Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin[a] (Russian: Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, IPA: [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn]; 1 February [O.S. 20 January] 1884 – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire.
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Ivanovich and the family name is Zamyatin.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin
1 February 1884
Lebedyan, Russian Empire
10 March 1937 (aged 53)
Paris, Third French Republic
Novelist, journalist
Science fiction, satire
The son of a Russian Orthodox priest, Zamyatin lost his faith in Christianity at an early age and became a Bolshevik. As a member of his Party's Pre-Revolutionary underground, Zamyatin was repeatedly arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and exiled. However, Zamyatin was just as deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the All-Union Communist Party (b) [VKP (b)] following the October Revolution as he had been by Tsarist policy.
Due to his subsequent use of literature to both satirize and criticize the Soviet Union's enforced conformity and increasing totalitarianism, Zamyatin, whom Mirra Ginsburg has dubbed "a man of incorruptible and uncompromising courage,"[1] is now considered one of the first Soviet dissidents. He is most famous for his highly influential and widely imitated 1921 dystopian science fiction novel We, which is set in a futuristic police state.
In 1921, We became the first work banned by the Soviet censorship board. Ultimately, Zamyatin arranged for We to be smuggled to the West for publication. The outrage this sparked within the Party and the Union of Soviet Writers led directly to the State-organized defamation and blacklisting of Zamyatin and his successful request for permission from Joseph Stalin to leave his homeland. In 1937 he died in poverty in Paris.
After his death, Zamyatin's writings were circulated in samizdat and continued to inspire multiple generations of Soviet dissidents.
Early life[edit]
Zamyatin was born in Lebedyan, Tambov Governorate, 300 km (186 mi) south of Moscow. His father was a Russian Orthodox priest and schoolmaster, and his mother a musician. In a 1922 essay, Zamyatin recalled: "You will see a very lonely child, without companions of his own age, on his stomach, over a book, or under the piano, on which his mother is playing Chopin."[2] Zamyatin may have had synesthesia since he gave letters and sounds qualities. He saw the letter Л as having pale, cold and light blue qualities.[3]
He studied engineering for the Imperial Russian Navy in Saint Petersburg, from 1902 until 1908. During this time, Zamyatin lost his faith in Christianity, became an atheist and a Marxist, and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.[4]
1905: Revolt and repression[edit]
Zamyatin later recalled the Russian Revolution of 1905 as follows: "In those years, being a Bolshevik meant following the line of greatest resistance, and I was a Bolshevik at that time. In the fall of 1905 there were strikes, and the dark Nevsky Prospekt was pierced by a searchlight from the Admiralty Building. October 17. Meetings in the universities."[5]
In December 1905, Zamyatin agreed to hide in his flat a paper bag filled with the explosive pyroxylin. The following day, he and thirty other Bolsheviks were arrested by the Okhrana inside their "revolutionary headquarters of the Vyborg district, at the very moment when plans and pistols of various types were spread out on the table."[6]
After being arrested and beaten up, Zamyatin managed to smuggle a note out of the prison, instructing his fellow Bolsheviks, "to remove everything compromising from my room and the rooms of my four comrades." Although this was immediately done, Zamyatin did not know of it until much later. During the months he spent in solitary confinement, Zamyatin recalled that he had almost daily nightmares about the paper bag in his flat containing pyroxylin.[7]
In the spring of 1906, Zamyatin was released and sent into exile in his native Tambov Governorate. However, Zamyatin later wrote that he could not stand life among the devoutly Russian Orthodox peasantry of Lebedyan. Therefore, he escaped and returned to Saint Petersburg where he lived illegally before moving to Helsinki, in the Grand Duchy of Finland.[7]
After illegally returning to St. Petersburg, "disguised, clean-shaven, with a pince-nez astride my nose,"[7] Zamyatin began to write fiction as a hobby. He was arrested and exiled a second time in 1911. He later recalled, "I lived first in an empty dacha at Sestroretsk, then, in winter, in Lakhta. There amidst snow, solitude, quiet, I wrote A Provincial Tale."[8]
Life in exile[edit]
After their emigration, Zamyatin and his wife settled in Paris. According to Mirra Ginsburg: "Zamyatin's last years in Paris were years of great material hardship and loneliness. As Remizov wrote, 'He came with sealed lips and a sealed heart.' He found little in common with most of the emigrés who had left Russia a decade earlier."[33]
The screenplay for Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths (1936) from Maxim Gorky's stage play was co-written by Zamyatin.
Zamyatin later wrote: "Gorky was informed of this, and wrote that he was pleased at my participation in the project, that he would like to see the adaptation of his play, and would wait to receive the manuscript. The manuscript was never sent: by the time it was ready for mailing, Gorky was dead."[34] After the film premiered, Zamyatin wrote articles for French magazines and worked on a novel titled The Scourge of God, with Attila as the main character. The novel was never finished.[35]
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography
