The Feminist Book Club 2/4

16.01.2025

Jevgenij Zamjatin: Mi (We, 1924/1952)

We opened the new year with a conversation about the founder of the modern dystopian novel, often associated with Huxley's Brave New World and influencing Orwell's 1984, Ursula Le Guin and other authors of dystopian and utopian literature.

The novel was completed in 1921, but received its first English edition in 1924 and its first Russian edition only in 1952. We dedicated the conversation to the genre characteristics of the dystopian novel and the outline of a future life in which relations between the sexes occupy a central place while reproduction is presented as one of the key areas of control. In addition, the love story is crucial to the plot, as the female character I-330 is the bearer of an alternative worldview. We also discussed the lack of literary writing in a dystopian world and the way the text deals with this. D-503 writes in his off hours, poets who write critically are executed, and the literature of the past society seems absurd. In addition to writing, love also stimulates dreams and fantasy, which are considered diseases in the imaginary society. In the process, the relationship between the individual and the community changes, in which there is no room for supposedly individual phenomena such as freedom, pain and dissatisfaction. Noting that Zamyatin predicted many of the current social problems, such as the improvement of surveillance systems and the interference of machines in traditionally human activities, we concluded the discussion by emphasizing his relevance to the contemporary reader, from whom more than a century separates him.