Yevgeny Zamyatin Research Articles

Z historii gatunku antyutopii literackiej. O (nie)oczywistych powinowactwach „My” Jewgienija Zamiatina i „Metropolis” Thei von Harbou

The main aim of the article was to demonstrate the similarities between Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We and Thea von Harbou’s Metropolis. The analysis reveals that these similarities are primarily evident in the depiction of space, plot, and character development. Regarding plot structure, female characters assume leading roles in both narratives. The antinomic pairs of women created by Zamyatin and Harbou surprisingly bring the two analyzed novels closer together. O-90 and Maria represent the archetype of the ideal mother ready for great sacrifices, embodying the power of creation. Conversely, I-330 and the false Maria are femme fatales, embodying the power of destruction. They become catalysts for social tensions. In their portrayal of these heroines, Zamyatin and Harbou draw upon Christian and mythological symbolism, creating distinctive images of the Virgin Mary and Lilith. Crucially, within these strongly masculinized worlds, women are the ones who actively initiate changes in their respective realities.

THE THEME OF TOTAL SURVEILLANCE IN THE FIELD OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN THE NOVEL “THE CIRCLE” BY DAVE EGGERS

C Currently, the genre of the dystopian novel is one of the most popular and has been changing significantly. The article studies the trends in the transformation of the surveillance theme in the dystopian discourse of the 21st century based on the novel “The Circleˮ (2013) by Dave Eggers, and compares the representation of this theme with classical novels (“1984ˮ by George Orwell, “Weˮ by Yevgeny Zamyatin). The image of totalitarian power, which is an indispensable component of a dystopian novel, has been modified recently – political terror is replaced by digital terror, where transparency of information, considered to be good, turns into evil and a means of manipulation. The metaphor of transparency is crucial in the novel, it symbolises the desire to create a constrained society, where control is the only constant. The article offers an analysis of the genre. Special attention is paid to the system of characters, which, despite the continuation of the tradition of the classical text, is significantly transformed. In addition, the article deals with the symbolism of the novel, as well as the problem of inaccurate translation of the title of the work, which leads to the loss of individual components of meaning. A detailed examination of the “The Circleˮ by Dave Eggers shows that surveillance affects people’s behaviour, controlling the desires and subordinating the will. The aspiration for absolute transparency of personal life and the monopoly on information create painful moods in a society that, despite security, feels vulnerable.

THE ARTISTIC ORIGINALITY OF VIKTOR IRETSKIY IN THE COLLECTIONS OF PETERSBURG WRITERS

This article is devoted to the artistic specificity of Viktor Iretskiy, which had been included in the collections of the House of Writers and Petrograd branch of the Union of Writers of Russia in 1922 and was not previously subjected to scientific comprehension. The texts not only testify to the development of two thematic and stylistic lines of Viktor Iretskiy's work in the 1910s based on post-revolutionary material, but also allow us concluding that their author was a prominent figure in Russian literature of the early 1920s. It is revealed that the realistic narrative about the present and the “engravings” about the past, which reflected the current issues and became one of the reasons for the expulsion of the prose writer from Russia on one of “the philosophers' ships” in 1922, ideologically and stylistically correlate with the works of Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aleksey Remizov, Boris Pilnyak, Vsevolod Ivanov, Mikhail Bulgakov and other contemporaries.

Dystopian Novel as a Literary Phenomenon in XX Century

             "Dystopia", an opposing term to "Utopia," depicts negative tendencies of authoritarian governments and modern technological world. The origin of dystopia is closely related to the events and radical changes taking place in XX century. The first and second world wars, creation of the Soviet Union and eventually, other totalitarian regimes, atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ecological crisis, violence, genocide, massive deportations of people in Central and East Europe, devastated economics of Europe and the beginning of The Cold War became a fruitful basis for "flourishing" dystopian literature. Anti-Utopian Novel is a literary predecessor to Dystopian Novel, elements of which can be found in Jonathan Swift's, Jules Verne's, Jack London's and Herbert George Wells' novels. While Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Ray Bradbury created classic models of Dystopian Novel.

