Zamiatin’s "We": the Future of the Soviet Regime
"We" is a science fiction novel that was written by Yevgeny Zamiatin in the 1920’s. The book depicts a futuristic society where individual freedom has been abolished by the all encompassing OneState. Zamiatin wrote We to describe the kind of world that would exist with the time, technology and resources available to establish a powerful totalitarian state. In many ways he was prophetic about the things to come following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
The significance of the title ‘We’ is meant to represent the collectivist mindset the OneState society and D-503 at the beginning of the story. “[F]orget that you’re a gram ‘I’ and feel yourself a millionth part of a ton ‘We’,” D-503 explains (Zamiatin ). This is how he accepts the loss of his individual rights to OneState by seeing himself as ‘We’ instead of ‘I’. This mentality is the result of the OneState process of socializing its numbers through regulation, propaganda, and any other methods necessary.
George Orwell was wrong in his review of We that the Soviet regime was not the target of Zamiatin’s satire. The methods of indoctrination used by OneState and that of the Bolshevik regime are similar. Although the Bolsheviks never had the technology to do a ‘Great Operation,’ had they the means, they would use it or any other tactic for achieving their goals. The Benefactor is a clear reference to Lenin, from his bald head to his cult of personality. Taylorism too, and its ‘Table’ that regulates everyone’s entire day and prevents individual initiative, is a reference to Lenin and his insistence on introducing Taylorism into Soviet factories: “We must raise the question of piece-work and apply and test it in practice; we must raise the question of applying much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system; we must make wages correspond to the total amount of goods turned out (The Immediate Task).” Also, Zamiatin anticipates the notion of the “compulsory organization of freedom” (elaborated much later by Czeslaw Milosz) and was prophetic about the direction the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 would take. With a one party state where the party retains all power and doesn’t allow opposition, elections are just a show with no meaning. Also, like the odes written by poets like R-13 to OneState, later in the Soviet Union because of censorship artistic expression would serve the state.
Zamiatin’s novel was written in experimental prose. Not written in chapters, but in records by our hero D-503 the builder of the INTEGRAL. The INTEGRAL is a spaceship OneState is building. D-503 keeps his records for us to receive when the INTEGRAL reaches our far away world. The purpose is to educate us should we be in what D-503 calls “the primitive state known as freedom (Zamiatin 1).” If we don’t submit to OneState’s “mathematically infallible happiness,” then the passengers of the INTEGRAL will be “obliged to force them [us] to be happy (Zamiatin 1).”
Everything in OneState is based in mathematics and science and is infallible; from the mathematical formula of happiness to the mechanical rhythm of the numbers chewing in unison the optimum number of chews of their petroleum nourishment. This illustrates the kind of scientific fetishism held by the intelligentsi. They believed Communism would inevitably come about because of the linear path of history that was scientifically mapped out by Marx. The intelligentsia so revered the scientific and cultural contributions of the West that they would adopt the new ideas because they saw them as the latest in educated opinion.
Not everyone in OneState is indoctrinated and a true believer like D-503 in the beginning of We. A secret group of revolutionaries called ‘Mephi’, named after a demonic creature from an old tale, seek to overthrow OneState and use D-503 and the INTEGRAL to do it. I-330 is one of these people that are free in their own mind and it was her duty to manipulate D-503. She seduces him and exposes him to free thoughts and new feelings. I-330 explains to him about the 200 Years War and those beyond the Green Wall. The ‘Mephi’ and those in the world beyond the Green Wall are free.
D-503 explains in terms we can understand that there are two forces in the world: energy and entropy. “One of them [energy] leads to blissful tranquility, to happy equilibrium. The other [entropy] leads to the disruption of equilibrium, to the torment of perpetual movement (Zamiatin 159).” D-503 tries to show what the opposition group ‘Mephi’ means, and that is entropy. A disruption of OneState like on the Day of Unanimity with the vote being split. I-330, later in an impassioned speech with an explicit political and philosophical statement coming straight from Zamiatin, tells D-503 the need for disruption, “You’ve got to smash them into each other—so there’ll be fire, explosion, inferno. And we—we’re going to smash them(Zamiatin 169).” She explains the need for new revolutions to shake things up; that there can be no final revolution as there can be no final number.
