About the product
Zamyatin's novel We, written in 1920, describes a society in the distant future in which the individual is subject to strict totalitarian control. The book was first published in English in New York in 1924, after which a campaign to persecute him began in the writer’s homeland. Zamyatin's dystopia was published in Russian only in 1988.
We recommend reading online a summary of “We” chapter by chapter, as well as taking a special test to better prepare for a literature lesson.
The material was prepared jointly with a teacher of the highest category, Kuchmina Nadezhda Vladimirovna.
Experience as a teacher of Russian language and literature - 27 years.
Plot of the novel
The dystopian novel “We” is built in the form of diary entries of number D-503, a brilliant engineer of the Integral spaceship. The hero writes for distant civilizations, which the government of the earthly Unified State calls on to follow the example of humanity and regulate their lives according to mathematical laws.
One day, when D-503 is walking with his girlfriend O-90, an irritable, white-toothed stranger speaks to him. The impression of the meeting is best conveyed as it is described by Zamyatin, with a quote from the novel “We”:
But I don’t know - there’s some strange annoying X in the eyes or eyebrows, and I just can’t catch it, give it a digital expression.
Just a few days later, D-603 already accepts the invitation of I-330, that same stranger, to visit with her the Ancient House, where she plunges into the chaos of life before the formation of the United State. But when asked to stay late, violating the daily routine, he refuses.
I-330, with its individuality and freedom, simultaneously attracts and frightens the hero, who believes - and this is best confirmed by a quote from Evgeny Zamyatin’s “We” - that
...the instinct of lack of freedom has been organically inherent in man since ancient times...
He even intends to denounce his new acquaintance, but instead goes to the Medical Bureau. D-503 does not understand that he is in love, and therefore thinks that he is sick. Based on the results of an examination by a doctor, he is temporarily suspended from work. At the same time, D-503 is no longer sure that he wants to lose his new worldview. This is clearly demonstrated by this quotation from Zamyatin’s “We”:
However, well: a week ago, I probably would have been offended too. And now - now not: because I know that I have it - that I am sick. And I also know that I don’t want to get better. I don’t want to, that’s all.
The hero in love allows I-330 to take him beyond the Green Wall, where the so-called savages live who have retained their individuality. Soon D-503 begins to cooperate with them and help them in their plans to destroy the city.
At the same time, D-503 succumbs to O-90’s persuasion to give her a child, despite the fact that they both face death for this. Later, with the help of I-330, when the revolutionaries partially carry out their plans and break into the city, he will transport his heavily pregnant girlfriend beyond the Wall, without realizing that she is in love with him, as follows from quotes from Zamyatin’s “We”:
- And you want me to go to her - so that I ask her - so that I... Don’t you dare ever talk about this to me again!
In the chaos of the struggle between the city and the jungle, work on “Integral” does not stop. The hero is on the side of the revolutionaries here too: they want to hijack a ship and send it to the city in order to destroy it once and for all. The plan almost succeeds, but at the last moment the Guardians appear and prevent the plan from being carried out.
Immediately after, D-503 is granted an audience with the Benefactor, who forgives him for his betrayal and says that I-330 only used him and did not love him. Having succumbed to the provocation, the hero goes to the Guardian Bureau to repent and inform on the revolutionaries, but does not have time: everyone is driven into the audience and undergoes an operation to remove the fantasy. After the operation, D-503 without hesitation reveals to the government everything he knows about the revolutionaries, including talking about I-330, which no longer evokes any feelings in him.
Zamyatin’s dystopian novel “We” ends like this:
And I hope we will win. More: I'm sure we will win. Because reason must win.
Other characters
- Yu – female number, elderly controller.
- R-13 – male number, poet, comedian.
- The doctor is a male figure who stands on the side of the conspirators.
- Guardian S is the keeper of the United State, who went over to the side of the conspirators.
- The Benefactor is the permanent supreme ruler of the United State.
