Before Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and before George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) Yevgeny Zamyatin envisioned his dystopian future in We (1920). He wrote it as the Russian revolution was failing to deliver on its promises of a better world. The Soviet censorship board banned it and it was smuggled out and first released in English and had to wait until 1952 to be published in Russian and until 1988 to be released in Russia. A truly epic book that I can’t believe I have not read until now thanks to my work book club!

Title: We
Author: Evgenii Ivanovich Zamiatin
Publication date: July 2021
Pages: 259
Format: ebook
Price: Free via Project Gutenberg
Started:  16/10/2026
Finished: 06/11/2026

Reading beyond this point are my rough notes and guaranteed spoilers.

Rough Notes:

People:

• D-503: who is telling the story
  • builder of the Integral
• O-90: his partner (“registered in her name”)
  • made of all circles with a child-like dimple on her wrist
  • 10 cm shorter than the required Maternal Norm
• I-330
  • like the corners of an X: slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip
• S-4721
  • s shaped man who commanded respect
• R-13: poet and old friend of D-503 and the both share sexual time with 0-90

Ideas:

• United State
• Accumulating Tower
  • ¿clock?
• personal hours
  • twice a day: 16:00 -17:00, 21:00 - 22:00
• sexual day
  • pink ticket to use curtains
• Green Wall
  • what keeps everything contained and under order
  • outside is the world who later we learn the Mephi live
• Mephi
  • Mephi is short for Mephistopheles, the devil who tempts Faust in Goethe’s play and the older German legends.
  • The name fits the novel’s religious framework. The One State casts itself as heaven, the Benefactor as God, and obedience as salvation. Anyone who rebels against that “God” is cast as the devil. The rebels take the name as a badge of honour, much as Satan was the first rebel, refusing to submit and choosing freedom over obedience. It also ties back to the Eden theme: I-330 plays the serpent to D-503’s Adam, and the Mephi are the devil’s party.
• the Tables
  • p25 the heart and pulse of the United State
  • p25 the Tables transformed each and everyone of us into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem. Every morning with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake up millions of us at once.
  • p26 full name: Table of Hours
• office of the Guardians
  • two days to file reports
• Day of Unanimity
  • election day
  • anyone who votes no is identified and eliminated by the Well-Doer
• Great Operation
  • in consequence of the Day of Unanimity not being so unanimous they will perform an operation to remove fancy:
    • p 209 “there is a centre for fancy, a miserable little nervous knot in the lower region of the frontal lobe of the brain. A triple treatment of this knot with X-rays will cure you of fancy”

Quotes:

• p20 “How shall I say it? the speed of her tongue is nor correctly calculated; the peed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts,-at any rate not the reverse”
• p34 “Love and hunger rule the world”
  • so they found solutions for both
  • sexual department does a test of your sexual hormones and make out a Table of sexual days and you get a pink checkbook to enjoy
• p173 “And tomorrow!” She breathed the words through sparkling white clenched teeth, “Tomorrow, nobody knows what… do you understand? Neither I nor anyone else knows; it is unknown! Do you realize what a joy it is? Do you realize that all that was certain has come to an end? Now things will be new, improbable, unforeseen!”
• p175 I felt around, seeking in the Journal of the United State quickly, quickly-I found this:
  • “The celebration of the Day of Unanimity, long awaited by all, took place yesterday. The same Well-Doer who so often proved his unshakeablewisdom, was unanimously re-elected for the forty-eighth time. The celebration was clouded by a little confusion, created by the enemies of happiness, who by their action naturally lost the right to be the bricks for the foundation of the renovated United State. It is clear to everybody that to take into consideration their votes would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in a concert hall.”

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).