“The number of revolutions is infinite. The last one—that’s for children. Infinity frightens children,” I-330 tells D-503 (Zamiatin 168). Infantilization of society is one of Zamiatin’s concerns. In We OneState took away the freedom of its citizen’s leaving them like helpless children. They, the numbers, have always lived in a glass cage always doing their duties without question. They are not free and independent, but like children not free and dependent on OneState like a parent. This security and dependency created by OneState has made its citizens actually love their chains, “[e]verything is very simple, childishly simple-Paradise! The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians: All those things represent good… [b]ecause that is what protects our nonfreedom, which is to say our happiness (Zamiatin ).” D-503 wouldn’t know what to do if he were free because he has so long, his whole life, been under the yoke of OneState.
Although D-503 is in a state of nonfreedom he is free, in a sense, from making decisions. OneState has made all his choices for D-503 and sheltered him from the adult responsibility for oneself. The exposure of freedom by I-330 shatters D-503’s childlike understanding of the world. A conflict in him is created between his public self and his private self. D-503 has been tainted with free thoughts and begins to make choices. He has feelings that make him believe he is sick, sick because he doesn’t understand them. D-503 went to I-330’s doctor friend and listed his symptoms: “insomnia, dreams, a shadow, a yellow world (Zamiatin 86).” The scissor-lipped doctor tells D-503 he has a soul, and that the condition is incurable. D-503 soul is a result of his new sense of individuality. No longer is he in the lock step OneState collectivist mentality, instead his mind is infected with freedom.
These ailments Zamiatin’s hero is suffering from are new and difficult for him to comprehend. Just as the irrational number the square root of negative one confused and frustrated D-503 in his childhood, these feelings, dreams and his soul have no tangible corresponding part in the real world. This number, the square root of negative one, is represented in mathematics as i, the very idea of individuality that is bothering him. D-503 asks the doctor, “what is going on (Zamiatin 69)?” The doctor explains that a soul is like a reflection in a mirror, the image of the two of them and for an instant an aero when it goes by are in it. They exist but are intangible. The image and soul are real, but are not empirically. They cannot be weighed, measured, nor calculated.
The end of the novel is tragic with D-503 being cured of his ‘soul’ and his free will. The ‘Great Operation’ is forced upon him and he takes his place at the side of the Benefactor. The plan of the Mephi to use the INTEGRAL against OneState is thwarted by the Guardians. And I-330 is brought before the Benefactor for interrogation and torture before she is executed while D-503 watches happily. This is the tragedy of the future that could be released by the revolution of 1917 as predicted by Zamiatin.
The significance of the title ‘We’ is meant to represent the collectivist mindset the OneState society and D-503 at the beginning of the story. “[F]orget that you’re a gram ‘I’ and feel yourself a millionth part of a ton ‘We’,” D-503 explains (Zamiatin ). This is how he accepts the loss of his individual rights to OneState by seeing himself as ‘We’ instead of ‘I’. This mentality is the result of the OneState process of socializing its numbers through regulation, propaganda, and any other methods necessary.
George Orwell was wrong in his review of We that the Soviet regime was not the target of Zamiatin’s satire. The methods of indoctrination used by OneState and that of the Bolshevik regime are similar. Although the Bolsheviks never had the technology to do a ‘Great Operation,’ had they the means, they would use it or any other tactic for achieving their goals. The Benefactor is a clear reference to Lenin, from his bald head to his cult of personality. Taylorism too, and its ‘Table’ that regulates everyone’s entire day and prevents individual initiative, is a reference to Lenin and his insistence on introducing Taylorism into Soviet factories: “We must raise the question of piece-work and apply and test it in practice; we must raise the question of applying much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system; we must make wages correspond to the total amount of goods turned out (The Immediate Task).” Also, Zamiatin anticipates the notion of the “compulsory organization of freedom” (elaborated much later by Czeslaw Milosz) and was prophetic about the direction the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 would take. With a one party state where the party retains all power and doesn’t allow opposition, elections are just a show with no meaning. Also, like the odes written by poets like R-13 to OneState, later in the Soviet Union because of censorship artistic expression would serve the state.
Zamiatin’s novel was written in experimental prose. Not written in chapters, but in records by our hero D-503 the builder of the INTEGRAL. The INTEGRAL is a spaceship OneState is building. D-503 keeps his records for us to receive when the INTEGRAL reaches our far away world. The purpose is to educate us should we be in what D-503 calls “the primitive state known as freedom (Zamiatin 1).” If we don’t submit to OneState’s “mathematically infallible happiness,” then the passengers of the INTEGRAL will be “obliged to force them [us] to be happy (Zamiatin 1).”
