We: 'Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is''

Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin (also written as Yevgeny or Eugene Zamyatin) was born on the 1st of February 1884 in Lebedyan, in the then Russian Empire.

Although he was the son of a Russian Orthodox priest, he lost his faith early in life and instead followed what he felt was his true calling and became a Bolshevik and a member of the Party's Pre-Revolutionary underground. The Tsarist authorities frequently arrested him, assaulted him, imprisoned him and exiled him but he refused to be bowed.

After the Revolution in 1918 he became disillusioned with the policies being pursued by the new Communist government, just as much as he had with those enforced in Tsarist times.

In his literary career he wrote across science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire but is most heralded for his highly regarded and very influential dystopian science fiction novel; ‘We’. The Party were appalled at this thinly veiled attack upon themselves, and he was blacklisted and found himself one of the first dissidents. In 1931 he did however successfully appeal to Stalin to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union.

Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin died on the 10th March1937 in poverty in Paris.

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E-raamat: 1. oktoober 2024