WEBVTT NOTE Yevgeny Zamyatin: Libertarian Novelist 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.400 The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with 2 00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:13.280 Jeff Brigenbach. 3 00:00:13.280 --> 00:00:18.860 When we think of the libertarian tradition, we tend naturally to think of political philosophers 4 00:00:18.860 --> 00:00:21.420 and economists of the past. 5 00:00:21.420 --> 00:00:28.280 But surely one part of the libertarian tradition belongs to novelists and other fiction writers. 6 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:33.520 In earlier podcasts in this series, I've already discussed two such figures. 7 00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:41.360 Ayn Rand, whose 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged is arguably one of the half-dozen most important 8 00:00:41.360 --> 00:00:49.000 libertarian works of the 20th century, and John Ronald Ruhl Tolkien, the professor of 9 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:55.260 philology at Oxford whose giant fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, published just a few 10 00:00:55.260 --> 00:01:14.260 This week I'd like to talk about a writer whose level of influence has been much more modest, but whose indirect influence has nevertheless been considerable. 11 00:01:14.260 --> 00:01:19.260 Regular listeners to this series know what I mean by indirect influence. 12 00:01:19.260 --> 00:01:26.060 I gave an example of it just recently, when I discussed the life and career of Isabel Patterson. 13 00:01:26.060 --> 00:01:32.360 Patterson's libertarian classic, The God of the Machine, has never reached a wide readership. 14 00:01:32.360 --> 00:01:39.860 But, thanks to the effort of her protégé, Ayn Rand, Patterson herself has influenced millions of readers 15 00:01:39.860 --> 00:01:44.660 who have never even seen a copy of The God of the Machine. 16 00:01:44.660 --> 00:01:50.580 The writer I'm talking about today wrote a novel in which a citizen of a totalitarian 17 00:01:50.580 --> 00:01:55.560 state of the future meets a woman and becomes obsessed with her. 18 00:01:55.560 --> 00:02:01.080 He begins a forbidden sexual affair with this woman, meeting with her illicitly in a very 19 00:02:01.080 --> 00:02:06.820 old part of the city where the intrusive gaze of the all-encompassing government doesn't 20 00:02:06.820 --> 00:02:09.100 seem to penetrate. 21 00:02:09.100 --> 00:02:14.700 Through his relationship with her, he becomes involved in the organized underground opposition 22 00:02:14.700 --> 00:02:20.820 to the all-encompassing government, an opposition he had never previously realized existed at 23 00:02:20.820 --> 00:02:21.820 all. 24 00:02:21.820 --> 00:02:27.100 Ultimately, he and the woman are caught, imprisoned and tortured. 25 00:02:27.100 --> 00:02:33.680 In the end, he is sincerely repentant of his crimes, and is completely devoted to the all-encompassing 26 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:37.820 government that has done him all this harm. 27 00:02:37.820 --> 00:02:44.240 A familiar story, no? