We

We

By Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Translated by Gregory Zilboorg.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Foreword
4. We
   1. Record One
   2. Record Two
   3. Record Three
   4. Record Four
   5. Record Five
   6. Record Six
   7. Record Seven
   8. Record Eight
   9. Record Nine
   10. Record Ten
   11. Record Eleven
   12. Record Twelve
   13. Record Thirteen
   14. Record Fourteen
   15. Record Fifteen
   16. Record Sixteen
   17. Record Seventeen
   18. Record Eighteen
   19. Record Nineteen
   20. Record Twenty
   21. Record Twenty-One
   22. Record Twenty-Two
   23. Record Twenty-Three
   24. Record Twenty-Four
   25. Record Twenty-Five
   26. Record Twenty-Six
   27. Record Twenty-Seven
   28. Record Twenty-Eight
   29. Record Twenty-Nine
   30. Record Thirty
   31. Record Thirty-One
   32. Record Thirty-Two
   33. Record Thirty-Three
   34. Record Thirty-Four
   35. Record Thirty-Five
   36. Record Thirty-Six
   37. Record Thirty-Seven
   38. Record Thirty-Eight
   39. Record Thirty-Nine
   40. Record Forty
5. Endnotes
6. Colophon
7. Uncopyright

Imprint

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.

This particular ebook is based on a transcription produced for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans available at the HathiTrust Digital Library.

The writing and artwork within are believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks releases this ebook edition under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.

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Foreword

In submitting this book to the American public the translator has this to say.

The artistic and psychological sides of the novel are hardly to be discussed in a preface. Great as the art of a writer may be and profound as his psychology may seem to one, the impression is largely a matter of individual variations, and this side must naturally be left to each individual’s judgment and sensibilities.

There is, however, one side of the matter which deserves particular mention and motivated emphasis.

It is perhaps for the first time in the history of the last few decades that a Russian book, inspired by Russian life, written in Russia and in the Russian language, should see its first light not in Russia but abroad, and not in the language it was originally written but translated into a foreign tongue. During the darkest years of Russian history, in the ’forties, ’sixties, ’eighties and ’nineties of the last century, many Russian writers were forced by oppression and reaction to live abroad and to write abroad, yet their writings would reach Russia, as they were intended primarily for the Russian reader and Russian life. Most of Turgenev’s novels were written while he was in France, and with the exception of his last short story which he dictated on his deathbed, all his novels and stories were written in Russian. Hertzen, Kropotkin, and at one time Dostoevsky, were similarly obliged to write while away from their native land.

Here is a book written by an artist who lived and still lives in Russia, and whose intimate love for Russia and her suffering is so great that he finds it impossible to leave Russia even in these days of stress and sorrow. But his book may not appear in the country where it was written. It is a great tragedy⁠—this spiritual loneliness of the artist who cannot speak to his own people. In bringing out this book in English, the author tries to address himself to the world without having the opportunity of being heard by his own people. This situation, however, is to a great extent symbolic of the spiritual mission of Zamyatin, for no matter what the language in which he originally writes, and no matter how typically national his artistic perception and intuition, he is essentially universal and his vision transcends the boundaries of a purely national art. Moreover, is it not true that the more genuinely national a man’s art, and the more sincerely national his personality, the more is he universal? Abraham Lincoln is more than an American national figure, and I doubt if the appeal Lincoln’s personality makes would be universal as it is if he were not so typically American. It is difficult to find personalities more national than Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, and this is perhaps the reason why they stand out as two of the most typically universal minds with a universal appeal that the nineteenth century gave us.

Zamyatin is not so great as the men referred to above, but despite his youth, he already proves to be the bearer of that quality of greatness which characterizes a personality with a universal appeal.

We is, as Zamyatin himself calls it, the most jocular and the most earnest thing he has thus far written. It is a novel that puts most poignantly and earnestly before every thoughtful reader the most difficult problem that exists today in the civilized world⁠—the problem of preservation of the independent original creative personality. Our civilization today depends upon the energetic movement of great masses of people. Wars, revolutions, general strikes⁠—all these phenomena involve great masses, large groups, enormous mobs. Despite the fact that there is hardly a corner in the world today where the average man does not make the trite complaint, “What we need is leadership,” the world today seems for a time at least to have lost its capacity for producing real leaders. For our great successes in mechanical civilization, our exceptional efforts in efficiency, tend to bring into play large numbers rather than great individualities. What under these conditions is the lot of a creative individuality? What the tragedy of an independent spirit under present conditions is, is pointed out in an unique way in We. The problem of creative individuality versus mob is today not a mere Russian problem. It is as poignant under Bolshevist dictatorship as it is in Ford’s factory.

Of course the