Soviet writer Yevgeny Zamyatin became famous for his novel “We”, which became a classic work in the genre of dystopia. This book put it on par with such luminaries of the genre as Orwell with his “1884”, and with Burgess, who wrote “The Seed of Desire.” The novel Zamyatin is still very popular, and with it a lot of interesting facts are connected. Zamyatin’s life was also eventful, which may have influenced his work.
At the age of four, Zamyatin had already read serious works, in particular, of Gogol. In childhood, the future writer practically did not communicate with his peers, preferring books to society. He graduated from the Voronezh gymnasium with excellent grades and a gold medal. This medal he laid in a pawnshop for 25 rubles at the time of need, but he never bought it back. Possessing a humanitarian mentality, while studying, Zamyatin coped best with essays and literature, but the exact sciences were not easy for him. To test himself, he specifically entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University in the department of shipbuilding. In his youth, he sympathized with the ideas of the socialist revolution, because of which he was even arrested in 1905. Soon, thanks to the intervention of his mother, he was released. He criticized the movement of the Bolsheviks.
For the first time Eugene Zamyatin published his work, the story “One”, in 1908. Being an experienced shipbuilding engineer, Zamyatin most loved icebreakers, admiring the severity of their appearance, in his own words. In 1914, for the story “In Kulichkah”, Zamyatin was arrested for the third time and sent into exile to the Far North. Maxim Gorky responded very positively to this story of his. Before becoming a writer, Evgeny Zamyatin managed to work pretty hard with his hands. In particular, he successfully mastered the profession of a shipbuilding engineer. Because of their contradictions with the Soviet authorities, the writer was sent into exile several times. It was during this period of his life that he became fascinated with literature. Zamyatin himself said that he began to write out of boredom during his time in exile. The writer attributed his work to the genre of “neorealism”.
The place of action of the famous dystopian novel “We” is not explicitly indicated anywhere in the text, but some indirect signs (for example, it will spoil the poet whom the hero of the book defines as Pushkin) indicate that the place of action is the territory of the former Soviet Union. The novel “We” was written in 1920, but it was first published in Russia only in 1988, since the ruling Soviet government found in it a satire on the Soviet Union. At the same time, it was published in Europe in 1924. By the way, this work was the first anti-utopian novel in the world.
In 1931, Zamyatin personally received permission from Stalin to travel abroad, after which he and his wife emigrated to France, settling in Paris. Writer until the end of his life remained a citizen of the USSR. Through the efforts of Zamyatin, the famous novel by Maxim Gorky “At the Bottom” was adapted for the screen, and a film was made on it in France. In the last years of his life, he published many literary works on eminent Russian writers, for example, Meyerhold and Tolstoy. Yevgeny Zamyatin died in Paris at the age of 53. The cause was a serious illness, which he earned during his exile to the Soviet north.
