Yevgeny Zamyatin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884 – 1937) was a Russian author best known for his novel We (1924).
He wrote science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire.
The son of a Russian Orthodox priest, Zamyatin lost his faith in Christianity at an early age and became a Bolshevik. As a member of his Party's Pre-Revolutionary underground, Zamyatin was repeatedly arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and exiled. However, Zamyatin was just as deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the All-Union Communist Party (b) (VKP (b) following the October Revolution as he had been by Tsarist policy.
Due to his subsequent use of literature to both satirize and criticize the Soviet Union's enforced conformity and increasing totalitarianism, Zamyatin, whom Mirra Ginsburg has dubbed "a man of incorruptible and uncompromising courage," is now considered one of the first Soviet dissidents. He is most famous for his highly influential and widely imitated 1921 dystopian science fiction novel We, which is set in a futuristic police state.
In 1921, We became the first work banned by the Soviet censorship board. Ultimately, Zamyatin arranged for We to be smuggled to the West for publication. The outrage this sparked within the Party and the Union of Soviet Writers led directly to the State-organized defamation and blacklisting of Zamyatin and his successful request for permission from Joseph Stalin to leave his homeland. In 1937 he died in poverty in Paris.
After his death, Zamyatin's writings were circulated in samizdat and continued to inspire multiple generations of Soviet dissidents.
