Yevgeny Zamyatin's Dystopian Novel "We:"
An Analysis of Life in a Rational Totalitarian Society.
by Antifascist

This place no good. (D. H. Lawrence's last written words)

"There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The difference lies only in the fact that one stick of dynamite explodes only once, but one book explodes a thousand times. Yevgeny Zamyatin"

Yevgeny Zamyatin's (1884-1937) dystopian novel "We" (1920) is the one of the best books you will ever read. British author, Eric Blair, was so impressed by Zamyatin's novel that eight months after reading "We," he wrote his own dystopian novel entitled, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948). Blair's pen name of course is George Orwell.

If you haven't read George Orwell's novel attacking totalitarianism, you're way over due. If you have already read Nineteen Eighty-Four, then you are in for a special treat: "We" is not a step down--it's a step up. You can re-experience that same excitement of insight again just like your first encounter with Nineteen Eighty-Four. The story plots are very, very similar and that can be a problem for previous readers of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I had to stop reading "We" and start over because my exposure to Orwell's novel greatly influenced my reading and interpretation of "We." In this sense, those that haven't read Orwell are in a unique situation. They can read Zamyatin's book before reading Orwell and get an unbiased, and even fresh interpretation of Zamyatin's novel. The story plot structures are nearly the same in both books, but their are subtle and yet profound differences in the authors' description, experience, and understanding of totalitarian societies.

Any analysis of "We" is inherently complex and challenging because there is Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four always shadowing the events within Zamyatin's novel so it is unavoidably awkward switching from one story and back to the other. Since Zamyatin's book is the primary focus of this study, I will assume that the Nineteen Eighty-Four story plot is known to the reader and contrast Orwell with Zamyatin at certain points to exam the philosophical and political distinctions in both views of totalitarian societies.

The central protagonist is named, D-503, who lives in a post war government know as "OneState" during the twenty-sixth century A.D. and is ruled by the "Benefactor." D-503 is a government scientist engineer building a glass spaceship named the "INTEGRAL" which will be used to colonized other planets. While constructing the spaceship D-503 starts a journal encouraged by the OneState that is initially meant to be a kind of ode and record of his society..."I shall attempt nothing more than to note down what I see, what I think--or to be more exact, what we think (that's right: we; and let this WE be the tile of these records)...a derivative of our life." Each chapter in the book is a numbered journal record. The entire city--including buildings and streets--in which D-503 lives is made of transparent glass and daily life is a highly regimented routine according to the time-labor efficient "Table of Hours" that schedules every moment of each "Number's" life. Everyone wears a uniform (Yuny) and electronic identification badge. These badges are have odd numbers, prefixed by consonants, to identify males. Females have even numbers with a preceding vowel.

D-503’s closest relationships are O-90 who is in love with D-503, a poet numbered R-13, and the manipulative I-330 with whom D-503 falls in love. Each person in the OneState is issued pink “Sex tickets” which they can register with another person to have sexual intercourse and while redeeming the coupon on “Sex Day” they can lower their window blinds for privacy—the only time that blinds are allowed. Through this system of time management D-503 gets involved with a resistance group called “Mephi,” which is a shorten name for “Mephistopheles,” that has plans to steal the INTEGRAL spaceship and use it as a weapon to destroy the OneState. The self confident logico-mathematician, D-503, becomes very disturbed undergoing a radical psychological change while writing his journal and begins to question the official State ideology and his personal world view at the same time there is a general uprising in the OneState that leads to mass arrests and punishment. The city's protective “Green Wall” designed to keep out unorganized primitive Nature is breached by survivors of the great 200 year war in which only 0.2 of the world population survived. The OneState responds to this limited uprising and chaos with a mass medical procedure called “The Great Operation.”

