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How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction

newstatesman.com

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Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction

#21

Post by trhway »

konart wrote: post #20
trhway wrote: post #9

I've never heard Platonov mentioned in the West when it comes to Russian/USSR literature dealing with ideological totality. Probably Platonov's language is very hard to translate in the way preserving his sound. To me his https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Pit is if one removed all the fictional elements from "We", removed even any [anti] glory of "dystopia" and any color, got down to the very ground, and w…

I deeply hated Котлован (The Foundation Pit) at school. To this day I can't understand why this on is even in school program.

Deep consolations to your fate :) It must have been real torture. Putting it on school program is worse than putting Dostoevsky there. While i was able to read Dostoevsky again later at University, and that time i was enjoying it and started to understand him (at least it was my impression that i was understanding him), i was able to start reading Platonov only when i was doing heavy physical labor 12-14 hours/day 7 days a week while working in summer construction in Siberia ("stroyotryad") - that puts you into the state of mind suitable for Platonov :)

Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction

#22

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

mcavoybn wrote: post #4

>While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented flawed worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one. Forgive me if I am reading too much into this, but the tagline for this article feels weird to me. It feels weird because it implies that the "worlds" of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell were without flaw. Was western civilization in the early 20th century really without flaw? Isn't every great dystopian work essentially a thought e…

in Soviet Russia/Union you had radical Utopia gone wrong as the governing ideology, an ideology that could wipe anyone out just like that, without any constraints whatsoever; (talking here about the Utopia of Thomas Moore that is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_%28book%29 - You didn't have as much power in the hands of the state in rest of Europe, until the damned nazis)

Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction

#24

Post by versale »

cambalache wrote: post #13
jhbadger wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better way of phrasing this would be "While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented totalitarian worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one." Of course Western society had flaws, and that was part of the point of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell writing their dystopias, but Zamyatin was living in the sort of society British authors could only imagine in their dystopias.

But that is a very simple-minded take. You just have to read "Down and out in Paris and London" to notice people suffered and suffer a lot in the "perfect" western world, so Orwell didnt have to "imagine" material to describe a dystopia, London, Paris or Moscow would have worked just the same, although for different reasons. Sometimes a soviet writer had a way better life than a worker in the west. Zamyatin was part…

The USSR didn’t exist in 1920: the civil war was ongoing (until 1922).

Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction

#25

Post by bryanrasmussen »

LeGuin had a great essay called The Stalin in The Soul regarding Zamyatin and We, I first read it in her book The Language of The Night about 40 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_of_the_Night

Haven't found it online, but did find this description of it http://jesseabrahamlucas.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-stalin-in-... - for some reason I remembered it as the Stalin of The Soul.

on edit: Note the description is anti-LeGuin, and her conclusions of the essay, but is still worth reading I think.

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