Е. Замятин и А. Платонов как критики советской власти

This article analyses the influence of Soviet on the destinies and works of Yevgeny Zamyatin and Andrei Platonov. There were hardly any literary contacts between them, but there is an ideological kinship. Both were critical of the death penalty actually used by the Bolsheviks, of the emergence of the Soviet Party elite in the USSR, of the plight of workers during the Civil War, and of the possibility of utopian social and political projects. Zamyatin and Platonov were persecuted by the Soviet authorities, the leaders of the All-Russian Writers’ Union and the Rappian critics. The writers analyses in detail Zamyatin’s journalistic articles, including Lenin's implicit image, as well as the genesis of some plot motifs, ideas, characters of the anti-utopian novel “We” (1920). The authors delves into Platonov’s literary criticism and examines the comparative typological similarities between Zamyatin’s journalism of the late 1910–20s and Platonov’s “The Innermost Man”, “Chevengur” and “Happy Moscow”.

The final remark about Zamyatin: point or endless dialogue? About L.V. Polyakova’s monograph “Y.I. Zamyatin’s Prose: historiosophical searches of the artist”

The work is a review analysis of the final work of the famous Zamyatinologist. The purpose of the study is to present the role of this monograph in modern literary criticism. In accordance with the goal, the significance of the historiosophical approach for the study of works of Russian literature, in particular the work of Yevgeny Zamyatin, is revealed, the expediency and universality of just such an approach is substantiated. The result of the above study can be a conclusion about the significance in the history of Russian literature not only of the named monograph, but also of the personality of the researcher himself.

Turning Romanticism on its Head: The Peripheral Symbolic Geography of Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin

Within the present paper, I aim to discuss how Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin have employed the peripheral symbolic geography of their two works (Brave New World and This Perfect Day) to articulate their debate between different sets of social values. Unlike other authors of negative utopias such as George Orwell or Yevgeny Zamyatin, neither Huxley nor Levin idealized pre-modern values. In order to highlight how the two articulated their views with the help of symbolic geography, I will also make use of Michel Foucault’s theoretical concepts of heterotopias, heterochrony as well as the ideas developed by the critics Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre in their seminal work Romanticism against the Tide of Modernity. My purpose is thus firstly to point out how and why Huxley and Levin divided the symbolic geography of their works in two parts as well as how they employed the Romantic critique of modernity. Secondly, I aim to show how despite using this analytical tool, they also employed symbolic geography with the purpose of turning the critique on its head, thus unveiling both its strong points as well as its shortcomings.

The Story of Stenka Razin and the Persian Princess in Direct and Inverse Projections: Yevgeny Zamyatin and Anna Barkova

The article considers two cases of the creative reception of the legend about Stenka Razin and the Persian princess in Russian literature of the 1920s – in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s tragedy Atilla (1925–1928) and screenplay Stenka Razin (1932–1933), on the one hand, and in the play by A. Barkova Nastasya Kostyor (1923), on the other hand. The direct and inverse projections of Razin’s plot are represented: in Zamyatin’s case the roles of Razin and the princess are distributed in the traditional way, as they are typical for the long history of this plot in Russian culture – both in folklore and in literature, and in Barkova’s case these roles are reversed in the gender aspect. This peculiarity is considered as connected to Barkova’s interest toward “woman question”, the problem of female emancipation, women’s equality. The plot of Stenka Razin and the Persian princess is analyzed in the article together with another one – the plot featuring the woman warrior, since they are closely interrelated in Russian literature of the 1920s. The hypothesis is that this relationship is due to the active demolition of the old gender order during this period.

Yevgeny Zamyatin: We, translated by Bela Shayevich; Vasily Grossman: Stalingrad, translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler

Yevgeny Zamyatin: <i>We</i>, translated by Bela Shayevich; Vasily Grossman: <i>Stalingrad</i>, translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler

Faustian Motives in We: A Novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Faustian Motives in We: A Novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin

The Beautification of Dystopias across Media: Aesthetic Ambivalence from We to Black Mirror