And we also have:
for the coolest -
Read “Summary of “Russian Women”” in full
Summary
Entry 1
It's the 32nd century. Humanity submitted to the absolute power of the United State, headed by its ruler – the Benefactor. The construction of Integral will soon be completed. His main task is to calculate the Universe, “to subjugate unknown creatures living on other planets, perhaps still in a wild state of freedom.”
D-503, “one of the mathematicians of the United State,” is working on the construction of the ship.
Entry 2
D-503 admires the clear spring sky, where there is never a cloud. In the afternoon, the “all rounded” O-90 comes behind D.
While walking among other numbered people, D-503 meets a stranger - thin and sharp I-330. Somehow she manages to read the engineer’s thoughts, and she invites him to room 112. This woman acts on D “unpleasantly, like an indecomposable irrational term accidentally inserted into an equation.”
Entry 3
D-503 explains such key concepts as Personal Clock, Tablet of Hours, Green Wall, Maternal Norm, Benefactor.
Since the distant Bicentennial War, no one has been outside the glass Green Wall, which fenced off the city from the dense forest.
The work of the United State is regulated by the Table of Hours, thanks to which all residents act like a perfectly coordinated mechanism: they wake up at the same time, start work and complete it, and go to bed. There are two private hours in the day when city residents can, at their discretion, draw the curtains, take a walk, or spend time at their desk.
Entry 4
The next day, D gets assigned to auditorium 112, where the phonolector remembers the musicians of the past who wrote music in a fit of inspiration. D’s new acquaintance, the thin I-330, sits at the piano in ancient clothes and plays a piece of ancient music.
D is waiting for his evening private hour, when O is supposed to come to him with a pink ticket entitling him to have the curtains closed.
Entry 5
D-503 sets out the laws by which the United State lives. After the victory in the Bicentennial War, only 0.2% of the population remained alive.
“The ancestors finally conquered Hunger at great cost,” when “the present, oil-based food” was invented. Also, the residents of the United State managed to get rid of such a feeling as Love, and now everyone can pre-select the desired number, write a statement, and meet with him on strictly regulated sexual days. It is very convenient and practical.
Entry 6
D bitterly admits that even the United State “has a few more steps to reach the ideal.” There are also numbers that break the rules, and then a celebration of Justice takes place on the main square.
However, D himself is not so clean before the law. One day, during a private hour, he went with I to the Ancient House, which was radically different from the usual blocks with transparent walls in which the rooms live. His companion left for a while, and then came out “in a short, old-fashioned bright yellow dress, a black hat, and black stockings.”
D-503 was late for the lecture, but I asked him to stay. It was an unthinkable violation of all the rules.
Entry 7
D has a dream and wakes up in horror because he knows that “dreams are a serious mental illness.” On the way to the Integral, he notices Guardian S and tries to tell him about his meeting with I in the Ancient House and her violation of the rules, but at the last moment he changes his mind.
O thinks that D is sick and needs to see a doctor. They spend the evening solving “problems from an old problem book: it’s very calming and clears your thoughts.”
Entry 8
D recalls how, during his school years, he was terrified by irrational numbers. He is about to go to the Guardian Bureau, but on the way he meets O and R-13. Sweet O’s companion is not to the liking of the pragmatic D, since “R-13 has a bad habit of making jokes.”
O has an appointment with R-13 for an afternoon private hour, but since half an hour is enough for them, the writer invites D to his home. In essence, their unequal love triangle represents a family in which D is comfortable and cozy.
Entry 9
D is located on the main square along with thousands of other rooms that came to the celebration of Justice. “Heavy, stony, like fate, the Benefactor” runs the Machine, which kills criminals with thousands of volts of electric current. After the execution, all that remains of them is “only a puddle of chemically pure water, which just a minute ago was beating wildly and red in the heart.”
Entry 10
D receives a notification according to which I-330 is assigned to him for this evening. A whirlwind of thoughts rushes through the engineer’s head, and he understands that “there will be a difficult, ridiculous, completely illogical conversation.”
