Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884 - 1937) was one of the few writers to oppose the tide of conformity that swept over Russian literature in the years after the Russian Revolution. Through his fiction, essays, and teaching, he exerted an enormous influence on Russian letters in the late 1910s and early 1920s, especially in Petersburg. His novel We (1920-21, read at a meeting of the All-Union Writers' Union in 1923 but first published, in English, in 1924) served as the ur-text for all twentieth-century dystopian novels, including Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, and Rand's Anthem. Finding his writings banned and himself increasingly isolated throughout the 1920s, he sought and gained permission from Stalin himself to leave the Soviet Union in 1931, and died in Paris in 1937.
Here at the Monadnock Review we recognize Zamyatin for the power of his craft, for his celebration of the sanctity of the individual, and for his emphasis on the crucial importance of artistic freedom. Select from the following to learn more about this nearly-forgotten genius: