We (novel)
We (
Мы,
1920) is a novel by
Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences with the Russian revolutions of
1905 and
1917.
We is a
dystopic satire, generally considered to be the grand daddy of the genre and direct inspiration for
Brave New World (
1932) and
Nineteen Eighty-Four (
1948). It takes the
totalitarian and conformative aspects of
Communism to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state
that believes that
free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizen's lives should be controlled with mathematical precision. The story is told in the diary of "D-503" (the hero's name), in which he describes his work building a spaceship
The Integral, whose purpose is to seek out and convert any extraterrestrial civilizations to the happiness that the One State has discovered, and his misadventures with a resistance group that seeks to do away with the Benefactor and his regime.
The novel was banned by Stalin and got Zamyatin arrested, though he eventually was exiled to Paris.