I makes it clear that D is in her hands because he did not report the violation to the Guardians. After this date, D can’t sleep.
Entry 11
For the first time in his life, D feels unsure of himself, he does not understand who he really is. He is visited by R-13, who casually mentions in conversation that he is also closely acquainted with I-330.
This news unbalances D, who realizes with horror that “all this madness - love, jealousy - is not only in idiotic ancient books.”
Entry 12
D is sure that he is seriously ill and dreams of recovery. He has no doubt that he will soon recover, since that night there were “no dreams or other painful phenomena.”
He is reading a book with poems by R, which he brought him the day before. One of the Guardians reads poetry with D.
Entry 13
After a sound, dreamless sleep, D is confident that he is completely healthy. An unexpected call from I-330 disrupts his daily routine. He is late for work, and his companion takes a certificate from a doctor he knows.
Now they are free. The couple heads to the Ancient House, where they make love without pink coupons or permits. It seems as if he is falling into his “old dream, so clear now.”
Entry 14
D goes down “to the duty officer to get the right to the curtains,” since that evening O is supposed to come with a pink coupon. However, the date is not planned from the very beginning, since D acutely understands “how empty everything is, given away.”
Unable to bear D's indifference, he cries bitterly and then O runs away. D realizes that I-330 has taken both R and O from him.
Entry 15
D arrives at the Integral construction site. From the Second Builder he learns that while he was sick, an “unnumbered man” was caught. He was taken to the Operating Room, where “the best and most experienced doctors work under the direct supervision of the Benefactor himself.”
The violator will be tortured using the Gas Bell. A person is placed under a glass bell and various gases are pumped under pressure until he gives away valuable information. But this is not inhuman torture, but exclusively concern “for the security of the United State, in other words, for the happiness of millions.”
Entry 16
D is very homesick for I-330, which he hasn't seen in days. One day “she flashed by, for a second filled the yellow, empty world,” and just as quickly disappeared.
D turns to the doctor, and he makes a terrible diagnosis: the patient has a soul. However, walking, in particular to the Ancient House, will help cure this ailment. Thus, the doctor reminds D that he will meet with I there.
Entry 17
D heads to the Ancient House in the hope of meeting I there, but he fails to find her. During the search, the mathematician notices the approaching keeper, and in a panic hides in the closet. Once safe, he “slowly, gently floated down somewhere.”
In the dungeon, D meets a doctor he knows, who promises to bring I-330. While waiting for the meeting, D’s “lips, hands, knees are trembling.” He meets I in a yellow dress, and she makes an appointment with him for the day after tomorrow.
Entry 18
D goes to bed and immediately sinks “to the sleepy bottom, like an overturned, overloaded ship.” He dreams of I in a pink dress, behind the mirrored door of his closet. Waking up, D tries to determine what the soul is, but plunges even further into the abyss of chaos.
On Doctor D's advice, he goes for a walk. In the evening, he receives a letter from O-90 in which she confesses her love to D, and at the same time lets him go so that he can be happy with I-330.
Entry 19
The first test run of “Integral” takes place, during which “a dozen unwary numbers” die. However, no one pays attention to this unfortunate incident, and the work continues.
The hero goes to a lecture on childcare, where he meets O. In the evening of the same day, O asks D for one favor: to leave her the child. Such a violation is punishable by execution, but O is ready to sacrifice herself just to feel the birth of a new life within herself. D agrees.
Entry 20
D analyzes what happened and comes to the conclusion that he is ready to die in the Benefactor’s Machine. If Operations Room O-90 calls his name, he will be killed along with her.
Entry 21
I-330 again does not arrive on its day, instead there is only “an indistinct note that does not explain anything.” Hoping to find her, D goes to the Ancient House. There he meets Guardian S, who asks him to be more careful.
In the evening, D meets an elderly controller, Yu, who complains to him that the children depicted her “in some kind of fish form.” She, of course, loves children, but did not fail to hand them over to the Guardians.