The similarities of this story plot with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four are striking: Winston Smith writes in his illegal diary about life in Oceania under the Ingsoc system ruled by "Big Brother" and has an illegal sexual relationship with a co-worker named Julia. Smith's job is to falsify government records in accordance to state propaganda, but is interested in the "Truth" of the past. Winston is given a copy of a book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism written by the dissident Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood. The book which is a critical analysis of Ingsoc. But Oceania is in a state of perpetual war and is a panoptical surveillance government making all personal activity transparent through ubiquitous "Telescreens." Winston and Julia are eventually arrested while under surveillance by the Thought Police to be imprisoned and tortured.

Yevgeny Zamyatin's (1884-1937)

George Orwell acknowledged using Zamyatin's book as the model for Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell read the French version of "We" published in 1924 and even wrote a review of it. The first English translation of "We" was published by Dutton in 1924. Ironically, the Russian language novel wasn't published in its native language until 1952.

However, Zamyatin's novel didn't appear in a vacuum. He was influenced by other writers before him who provided the themes for "We." Zamyatin read H.G. Wells thoroughly, even editing and writing a preface for a series of Wells' stories.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) was an English author that also influenced Zamyatin. Jerome authored an essay entitled, "The New Utopia" (1891) with a similar futuristic urban setting where men and women are uniformed and only wear numbers for identification using the same number system as in "We:" even numbers for women and odd numbers for men.

And in more recent history, Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Eugene Zamyatin's We." The science fiction movie "Blade Runner" based on Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is another contemporary example of utopia gone bad.

The greatest influence of all can be traced back to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor found in the pages of his novel THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. In this chapter Dostoevsky tells a parable of Christ returning to earth during the Inquisition in Seville and is promptly arrested by the Church-State, then sentenced to death--again. Before the execution is carried out, Christ is interrogated by The Grand Inquisitor and told the facts of Life. The central theme in all of these stories is Human Freedom and Domination. Other writers like H. D. Lawrence, Herman Kesten, Stefes Andres, Arthur Koestler--all interpreted political events in Europe after WWI with this parable in mind as the struggle of Humanity to choose Freedom or Bread. Both Orwell and Zamyatin were writing in the same genre of satirical dystopian literature that continues to this day.

The two books, "We" and Nineteen Eighty-Four have been called by literary theorist Northrop Frye "Menippean satire" which is a kind of fiction that focuses on attitudes, ideas, and theories with people embodying these world views in a story that reads more like a intellectual confession than a dramatic naturalistic novel. Winston Smith in the role of a bureaucratic propagandist and D-503 as a State scientist represent two repressed human beings slowly becoming conscious of the oppressive world around them through their diaries and journals. However, there are profound differences in the kind of totalitarian societies they exist and how the protagonists see themselves in that society.

RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL TOTALITARIAN SOCIETIES

D-503 enthusiastically begins his journal by coping the State's announcement of its space program launch of the INTEGRAL:

The spaceship's name is derived from the word "integration" which means to assimilate different element into a homogeneous whole. There is a type of propaganda called "sociological propaganda" or is sometimes called "integration propaganda" which is designed to unify thinking, viewpoints, and behavior into a specific pattern. Its goal is conformity by individuals and uniformity of society by establishing shared stereotypes, beliefs, and group reactions. Integration of persons ensures stable behavior, reshapes thought and action by unifying, remolding the person, and reinforcing group relations. “Integration propaganda” is not usually seen as “propaganda,” but as knowledge and so is “transparent.” The INTEGRAL represents, in short, the official ideology of the OneState. D-503 is a mathematician, a true believer of this ideology, and understands it as the embodiment of Reason itself.

