Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We is an often-overlooked precursor to classics like George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Ursula Le Guin called it “the greatest work of science fiction ever written.” The novel raises questions about science and technology, but more deeply about love and rationality.
Some people find dystopian, anti-utopian fiction already depressing, distracting, monotonous, and outdated, like an extension of the evening news. It's like blaming the mirror for what we see. We don't like what we see, but we can't stop staring. Wars have crossed our shores. Politics has turned into street fights, democracy is in question, and authoritarianism is on the rise. American optimism is fading. The mirror is cracked.
Written in the early days of the Russian Revolution, after the fall of the tsarist government in 1921, the novel feels universal and timely rather than a critique of the early Soviet Union. The diary of the country's mathematician tells a story set in the 26th century. Characters are identified by numbers rather than names. The protagonist is D-503, a loyal citizen and diary writer, and the female is I-330, a free spirit. The country is ruled by a “Benefactor” and logic and rationality reign supreme. All citizens are surgically stripped of emotions. Every aspect of daily life is monitored, from surveillance greenhouses to regulated sex. Sex is the only time the curtains can be closed.
D-503, normally aloof, praises the order and stability of the state. But when he meets a woman, I-330, he discovers love and is confused. “In ancient times, Christians understood this emotion.” He is torn by her attraction to him in defiance of the state. Love is illegal because it threatens common sense. The authorities arrest D-503, restore him to his original state, and make him undergo another operation. I-330 is executed.
What is most troubling is not political oppression, but the influence of rationalism and the illusion of goodwill. I-330 tells the still emotionless D-503: “You will impose the merciful yoke of reason around the neck of those who may still live in a primitive state of freedom, and you will force them to be happy.” When everything must be rational, nothing is rational, freedom is an artificial thing, and happiness is a demand.
The story shows that the pursuit of order in a more perfect, rationally organized society leads to tyranny. Utopianism does not lead to totalitarianism, but using law to enforce peace and harmony is tyrannical. Ironically, many liberals today who claim to value freedom try to stifle debate over conflict. Freedom of speech is essential, as long as they are not too conservative. We stretch the definition of “hate speech” to anything that hurts someone's feelings or threatens public safety. Tolerance is what one critic calls “a bad imitation of kindness, the hatred of all difficulties and circumstances.”
The novel makes clear that the ability to choose conflict and suffering over peace and security is essential to freedom. Far from being a necessary evil, the state becomes an essential good when it protects individual freedom from tradition, reason, right or left, benefactors who wield dictatorial power. The soul of politics transcends “democracy”; it lies in freedom. Freedom is a quality that requires resilience and a willingness to make mistakes.
As Zamyatin put it in a later essay: “Some men are alive and yet dead, and some are alive and yet alive. The dead write, walk, talk, act, but they make no mistakes and produce only dead things. The living and yet alive are always making mistakes, searching, and suffering.”
So, with love. The woman who captures D-503's heart in “We” is often compared to Eve, the temptress who tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Like Eve, she too is a catalyst for rebellion and awakening.
Her words are timeless: “Only those who refuse to be dominated can love.” No longer innocent, but free.
Notes and reading
Freedom of Speech – Zamyatin would have been aware of John Stuart Mill's views on liberty and free speech. Mill famously argued that freedom of speech should include the freedom to offend. But he also said that this freedom “must be based on the enduring interest of man as a progressive being.” Freedom of speech is of little value if it serves reactionary purposes.
“The living dead do not make mistakes…” – Zamyatin, “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Questions” (1923), from The Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1992).
Religion – We have parallels with the Bible, especially the Book of Genesis, with the One Nation representing Paradise, D-503 representing Adam, and I-330 representing Eve. The group of rebels symbolizes Satan's rebellion against Heaven. Zamyatin uses these religious elements to criticize both organized religion and militant atheistic society. The Benefactor is portrayed as a tyrannical god-like figure who suppresses individuality and freedom.
“You are in a terrible state …” State doctor to D-503, we (1921) – Evgeny Zamyatin (Penguin Vitae, 2021), record 16. “You will impose the merciful yoke of reason …” – record 1. “You can only love something …” – I-330 to D-503, record 13.
Tolerance is often what one critic calls “a bad imitation of kindness.” – G. K. Chesterton, “Strange Feet,” in The Complete Father Brown (Penguin, 1981).
moreover
“There is a debate between authority and anarchy. The point is not to create a unified society of 'shared values' – such a society has never existed before, or only at the tip of the executioner's axe – but to create a society that can get by non-violently in the absence of shared values, apart from the shared value of trying to resolve conflicts non-violently.”
— “Let the Words Be Spoken: Why Liberals Have a Hard Time Defending Liberalism,” Adam Gopnik, New Yorker reporter (May 27, 2024).
“You don’t have to be nice to your political opponents, but you do have to talk to them.” Washington Post (March 8, 2017) Article by Teresa Bejan, professor of politics at Oxford University and author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (2018).
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