Abstract Despite the implied critical stance of dystopian narratives, there is a strand of beautiful, aesthetically pleasant dystopias—inherently ambivalent texts that are—both fascinating and horrifying. Drawing from examples in literature and television, this article argues that “beautified dystopias” generate a surplus (or excess) of aesthetic enjoyment, harboring a mystifying potential in tension with the critical-satirical potential of dystopias. In a rereading of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, this article first examine how D-503's aestheticizing voice—although undeniably constructed for a satirical effect—fosters a degree of fascination toward the dystopian world in excess of Zamyatin's intentions. Second, taking Black Mirror's “Fifteen Million Merits” as an example of contemporary televisual dystopias, this article argues that the supposedly ironic construction of beautified cinematic mise-en-scènes deepens and complicates the underlying ambivalence of “beautified dystopias.” The author's assumption is that this is not an exceptional case, but rather an integral part of the current dystopian structure of feeling.

Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics

Survive and Resist: The Definitive Guide to Dystopian Politics

The Present as Past: Science Fiction and the Museum

This article explores the role that science fiction (sf) texts might play in the museum, offering a perspective on acts of collection, curation, exhibition, and museum architecture, to ask what the museums of science fiction futures can offer those of us concerned with the role and responsibility of the museum in the present. It draws together methods, content and reflections from a workshop held at the Horniman Museum with art and curation students from University of the Arts London in 2019, which explored the spaces and imaginaries of the museum. Over the course of this workshop, participants were asked to restage the museums described in three science fiction novels: H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), and Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (1979). By bringing the spaces of science fiction into the museum, these interventions reframed the terms of our engagement with museum objects and provided a site for broader reflection on the nature of museum design and practice. This process of imaginative construction is extended into this paper, which crosses the fields of architectural design and theory, science fiction and utopian studies, and museum studies. It draws directly upon the interventions generated in the workshop, including photographs and descriptions which reflect on the critical potential present in multiple forms of knowing and the radical possibility inherent in collective acts of remaking. These fragments are used to direct research into museum practices, to situate these actions within wider theoretical contexts, and to explore the science-fictional as a mode of thinking and making as well as a source text.

An Architectural Reading of Zamyatin’s Intersectional Elements in The Novel “We”

“We” was written by Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin in 1921 after the Soviet Revolution. To be at the edge of the conflicts was scrutinized at the novel, in which the protagonist, labeled as D-503, having a tentative position at the well-defined ground by the power which presented itself as the truth or the law. The narration was constructed via the diary of protagonist; how D-503 perceived the paradigm, which he had lived in, what kind of conflicts and contradictions he had been living with the system was questioned. Zamyatin chose very specific architectural elements to explain and criticize the dominant paradigm of the era -early 1920’s, and the periphery of that dominancy; like Green Wall, Glass Wall, logical labyrinth, cube square, and etc. These intersectional elements were constructed as in the form of blurred voids in order to unfold the ideological positions of the written period of the novel. The materialization and meaning of the walls, could be read as dialectic conceiving of how Zamyatin scrutinized both the revolution and the paradigm. As being a dystopia, the novel “We” criticizes the idealized beliefs that were presented as transparent, lucid and conductive.

«Сверхтекст» Е.И. Замятина о деве-воительнице. Статья первая

This article deals with Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “hypertext” about the female warrior, i.e. with the totality of her manifestations in the works of the writer and the semantic continuum that they form. This type of character is defined as a heroine with outstanding physical abilities (such as strength, horse-riding and shooting skills, etc. – and also great beauty), a strong, proud personality, persistence, ability to fight back, determination to gain the upper hand, to win at all costs – especially in the game of power and armed conflict with the male character that is in love with the heroine and/or is loved by her. The author identifies Zamyatin’s works in which the woman warrior appears, analyzes the plot functions and the characteristic motif complex associated with this image. The author demonstrates that the female warrior represents a very frequent type of heroine in Zamyatin’s works: the image appears at the beginning of his career as a writer, in the short story “Kryazhi” (1915), and accompanies him until the end, manifesting itself in the screenplays written in the 1930s. The author reveals that a specific variant of the plot featuring the female warrior is implemented in Zamyatin’s works: the heroine is shown as equal in strength with the male character, and the test of power happens, in particular in the form of a literal duel. Whatever its outcome is and whoever wins, the storyline usually finishes with the death of one or both characters – either during the combat or as its remote consequence. While the type of the plot is usually the same, the female character itself shows a wide variety: there are Valkyrie-like heroines (Ildegonda in the play Atilla), polenitsas from Russian bylina songs (such as Nastasya Mikulishna in the screenplay “Dobrynya” or Marya in “Kryazhi”), Mongolian women warriors (Bortè, Ulek), and even contemporary heroines of this type (Zinaida in the screenplay “The God of Dance”). Usually such characters are attributed in Zamyatin to the legendary epic past or rooted in “folk archaics”; they belong to the rural world, to the Russian village. The constant topoi and the evolution of the female warrior in Zamyatin’s artistic works are revealed; in particular, such motifs as love–hate, test of strength (in the form of a duel or a competition), mutual intendedness of two “strong ones” and their tragic non-encounter are considered. The author notes that the supervalue of the female warriors in Zamyatin’s works is love, while for some other writers of the Silver Age, for instance, for Marina Tsvetaeva or Lyubov Stolitsa, such values were female agency, independence, control over one’s life, freedom, or even spiritual salvation. The play Atilla and its heroine Ildegonda are analyzed particular detail; the sources of this image are revealed.

