OS Before George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and such lesser known dystopian novels as Ayn Rand's Anthem, there was Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin's We. Written in 1920, this brilliant, haunting novel is unrivaled for its clear-sighted exhortation against the cold calculus of Bolshevism. The book was written before Stalin's monstrous regime had caused the deaths of millions, but Zamiatin already had plenty of reasons to be alarmed by the faulty logic of a stark utilitarian ideology that aimed to ensure survival for the greatest number, but not individual liberty.
We, a work of startling originality, presents a world where every aspect of daily life is defined and regulated by fractions, geometric shapes, derivatives, and equations. In Zamiatin's mathematical utopia, all that "is" has been "integrated" into a "colossal universal equation". The prime objective of this 26th century utopia is to arrive at the great "integral", which would have the power to change the "cosmos" and bring about "mathematically faultless happiness".
Zamiatin was aware of the essential role of language in the new Communist regimeùthe capacity of loaded words and phrases to command a vast society by manipulating people's thinking, the apperception of their world. Both Huxley and Orwell borrowed from We, but it is Orwell's 1984ùwith its cleverly coined phrases indicating the government's use of language to control its citizensùthat continues to inspire contemporary writers. (Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a Canadian example). In his recent Seeing, JosT Saramago is preoccupied with similar concerns, although he tackles the problem of language and politics in his own unique fashion. Zoran Zivkovic, a Serbian novelist, and an Estonian writer, Mati Unt, dwell on the inner life or psyche of those living in countries with repressive regimes. Yet Zamiatin's We set a precedent in this respect too. The novel is written in the form of a diary with entries that reveal the gradual breakdown of a mathematically-gifted individual as he tries but fails to suppress the intense longings he fears will render him unworthy of the sterile elegance of his rationally-structured world.