However, Reason has a very specific societal meaning for D-503; Reason is the necessity of mathematics and the precision of scientific methodology. D-503 wrote,

This is a reductionist pan-mathematical view of Reason which is sole arbiter of truth--a Truth which is conveniently non-historical. Ambiguity and uncertainty is the enemy. Subjectivism is negated by authoritarian anti-introspective Objectivism: it is an epistemology for the authoritarian personality. D-503 is a complete evangelical ideologue “…we’re coming to make your life divinely rational and precise, like ours.(pp.68)”

All social action is based on this definition of Reason. Rationality is "instrumental rationality" which directs instrumental action. This type of action reduces the world, and people, to a mere objects for manipulation for a desired end. The cosmos is just, “…mute blue planets, where the rational stones are organized into societies. (pp. 177)” Therefore, it is only "reasonable" to take the next step and apply another key concept in this authoritarian rationality--"efficiency." D-503 writes, "Taylor was the genius of antiquity. True it never finally occurred to him to extend his method over the whole of life. Over every step you take right around the clock. ..but still, how could they write whole libraries about someone like Kant and hardly even notice Taylor-the prophet who could see ten centuries ahead? (pp. 34)" D-503 is writing about Frederick Winslow Taylor ( 1856-1915) who was an American engineer that founded the "Efficiency Movement" to improve industrial production using scientific management . He is know for developing Time-Motion Study to increase labor productivity. The OneState applied the same methodology to its "Numbers" so every minute was ordered and controlled. This schedule was published in the "Table of Hours."

The concept of "Efficiency" is self-justifying and self-perpetuating so that seizing the entire day for the OneState is logical and reasonable, “But they [ancients] served their irrational, unknown God, whereas we serve something rational, and very precisely known.(pp. 45)” Totalitarian Reason becomes not only the criterion of knowledge but also the standard for all other social values, behavior, and even aesthetics. D-503 entire perception is influenced by the OneState's ideology of Reason. He writes in his journal, "I personally see nothing beautiful in flowers, nor in anything else that belongs to the savage world long ago banished behind the Green Wall. The only thing that is beautiful is what is rational, useful: machines, boots, formulas, food, and so on. (pp. 48)" For D-503 society is a “Machine.”

One of the most important symbols in “We” is the “Wall.” The wall is not just a physical barrier to separate the OneState from unruly Nature, but is an ideological boundary that defines the sphere of rational discourse and meaning. Any feeling, thought, or emotion that is outside the system of established, official, and accepted meaning is de facto “irrational.”


The Orwellian totalitarian State of Oceania is a very different nightmare. Orwell was interested in a specific historical version of the communist state called Stalinism. He wanted to show the structure and workings of a centralized bureaucratic fascist state that ruled by shear brutal terror. This was the trend in Europe during the rise of Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Stalinist states which used repression and terror to get and maintain power. Orwell assumes that all centralized bureaucratic states, whether capitalist and socialist inevitably becomes repressive and dominating. We can see the elements he is most interested in these terror states by his critique of Zamyatin’s “We.” Orwell wrote in his review of Zamyatin’s OneState:

This is because the OneState is a rational totalitarian state in which ideological hegemony is the primary instrument of domination. Oceania is an irrational totalitarian state in which Terror is the primary instrument of domination. OneState also uses force to dominate with public executions, electric tasers whips-- and coincidentally the suffocation-resuscitation-suffocation torture method. But the OneState uses force according to the same rules of efficiency that Frederick Winslow Taylor’s management methods are applied to all aspects of the OneState. In the Orwellian nightmare terror, torture, and power are ends in themselves. Remember O’Brian speech while he tortures Smith:

The OneState dominates by appealing to one’s desire for security, and even allows sexual behavior. Oceania dominates by fear and terror. Sexual behavior is discouraged in Oceania. D-503 is happy and satisfied with his life in OneState and says so in his journals, but Winston is demoralized and illegally obtains a diary in which he must write in secret about Oceania as an act of rebellion. D-503’s journal is subjective and describes his beliefs and psyche, but Winston is reporting on the objective apparatus of a totalitarian bureaucratic state. D-503 is an idealist; Smith is an empiricist—just like their literary fathers.