«СЫВОРОТКА ПРАВДЫ»: ШВЕДСКАЯ АНТИУТОПИЯ К. БОЙЕ «КАЛЛОКАИН»

The relevance of the present article is related to the urgent problem in Humanities (cultural studies, philology and sociology): characterization of anti-utopia that emerged in the ХХ and the XXI centuries, and its various national modifications. The purpose of the article is to define typical features of the anti-utopia in the Scandinavian novel Kallocain written by a Swedish writer Karin Boye and draw some parallels with Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We. The article proves the following thesis: the majority of the specific characteristics of anti-utopia are based on the category of the chronotope. The basic methods of the research were descriptive analytical method, comparative typological method, summarization, cultural-historical method, motive analysis, and content analysis of the text. The model of state-building is implemented in the artistic space of both novels. This model is presented as an ideal one; however, a closer look shows that it is the model of the totalitarian system of government: the states are isolated from the surrounding world which is presented in the novels as alien and hostile. Order, stability, and equality prevailing in the World Empire (Boye) and the United State (Zamyatin) are pushed to their grotesque limits and lead to the universal equalization of the citizens, and the governmental control of all the aspects of human life, including the intimate sphere.

Exploring the “Circuits” Less-Traveled

118 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) BOOKS IN REVIEW Exploring the “Circuits” Less-Traveled. Anindita Banerjee and Sonja Fritzche, eds. Science Fiction Circuits of the South and East. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2018. x+250 pp. $67.75 pbk. In their shrewdly assembled book, editors Anindita Banerjee and Sonja Fritzche bring the exploratory spirit so emblematic of most sf to a collection of intriguing, well-researched essays. Featuring analysis of sf films and novels worldwide, with a special focus on the literatures of Eastern Europe, Asia, and South America, each piece brings a needed spotlight to sf outside the United States and United Kingdom. The book reflects its global nature by being divided into three sections: “An Other Transatlantic,” “Transnationalism Behind the Iron Curtain,” and “Asymptomatic Easts and Subterranean Souths.” Each chapter is fascinating, even though my own area of focus is Japanese sf in translation. With articles focusing on linguistics, historiography, and sociopolitical analysis, this collection has something for any scholar to enjoy. My one complaint about it is that it is not longer. The introduction by the editors sets the stage, reflecting on connections between Del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) and Belyaman’s earlier film The Amphibian Man (1961) to connect to one of the overarching themes of the collection—i.e., these “circuits” within sf of Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Global South are noteworthy yet underappreciated, and their influence on sf worldwide is essential to considering sf and its place in today’s world (2). The first section focuses on themes of “othering” within these literary traditions. Anindita Banerjee contributes the first chapter, “T/Racing Revolution between Red October and the Black Atlantic,” which elucidates the connections between racialized “others” and the transmogrification of language in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), acknowledged as a great influence on its far more mainstream counterpart, George Orwell’s classic 1984 (1949). Banerjee also looks forward to Afrofuturism, and her citations and analysis of the original Russian text and the English translation are riveting and clever, especially the discussion of the “African-lipped” extraterrestrials, and of the duality between the characters identified with “I/a” and “R,” lost in most English translations (25, 28). The second chapter, “Eugenia: Engineering New Citizens in Mexico’s Laboratory of Socialism” by Miguel Garcia, gives Eduardo Urzaiz’s Mexican sf novel Eugenia (1919) a historicized analysis, doing a deep dive into the eugenics-based logic of the novel and the history of eugenics as a whole. Garcia elucidates how eugenics, often discussed in US and German contexts, could