Entry 22
D witnesses a procession: three criminals are being escorted. One of them, noticing a familiar face in the crowd, stops, but the guard clicks “at him with the bluish spark of an electric whip.” A girl rushes towards the young man, and D thinks it’s I-330.
Entry 23
I-330 comes to D and talks about his love for him. But she wants to be sure that D is ready to do anything for her. The mathematician feels that the woman is not telling her something. She agrees to tell him everything, but only after Unanimity Day.
Entry 24
D reflects on the great Day of Unanimity, during which the same ruler is invariably chosen. At the same time, “the elections themselves have a rather symbolic meaning” and are intended to emphasize that the people of the One State are “a single, powerful million-celled organism.”
The Mathematician suggests I-330 go to the main square together, but she refuses.
Entry 25
A solemn anthem sounds, and “the Benefactor in white robes, who wisely bound us hand and foot with the beneficent snares of happiness,” descends from the heavens onto the aeroplane.
“The rustle of millions of hands” sweeps through the rows - everyone votes “for” the Benefactor, and after “thousands of hands waved upward - “against”.” A terrible panic begins, I-330 is wounded, and D carries her away from the maddened crowd in his arms.
Entry 26
Much to D's surprise, the familiar world still continues to exist. The United State Newspaper reports that, despite the machinations of enemies, for the 48th time the same Benefactor, who has repeatedly proven his unshakable wisdom, was unanimously elected.
All streets in the United State are plastered with Mephi leaflets, and the Guardians destroy them urgently.
Entry 27
D meets I and she takes him beyond the Green Wall. Finding himself in the forbidden zone, the mathematician is most amazed by the sun - “they were some kind of living fragments, constantly jumping spots, which blinded his eyes and made his head spin.”
“A crowd of three to four hundred... people” is noisy in the clearing. I-330 appeals to them to seize the Integral and go to other planets in order to forever destroy the laws and orders established by the Benefactor. Many people think this is crazy, but D supports his companion.
Suddenly, D notices the familiar face of the Guardian in the crowd, but I-330 claims that no one knows about this place.
Entry 28
I-330 comes to D and reports that the government is up to something: “they are preparing something in the auditorium buildings, some tables, doctors in white.” She also suggests that D is a mixed-race descendant and is the son of a woman from the city and a man who lived beyond the Green Wall.
I-330 tells the mathematician about the Mephi, who are desperately fighting for freedom. Later, D receives a letter warning him of the arrival of the Guardians. He manages to hide the dangerous notes, and the Guardians leave with nothing.
Entry 29
While heading to the Ancient House to meet with I-330, D notices a pregnant O-90. She is very happy and thanks D for this happiness. However, the mathematician is worried: he knows perfectly well what fate awaits O-90 for an illegal pregnancy.
D invites her to cross the Green Wall and experience the true joy of motherhood: to see how the child “will grow in your arms, become round, and fill out like a fetus.” Having learned that only I-330 can help her, O-90 resolutely refuses help.
Entry 30
I says that “among the hundreds taken at random by the Guardians yesterday, there were 12 Mephis,” and you need to act as quickly and decisively as possible. A delay of 2-3 days can be fatal.
The capture of the Integral is scheduled for the day after tomorrow - on the day of its first test flight. And then in the hands of I-330 and her like-minded people there will be “a weapon that will help end everything at once, quickly, without pain.”
Entry 31
The next day, D reads in the State Newspaper that the United State intends to finally make people ideal, completely depriving them of their imagination. To do this, it is enough to perform a small operation, destroying the “pathetic brain nodule” - the center of fantasy.
Because of this news, the launch of Integral is postponed. D is glad of this, because he does not need to betray his own brainchild. He has high hopes for the Operation, hoping in this way to regain his former calm.
However, I-330 harshly puts him before a choice: “Operation and one hundred percent happiness or...”. D chooses the second option - an unknown, frightening future, but along with I-330.