Readers of the Orwellian nightmare immediately make comparisons of Oceania with contemporary societies and there are certainly strong similarities with many Socialistic and Capitalistic states, but Zamyatin’s OneState far superior in mapping how industrial civilizations actually seize and maintain domination over its populations. Even Orwell admitted in his book review that the OneState’s use of power is “on the whole more relevant to our own situation.” Oceania represents a totalitarian state evolved to the point of insanity and irrationality where even language it self is contradictory, “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.” (This was an actual Soviet poster Orwell observed suggesting the five-year plan could be fulfilled in four year). The OneState used Reason as an instrument that justifies repression by appealing to efficiency, order, and technical rationality. Its method of domination relies more on conformist dependency and voluntary submission by its citizens than the inefficient “…boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’

RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL PROPAGANDA

The French philosopher and historian Jacques Ellul draws a distinction in his book, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes.( Trans. Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner. New York: Knopf, 1966), between two types of propaganda. One form of propaganda is agitation propaganda and the other is integration propaganda. Agitation propaganda is designed to convert resentment into enthusiasm and over excitement for open rebellion or war. These two types of propaganda are also called rational and irrational propaganda.


Orwell describes how Winston is forced to attend the State mandated Two Minutes Hate sessions to vent anger at Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People. This is a propaganda exercise designed to cultivate anger in the population and provide an emotional outlet. The same propaganda method was used in the "Duck and Cover" Civil Defense exercise that American school children were forced to participate during the 1940s even into the 1980s in the event of Thermal Nuclear bomb attack. Children were instructed to assume the fetal position, lying face-down and cover their heads with their hands in the event a 50 megaton nuclear bomb is dropped on their city. This exercise was designed to instill fear in the population and define an enemy.

The OneState used ideology to provide a cover of objectivity and rationality that normalized the use of power to dominate and even appear to be to paternalistic and therapeutic in dealing with dissidents. Dissidents are diagnosed as antisocial, or having a mental disorder, then subject to behavior modification techniques before more extreme measures are taken. The preferred method of control is by homogeny based on rational propaganda disseminated by the state, culture, media, social institutions and even consumerism. Herbert Marcuse provides analysis of how industrial society utilizes these effective and sophisticated ideological tools to secure domination in his book, One Dimensional Man (1964, Beacon)

Reason, Ideology, Science, Industrial Production, Government, Education, social institutions, mass persuasion, electoral manipulation, and Culture are all integrated into a homogeneous system of domination. The political ideological Think Tank supersedes the Orwellian Memory Hole. Zamyatin’s “We” is a study not of the bureaucracy of totalitarianism, but of an ”ontology of false conditions.”

ONE POLICEMAN IS BETTER THAN A THOUSAND KANTS

D-503 mentions the theologian Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) numerous times in his journal in regard to Knowledge and Ethics of the “ancients.” The OneState science replaced Ethics with a kind of State Utilitarian calculus to replace Freedom, or “disorganized wildness.” The dangers and ambiguity of an ethical system based on individual Freedom suffered from uncertainty which could not be solved with mathematical certainty. D-503 writes in his journal, “All their Kants together couldn’t solve it (because it never occurred to one of the Kants to construct a system on scientific ethics-this is, on based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication).(pp. 14)”

The "Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant’s work to define Reason and how we can have knowledge. "The Critique of Practical Reason" is the same philosophical effort except the subject is “practical action” or “Ethics.” “What are ethics and how do we behave?” is the question Kant attempted to solve by basing it on logical certainty. It is an ethical system derived from Christian theology and is built on the concept of “Duty.” This type of ethical system is called a “De-ontological” system of ethical maxims. In a Kantian world, one must do the right act regardless of the consequences so it is the opposite of a Utilitarian system (a Consequentialist theory of ethics) that calculates the consequences of human action in determining what act is right. Kant summarized the fundamental principle of morality as the "Categorical Imperative,” or Duty and one formulation is the “End in Itself” maxim which states, "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end." Immanuel Kant wrote of politics, “Human right must be kept sacred, no matter how great the sacrifice it costs the ruling powers. One cannot go only halfway and contrive a pragmatically conditioned right….All politics, rather, must bend the knee before sacred human right…” D-503 doesn’t really construct a counter argument against Kantian ethics, but rather makes Kant the symbol of all ethical systems that are base on an individual free acting moral agents. In OneState, there are no individuals, only Numbers,“So, take some scales and put on one side a gram, on the other a ton; on the one side “I” and the other “We,” OneState. It’s clear, isn’t it?—to assert that “I” has certain “rights” with respect to the State is exactly the same as asserting that a gram weights the same as a ton.( pp.110)”

