In addition to real dystopias, the 20th century also produced fictional dystopias, but the best known are those of George Orwell. 1984 – It started with liberal democracy. But it all owes a lot to the novel of one of the real-life dystopias. weYevgeny Zamyatin of the Soviet Union.
Born in 1887, Zamyatin became a Bolshevik as a student, was arrested during the 1905 revolution and twice exiled from St. Petersburg, and attempted to “slander the Russian officer corps” by satirizing military life. His hopes that the 1917 revolution would bring artistic freedom were quickly disappointed. The revolution did not liberate artists, but instead they now had to create art that would serve the revolution. In 1921 he wrote:
Many people have said a lot about the imperfection of the universe. There is a surprising lack of monism: water and fire, mountains and abysses, saints and sinners. There would have been absolute simplicity and happiness, unclouded by any thoughts. [God] If he had saved the barbaric state of freedom from the beginning, he would have created just one fire beast from the beginning! … We are undoubtedly living in a space age, an age of creation of a new heaven and a new earth. And of course we will not repeat [His] mistake. There will be no more polyphony or dissonance. There will be nothing but majestic, monumental, all-encompassing unanimity.
in weZamyatin, written in 1920-1921, explored these fears.
The work is set in the distant future of One State, and the main character, D-503, writes:
Every morning, with the precision of six turns, at the same time, at the same moment, millions of us rise as one. At the same time, we all start working in unison. And one million people in unison we end it. And at the moment designated by the table, fused into one body with a million hands, we raise the spoon to our mouth. At the same moment specified on the table, we raise the spoon to our mouth. At the same time, we go out for a walk, go to the auditorium, go to the hallway to practice tailoring, fall asleep…
The “rights” to lower colors are:
… Granted only on sexual days. At other times we live behind transparent walls that seem to be woven from luminous air. We are always visible, always washed in light. We have nothing to hide from each other. Moreover, it makes the Guardians’ difficult and noble mission much easier. Otherwise, who knows what will happen? Perhaps it was precisely the strange and opaque dwellings of the ancients that gave rise to their puny psychology. “My (sic!) home is my castle.” What a great idea!
In fact, D-503 is horrified to see “a time when people still lived in a free, unorganized, barbaric environment.” In the early days of the Soviet Union, Zamyatin saw Edward Bellamy’s socialist utopia. Looking Back: 2000-1887 I realized it and hated it.
Like Adam and Winston Smith, D-503 becomes caught up in an ill-fated rebellion. “Those two people in paradise were given the choice of happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness.” Zamyatin assumes that the system operates on its own terms. ~can do Happiness guaranteed. History will show him wrong. These systems produce neither happiness nor freedom. When Orwell was told by a supporter of Soviet oppression, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” he responded, “Where is Orwell?”
we Rejected for publication, it first appeared in English in 1924, and was attacked by Zamyatin’s fellow writers during a reading at the Writers’ Union in 1923. In the 1920s, the state-sponsored Russian Proletarian Writers’ Association accused him of “dissonance with the revolution” and “slander and slander” of revolutionary beliefs. He was also acting “maliciously.” As he fought his ill-fated rebellion, Zamyatin wrote of his fellow writers in 1926: “A revolution doesn’t need dogs that ‘sit’ because they expect a handout or are afraid of the whip.” Nonetheless, that’s what you get. The flowering of Russian literature that began with Pushkin ended, at least for the writers who stayed in Russia. An exhausted Zamyatin left the Soviet Union in 1931 and traveled to Paris, where he died in 1937.
In 1962 Written by Isaac Asimov American science fiction went through three stages: ‘adventure domination’, ‘technology domination’, and ‘social domination’, while Soviet science fiction stayed in stage 2. “The Soviet people have been told, and perhaps believe, that they are building a new society that will dominate the world through the sheer charm of superior work possibilities.” “Then for a Soviet writer to claim that a different society is possible in the future, or even to look too closely at the present society, borders on a lack of patriotism.” What Asimov said was incorrect. we is a three-stage novel, one of the greatest novels of the century.
John Phelan is an economist. American Experimental Center.