Everything in OneState is based in mathematics and science and is infallible; from the mathematical formula of happiness to the mechanical rhythm of the numbers chewing in unison the optimum number of chews of their petroleum nourishment. This illustrates the kind of scientific fetishism held by the intelligentsi. They believed Communism would inevitably come about because of the linear path of history that was scientifically mapped out by Marx. The intelligentsia so revered the scientific and cultural contributions of the West that they would adopt the new ideas because they saw them as the latest in educated opinion.
Not everyone in OneState is indoctrinated and a true believer like D-503 in the beginning of We. A secret group of revolutionaries called ‘Mephi’, named after a demonic creature from an old tale, seek to overthrow OneState and use D-503 and the INTEGRAL to do it. I-330 is one of these people that are free in their own mind and it was her duty to manipulate D-503. She seduces him and exposes him to free thoughts and new feelings. I-330 explains to him about the 200 Years War and those beyond the Green Wall. The ‘Mephi’ and those in the world beyond the Green Wall are free.
D-503 explains in terms we can understand that there are two forces in the world: energy and entropy. “One of them [energy] leads to blissful tranquility, to happy equilibrium. The other [entropy] leads to the disruption of equilibrium, to the torment of perpetual movement (Zamiatin 159).” D-503 tries to show what the opposition group ‘Mephi’ means, and that is entropy. A disruption of OneState like on the Day of Unanimity with the vote being split. I-330, later in an impassioned speech with an explicit political and philosophical statement coming straight from Zamiatin, tells D-503 the need for disruption, “You’ve got to smash them into each other—so there’ll be fire, explosion, inferno. And we—we’re going to smash them(Zamiatin 169).” She explains the need for new revolutions to shake things up; that there can be no final revolution as there can be no final number.
“The number of revolutions is infinite. The last one—that’s for children. Infinity frightens children,” I-330 tells D-503 (Zamiatin 168). Infantilization of society is one of Zamiatin’s concerns. In We OneState took away the freedom of its citizen’s leaving them like helpless children. They, the numbers, have always lived in a glass cage always doing their duties without question. They are not free and independent, but like children not free and dependent on OneState like a parent. This security and dependency created by OneState has made its citizens actually love their chains, “[e]verything is very simple, childishly simple-Paradise! The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians: All those things represent good… [b]ecause that is what protects our nonfreedom, which is to say our happiness (Zamiatin ).” D-503 wouldn’t know what to do if he were free because he has so long, his whole life, been under the yoke of OneState.
Although D-503 is in a state of nonfreedom he is free, in a sense, from making decisions. OneState has made all his choices for D-503 and sheltered him from the adult responsibility for oneself. The exposure of freedom by I-330 shatters D-503’s childlike understanding of the world. A conflict in him is created between his public self and his private self. D-503 has been tainted with free thoughts and begins to make choices. He has feelings that make him believe he is sick, sick because he doesn’t understand them. D-503 went to I-330’s doctor friend and listed his symptoms: “insomnia, dreams, a shadow, a yellow world (Zamiatin 86).” The scissor-lipped doctor tells D-503 he has a soul, and that the condition is incurable. D-503 soul is a result of his new sense of individuality. No longer is he in the lock step OneState collectivist mentality, instead his mind is infected with freedom.
These ailments Zamiatin’s hero is suffering from are new and difficult for him to comprehend. Just as the irrational number the square root of negative one confused and frustrated D-503 in his childhood, these feelings, dreams and his soul have no tangible corresponding part in the real world. This number, the square root of negative one, is represented in mathematics as i, the very idea of individuality that is bothering him. D-503 asks the doctor, “what is going on (Zamiatin 69)?” The doctor explains that a soul is like a reflection in a mirror, the image of the two of them and for an instant an aero when it goes by are in it. They exist but are intangible. The image and soul are real, but are not empirically. They cannot be weighed, measured, nor calculated.
The end of the novel is tragic with D-503 being cured of his ‘soul’ and his free will. The ‘Great Operation’ is forced upon him and he takes his place at the side of the Benefactor. The plan of the Mephi to use the INTEGRAL against OneState is thwarted by the Guardians. And I-330 is brought before the Benefactor for interrogation and torture before she is executed while D-503 watches happily. This is the tragedy of the future that could be released by the revolution of 1917 as predicted by Zamiatin.
Works Cited
Zamiatin, Yevgeny. We. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Lenin, V.I. The Immediate Task of the Soviet Government (March 1918). Encyclopedia of
Zamiatin, Yevgeny. We. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Lenin, V.I. The Immediate Task of the Soviet Government (March 1918). Encyclopedia of
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