In HuxleyвЂ™s book the problem of вЂhuman natureвЂ™ is in a sense solved, because it assumes that by pre-natal treatment, drugs and hypnotic suggestion the human organism can be specialised in any way that is desired. But though ZamyatinвЂ™s book is less well put together-it has a rather weak and episodic plot which is too complex to summarise-it has a political point which the other lacks. So far the resemblance with Brave New World is striking. Now the Single State has restored his happiness by removing his freedom.

In the Garden of Eden man was happy, but in his folly he demanded freedom and was driven out into the wilderness. The guiding principle of the State is that happiness and freedom are incompatible. The Single State is ruled over by a personage known as The Benefactor, who is annually re-elected by the entire population, the vote being always unanimous. For purposes of love-making everyone has a sort of ration book of pink tickets, and the partner with whom he spends one of his allotted sex hours signs the counterfoil. There is, of course, no marriage, though sex life does not appear to be completely promiscuous. At stated intervals they are allowed for one hour (known as вЂthe sex hourвЂ™) to lower the curtains round their glass apartments. They live on synthetic food, and their usual recreation is to march in fours while the anthem of the Single State is played through loudspeakers. They all wear identical uniforms, and a human being is commonly referred to either as вЂa numberвЂ™ or вЂa unifвЂ™ (uniform). They live in glass houses (this was written before television was invented), which enables the political police, known as the вЂGuardians,вЂ™ to supervise them more easily. In the twenty-sixth century, in ZamyatinвЂ™s vision of it, the inhabitants of Utopia have so completely lost their individuality as to be known only by numbers. The atmosphere of the two books is similar, and it is roughly speaking the same kind of society that is being described, though HuxleyвЂ™s book shows less political awareness and is more influenced by recent biological and psychological theories. Both books deal with the rebellion of the primitive human spirit against a rationalised, mechanised, painless world, and both stories are supposed to take place about six hundred years hence. The first thing anyone would notice about We is the fact-never pointed out, I believe-that Aldous HuxleyвЂ™s Brave New World must be partly derived from it. So far as I can judge it is not a book of the first order, but it is certainly an unusual one, and it is astonishing that no English publisher has been enterprising enough to re-issue it. The English translation was published in the United States, and I have never been able to procure a copy: but copies of the French translation (the title is Nous Autres) do exist, and I have at last succeeded in borrowing one. A copy of the manuscript found its way out of the country, and the book has appeared in English, French and Czech translations, but never in Russian. We was written about 1923, and though it is not about Russia and has no direct connection with contemporary politics-it is a fantasy dealing with the twenty-sixth century A.D.-it was refused publication on the ground that it was ideologically undesirable.

Zamyatin, who died in Paris in 1937, was a Russian novelist and critic who published a number of books both before and after the Revolution.

Looking it up in Gleb StruveвЂ™s 25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature, I find its history to have been this: Several years after hearing of its existence, I have at last got my hands on a copy of ZamyatinвЂ™s We, which is one of the literary curiosities of this book-burning age.

This material remains under copyright and is reproduced by kind permission of the Orwell Estate and Penguin Books. Buy We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (BlackwellвЂ™s).Paul Owen: 1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?.Home / Orwell / Essays and other works / Freedom and Happiness (Review of вЂWeвЂ™ by Yevgeny Zamyatin) Freedom and Happiness (Review of вЂWeвЂ™ by Yevgeny Zamyatin)

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