The very concept that Freedom is the origin of values, is replaced by the OneState “Efficiency Principle,” and to be inefficient is a crime. “Efficiency” is used as though its is an objective term when actually it is a highly subjective and normative term. The OneState defines what is efficient. By eliminating the free moral agent, the OneState is really attempting to eliminate ethical dilemmas altogether and replacing questions of right and wrong with a biased calculus furthering the “rational” interests of the State over a person. The person is a means and not an end.

However, ethical questions are not really eliminated, just new maxims are replacing the old maxims. In “We” the new ethical system is sometimes described as Efficiency Utilitarianism and sometimes Hedonistic Utilitarianism. The poet, R-13, offers his ode to the OneState by creating a myth that justifies domination of the person by the State. This text is the strongest reference to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in which Freedom, Security, and Happiness are discussed. The Inquisitor proclaims that “No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us.’ ” Humanity will choose earthly bread over the heavenly bread of Freedom. R-13 writes,

Repression is not justified by the OneState on the basis of war or scarcity as in Orwell’s nightmare, but Happiness, Order, and Efficiency. The OneState is a more effective totalitarian state by appealing to happiness and even sexual satisfaction than Oceania that relies primarily on torture, imprisonment, and deliberately engineered poverty.

The individual is negated by collective massification in both the OneState and Oceania. But this is only one method a totalitarian state can use to dominate Life. The concept of the personhood can be manipulated by other anthropologies that are just as effective dominating and denying humanity—by reducing a person to a means and not an end.

In fact, both massification and individualism can be sociological pre-conditions for propaganda.

The argument that only collectivist societies deny personal freedom doesn’t hold: it is but one formulation of massification. Societies that promote Rugged Individualism can also use this ideological anthropology to dominate and maintain power: the Marketplace and the Corporation are also collectives.

THE DISEASE CALLED CONSCIOUSNESS

When D-503 describes the weather in his journal, he is not just giving a weather report. Clouds and the wind are symbols that represent his inner struggle of coming conscious of his life and situation. D-503 begins the journal as a true believer of the OneState but undergoes a transformation as he writes and thinks about his life. His love affair and infatuation with I-330 ( the “I” stands for the “Individual” or “Ego”) causes tremendous introspection that trigger headaches, insomnia, and then dreams of a “Yellow Buddha” among other infirmities. Winston Smith began his illegal journal already seeking insight, the rational mind, and the Truth as the “last man in Europe” which was the original title of Nineteen Eighty-Four. D-503 initially sought the rational system, which is the OneState--not necessarily the Truth--but instead tries to fight off his growing doubts in a Freudian battle between the id (Desire) and Superego (the socialized controlled self), “There were two me’s. One was the old one, D-503, Number D-503, and the other….(pp. 56)” and “I’m in front of a mirror…I am looking at myself, at him, and I am absolutely certain that he…is a stranger, somebody else…I just met him for the first time in my life. And I’m the real one. I AM NOT HIM.(pp. 59)” Social repression results in a “second nature” distinguished from the instinctual self. This second self is the product of the repressive society he lives in. Winston’s policemen are external, but D-503’s are internal having to battle his own thoughts and sense of morality. D-503’s self consciousness emerges, but its repression results in neurosis. Insight and self-awareness are treated like a mental, or personality disorders by society’s behavioral norms so he writes, “ It suddenly became clear to me that I ought to go to the Medical Bureau.(pp.37)” D-503’s authoritarian personality cannot tolerate doubt and uncertainty just as he couldn’t tolerate irrational numbers, “I don’t want square root 1 1! Take it out of me…That irrational root grew in me like some alien thing, strange, and terrifying.” And later he adds, “What is the matter with me? I’ve lost the rudder.( pp. 82)”