be applied to Mexico’s socialist regime of the time, and how Eugenia functions as an exercise of sorts into just how this could work. The final chapter of the section, Antonio Cordoba’s “Between Moscow and Santa Clara: The Soviet-Cuban Imaginary in Agustin de Rojas’ Espiral (1980),” brings into focus the intimate connection between Cuban and Soviet sf during the Cold War, especially in reference to the networks of scientific research and sf publishing in the Global South (76). This article masterfully 119 BOOKS IN REVIEW connects publishing, socioeconomic, and narrative history in Espiral and other Soviet works translated into Spanish and distributed in Cuba. Cordoba’s meticulous research and ability to make accessible to both well-acquainted and uninitiated audiences (like myself) the nuances in both Soviet and Cuban literature of the Cold War period and their connections to their respective regimes make this a significant contribution. The second section’s chapters, each centering on the transnational exchange between Eastern European and former Soviet works and the West, continue to deliver exceptional analysis. In conversation with Delany and other scholars discussing sf and linguistics, Carl Vanderloos’s chapter “Alien Evolution and Dialectical Materialism in Eastern European Science Fiction” notes how the history of dialectical materialism as a philosophy affected the ways that Soviet sf engaged with the world and with nature differently from American or British sf. His exploration of the origins of dialectical materialism and its contextualization in sf are fascinating, especially his assertion of Soviet sf that “the future was to be human and humanist, not alien or alienated” (105). In his close readings of Ivan Efremov...

Поэтика А. П. Чехова в восприятии Е. И. Замятина: от «драматической формы рассказа» к «молекулярной драме»

Поэтика А. П. Чехова в восприятии Е. И. Замятина: от «драматической формы рассказа» к «молекулярной драме»

„Серапіонові брати” в оцінці критики російського зарубіжжя

The author of the article studied the assessment of the literary group Serapinovy brothers by the critics of the Russian diaspora – Georgy Adamovich and Alexander Yashchenko. Adamovich was called the best critic of emigration, he enjoyed a well-deserved prestige. All critical articles by Georgy Adamovich are distinguished by their objectivity. He deeply understood the essence of works of art. This allowed the critic to accurately predict the further paths of the creative development of the author, about whom he wrote. The article reconstructs the presence of Georgy Adamovich at the meetings of the Serapion brothers in those years when he was still in Russia. The critic's articles also indicate his rejection of folklore, the stylization of that part of the serapions who called themselves „eastern” and followed the folk tradition. The critic gives a positive assessment to the writers who were guided by Western literature. In his articles, Georgy Adamovich gives an objective assessment to the poets of the literary group Nikolai Tikhonov and Elizaveta Polonskaya. The fate of these poets testifies to the fact that the critic understood exactly the prospects of their development. The author of the article investigated the reception by Alexander Yashchenko of the Russian literary group. Alexander Yashchenko was the publisher and main critic of the New Russian Book magazine, which was published in Berlin. The author of the article determined that Yashchenko was interested in the literary life of Russia and understood the laws of the literary process of the 1920s. Alexander Yashchenko, in an article on the development of Russian literature from 1917 to 1922, calls the writers of the Serapion Brothers literary group as an important phenomenon of this period. The critic examines the work of Vsevolod Ivanov, Mikhail Zoshchenko and Konstantin Fedin. He objectively evaluates their works, points out the possibilities of creative development. The author of the article notes that criticism of Alexander Yashchenko is characterized by depth and objectivity. Back in 1922, the critic saw that the work of Yevgeny Zamyatin influenced the writers of the Serapion Brothers literary group. Scientists drew attention to this only at the end of the twentieth century.

Неизвестные сценарии Евгения Замятина

Неизвестные сценарии Евгения Замятина