Entry 32
The first numbers to undergo the Operation, with the banner “We are the first!” We have already operated! Everyone is behind us! they are trying to drive the remaining numbers to the operating tables. D, along with many others, manages to escape.
The mathematician meets O-90, who agrees to take refuge behind the Green Wall: she does not want to undergo an operation after which she will not be able to love her child. D gives her a letter to I-330 and directs her to the Ancient House.
Entry 33
The next day, D learns from the newspaper that work will be suspended until all numbers undergo surgery. This is a mandatory condition for everyone, and “those who fail to appear are subject to the Benefactor’s Machine.”
Entry 34
"Integral" is ready for testing. It rises into the air and leaves the earth's atmosphere. The appointed hour is approaching when Mephi must take the reins of power into their own hands. However, one of them turns out to be the Guardian, and the plans for the coup are destroyed. I suspects D of treason.
Entry 35
To prove his innocence of I-330, the mathematician decides to kill controller Yu: he is sure that it was her fault that the planned coup was foiled. He searches for her all day around the city, but does not find her anywhere.
In the evening, Yu herself appears to D. He lowers the curtains and swings the rod, intending to kill her. Yu is sure that D acts this way in a fit of passion, and “it was so unexpected, so stupid” that he lowers the rod from his hand and begins to laugh. At that moment D understands “that laughter is the most terrible weapon: with laughter you can kill everything - even murder.”
Yu admits that she did not issue the I-330. The bell rings: the Benefactor himself urgently summons D.
Entry 36
The benefactor reveals the truth to D: the traitors are not interested in him in himself. He is of value to them only as the builder of Integral. Daring to raise his eyes to the Benefactor, D sees in front of him “a bald, Socratic-bald man, and on his bald head there are small drops of sweat.” Unable to contain his laughter, D runs away.
Entry 37
During breakfast, an unexpected incident occurs: birds appear in the sky, flying into the United State through the destroyed Green Wall.
In the resulting crowd, D tries to find I-330, but to no avail.
Entry 38
Waking up in the morning from a bright light, D sees I-330 in front of him. She has very little time, and the mathematician is trying to justify himself to her. He tells her about his meeting with the Benefactor. I-330, without answering anything, leaves D.
Entry 39
D decides to go to the Guardian Bureau and confess everything to them. He finds an acquaintance, Guardian S, and begins to frantically and confusingly, “in awkward lumps, shreds,” talk about everything that happened. But the Guardian admits to him that he himself belongs to the conspirators, and he knows about everything.
D leaves the Bureau and meets his neighbor, a scientist who managed to prove the finitude of the Universe.
Entry 40
The mathematician and his scientist neighbor, “as not having a certificate of the Operation,” are sent to undergo a procedure to remove fantasy.
The next day D comes to the Benefactor and tells him everything. In the evening of the same day, D is present during the torture “in the famous Gas Room.” A woman is brought there who vaguely resembles someone D. Despite the torment, she, unlike her comrades, does not utter a word. Tomorrow she will be executed along with others in the Benefactor's Machine.
But not everything is calm in the United State, and “in the western quarters there is still chaos, roaring, corpses, animals.” The rooms manage to isolate themselves from them with a temporary wall of high-voltage waves. D has no doubt about the victory of the United State.
We
The time when “We” was written was when the discussion about social order in art began. Zamyatin angrily parodies the rhetoric and practice of the Proletkult
A mass cultural and educational organization under the People's Commissariat of Education existed from 1917 to 1932. In its heyday, it had more than 100 branches, there were about 80 thousand people in its ranks, and about 20 periodicals were published under its leadership. , in “We”, depicted as an institution of State Poets and Writers, who every day, on call, from 8 to 11, serve ideology: “Now poetry is no longer a shameless nightingale whistle” (hello to Boris Pasternak, who in 1917 defined poetry as “ two nightingales duel"). “Poetry is public service, poetry is utility.”