The diagnosis is grim as the OneState physician says, “You’re in bad shape. It looks like you’re developing a soul.(pp.86)” D-503 realized that he has developed some accompanying malaises--an imagination,”…now I know that I have one, that I’m sick. And I also know I don’t fell like getting well.(pp. 80)” and "that ancient sickness called dreaming…(pp.71)” But “What is a soul?” D-503 sincerely asked. The doctor gives a beautiful explanation.

The soul is not a passive observer, but an active agent that makes experience its own and creates a private internal system of meaning and memories independent of ...the State, for example.

This scenario plays out Zamyatin’s belief that sexuality, imagination, aesthetics, nature, and the past play subversive roles in resisting the totalitarian state. This is Zamyatin’s theory of liberation which views consciousness as spontaneously and incessantly seeking Happiness and Freedom.

D-503’s sexual relationship with I-330 was the primary catalyst of his internal transformation and inner conflict. He was tempted to report I-330 to the authorities as a deviant, but procrastinated because of his love for her. He wrote, “I no longer have the strength to destroy this painful piece of myself, which might turn out to be the piece I value most.(pp.160)” I-330 exploited his loyalty by asking D-503 to use her sex ticket in an unusual way during his private hour by “…still taking her ticket down to the duty desk and then lowering the blinds and sitting alone in my room….(pp. 114)” During this private time D-503 was able to reflect and write in his journal and this brought on further insights and even greater turmoil. Both D-503 and Winston gained clarity of thought through privacy and solitude which the totalitarian state tried to keep at a minimum through time management. Leisure time is designed only for regenerative activity to continue labor, and not any meaningful activity to simulate the imagination, or allow introspection, or self evaluation, “Not to sleep at night is unlawful.(pp.58)”

Nature is walled off from the city. It is outside the city walls within disorderly Nature that the Mephi live the ancient life. I-330 understands D-503 well. At one point D-D503 says, “I hate the fog. I’m afraid of the fog.” I-330 responds, “That means you love it. You’re afraid of it because it’s stronger that you. You hate it because you’re afraid of it, you love it because you can’t master it. You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.( pp.71)” Nature’s imagery—wind, birds, storms--is used through out the novel as symbolizing Freedom.

In Winston Smith’s world revolt and liberation were unlikely, if not impossible. The proletariat would never revolt because they were entrapped in a kind of Catch 22.

The proletariat had lost their ability to use the past as a benchmark of measuring their experience.

For Winston, the past represents freedom and this past had to be continually censored by Big Brother; however, for D-503 the past was ideologically corrupt and, therefore, more effectively self censoring except that it remained present in the form of the resistance movement of named, Mephi.

For Zamyatin, History itself has a self-correcting mechanism that prevents unending domination and monopoly of power. His explanation is a kind of Hegelian dialectic that moves human history forward, but upward.
The driving forces behind this movement of history are entropy and energy. I-330 lectured D-503 on the dynamics of Historical Change:

Nature, and Time restore balance in the Cosmos because it is infinite and always changing. It’s the Heretic in history, in this case I-330, that will always be present to act as an agent of the energy force. In spite of tragedy in Zamyatin’s novel, it is still a story of Hope, unlike Orwell’s nightmare.

D-503 is fond of mathematics and often challenges his colleagues with the question, “You aren’t up to philosophical-mathematical thinking?” I-330 once asked D-503 this mathematical question: