ranked with them and We as one of the great dystopian novels of the twentieth century. Similar to We and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Boye’s novel involves a surveillance society where individuality is oppressed, where everyone rats on each other, and where there is no trust. Boye’s unique dimension involves a scientist who invents a drug called Kallocain that forces people to tell the truth.

Surveillance and Loss of Individuality

We takes place in a totalitarian society (called the “OneState”) where everything is regimented. Buildings are constructed of glass so people can be watched nearly all the time.

Although surveillance plays a key role in this novel, the predominant theme is the loss of individuality. People don’t have names – they are referred to by numbers. The narrator is called D-503.

People live in a world of total control. The state government is called the “Benefactor” which watches over everyone with the aid of its secret police, called the “Bureau of Guardians.” People’s days are highly regimented so that everyone is the same and acts in unison.

The novel centers around D-503, who becomes involved with a woman, I-330, who tells him that she is part of the Mephi, a resistance group. Ultimately, influenced by I-330, D-503 begins to transgress the law.

From Believer to Transgressor

Highly relevant for We are further words from Adams:

Many societies in fictions are depicted as utopias when in fact they are dystopias; like angels and demons, the two are sides of the same coin. This seemingly paradoxical situation can arise because, in ad dystopia, the society often gives up A in exchange for B, but the benefit of B blinds the society to the loss of A; it is often not until many years later that the loss of A is truly felt, and the citizens come to realize that the world they once thought acceptable (or even ideal) is not the world they thought it was.

Unlike Winston in Nineteen Eight-Four, the narrator of We begins as a believer in the OneState. But as the novel proceeds, his thinking evolves. Like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Big Brother tortures Winston until he becomes compliant, the OneState catches up with D-503 and alters his thinking in horrifying ways.

In an illuminating essay, Jacob Howland observes that Zamyatin was heavily influenced by Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

The One State is the completed Tower of Babel foreseen by the Grand Inquisitor of The Brothers Karamazov as the final solution to the riddle of history. It is the ultimate political embodiment of what Dostoyevsky characterizes as a Christian heresy that storms the heavens in the name of man—each and every man and woman—only to raise up, in place of the God whose incarnation exemplifies the dignity and worth of every human life, the abstract, fundamentally quantitative idea of Humanity. The homogenous multitude replaces the single individual in his or her inner infinity. This swindle—the deceptive substitution of quantity for quality—is characteristic of ideological tyranny, and indeed of modernity as such. As Dostoyevsky wrote in his notes for the novel, “Those who love men in general hate men in particular.”

We is very much a commentary on the Soviet Union, and it’s amazing Zamyatin and his book were able to escape. We was smuggled out of the country and wasn’t published there until 1988. It was first published in an English translation in 1924.

In 1931, Zamyatin wrote a letter to Stalin asking to be expelled from the USSR, and he was granted permission to be exiled. He spent the last six years of his life in Paris and died in poverty in 1937.

Taylorism

In the forward to an edition of We, journalist Masha Gessen writes:

Zamyatin [was] not only the original writer of totalitarianism but also one of its original victims. It also marks his biggest mistake as a writer of futurist fiction. In We, Zamyatin envisions the tyranny of rationality, a world of relentless causality. Every action has a predictable consequence. . . . If only things were so clear.

Totalitarian terror is random. Nothing—not even an upside-down world, an inside-out world, a world that rewards the absence of soul and prizes the death of nature—can be as frightening as a world that makes no sense. True terror works by making everyone believe that they can be imprisoned, condemned, beaten, raped, executed anytime—punished for nothing and everything, without cause, warning, or recourse to justice. What ultimately dates We—what, in a sense, reaffirms our perception of time—is that in 1920, Zamyatin could not yet imagine a tyranny of chaos.

While it is true that We involves a tyranny of efficiency and rational order, I don’t see this as a “mistake” or shortcoming. Generally, too much of anything is bad, and dystopias involve societies that have taken things to the extreme to stifle individuality and impose control. Huxley’s vision was the use of pleasure; Orwell’s was raw authoritarian power to demand people believe irrational things and distrust their own senses.

We focuses on a different dimension. It is a critique of Taylorism, the theory of Frederick Winslow Taylor that propounded the meticulous measurement of workers and the scientific management of the workplace for maximum efficiency.

This was the philosophy Henry Ford used in his factories, and although Taylorism is seen as dystopian today, it is very much alive and common in the corporate world.

Cartoon about Taylorism from 1927

Ursula Le Guin called We “the best single work of science fiction yet written.” I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I think We remains highly relevant today. It warns us about ruthless surveillance and the oppression of individuality. But even more relevant is its general warning about the sacrifices society makes for efficiency and order. Today’s equivalents include fulfillment centers, data centers, gig economy apps, data brokers, Flock cameras, DOGE, facial recognition systems, and many of the other things that Big Tech, corporations, and the government are doing.

My Other Essays of Interest

• Orwell vs. Huxley: Which Dystopia Was More Prescient?

• A Century Ago, E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” Predicted How AI and Digital Tech Are Hollowing Us Out

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  Daniel J. Solove is the Bernard Professor of Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is the founder of TeachPrivacy, a company that provides workforce privacy, cybersecurity security, and AI training to companies and organizations around the world. He is the author of 10+ books and 100+ articles.

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