The main target is the proletarian poet Alexey Gastev
Alexey Kapitonovich Gastev (1882–1939) - poet, writer, revolutionary. Member of the RSDLP since 1901. He went to France several times, where he worked as a mechanic. After the revolution, he managed factories and became the founder and director of the Central Institute of Labor, where he dealt with issues of improving productivity. From 1932 to 1936 he was chairman of the All-Union Committee for Standardization. Author of poetry and the utopian novel “Express. Siberian Fantasy”, books “How to Work”. In 1938 he was arrested and executed. , who proposed to “engineer” a person in order to speed up his merger with the machine: “Drive geometry into their neck. Logarithms as gestures for them.” In the poem “Beeps” (“Poetry of a Worker’s Impact”, 1918), Gastev states: “... in the morning, at eight o’clock, beeps scream for a whole million. / Now we start together minute by minute. / A whole million takes up the hammer at the same moment” - D-503 echoes him: “Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour and at the same minute, we, millions, get up as one. At the same hour, one million people start work and one million people finish.”
Everything that looks like absurd and ugly hyperbole in Zamyatin’s novel was the official ideology of Proletkult. Vladimir Lugovskoy
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Lugovskoy (1901–1957) - poet. He began publishing in 1924, the author of the collections “Flashes”, “Muscle”, “The Suffering of My Friends”, “To the Bolsheviks of the Desert and Spring”. He was a member of the constructivist group. After a business trip to France, he was subjected to party criticism, his poems were condemned as politically harmful. Lugovskoy publicly repented, but was in disgrace until the mid-1950s. , according to his own certification, “a political educator, a soldier and a poet,” wrote in the poem “Morning of the Republics” (1927): “I want to forget my name and rank, / To change to a number, to a letter, to a nickname.” In hindsight, all this reads as a direct prediction of the Gulag: D-503 and S-4711 will be replaced by Shch-854 - Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Denisovich. But Zamyatin, perhaps more than the physical destruction of personality under totalitarianism, was worried about the destruction—primarily self-destruction—of art.
True, algebraic love for humanity is an indispensable sign of truth - its cruelty
Evgeny Zamyatin
In the article “I’m Afraid,” created in the same year of 1921 as “We,” Zamyatin writes about the new “court poets” who fluctuate in their writing along with the social barometer: “All Proletcultists,” the writer concludes, “have the most revolutionary content and the most reactionary form." Among them, he regretfully singles out Mayakovsky, an early and sincere singer of the revolution, who, however, after its victory, began to improve “official plots and rhythms.”
D-503’s favorite literary works - “Daily Odes to the Benefactor”, “Flowers of Judgment Sentences”, the immortal tragedy “Late for Work” and the book “Stances on Sexual Hygiene” - sound like absurdist humor, but in reality they closely echo Mayakovsky’s utilitarian poems - "Windows of ROSTA
Russian telegraph agency created in 1918. ROSTA news was required to be reprinted by all media outlets. In addition to disseminating information through the telegraph, the agency published its own newspapers, magazines, as well as satirical propaganda posters “Windows of ROSTA”, one of the authors of which was Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1925, the ROSTA agency transferred its powers to the newly formed TASS agency, and in 1935 it was liquidated. and Glavpolitprosvet” of 1919–1922, calling: “Don’t drink raw water”, “Worker, take care of the ashes!”, “All party members are subject to verification” or “Without large-scale industry there is no communism.”
Mayakovsky is one of the possible prototypes of R-13, the state poet who glorifies the execution of a fellow worker with trembling lips. A poet in a totalitarian society is forced to write under the dictation of propaganda, to remain silent or die: “True literature can only be where it is made not by executive and trustworthy officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, skeptics.”
But perhaps the worst tragedy of R-13 is his internal split: he tries to internally come to terms with the state ideology, writing a “paradise poem” (a direct allusion to the “Grand Inquisitor”) about the happiness of getting rid of the burden of freedom, specifying - it is not clear to D -503 or for yourself: “And at the same time the tone is very serious...” Official R-13 dies as an author, and his physical death at the end of the novel, during a riot, becomes a symbol of liberation.
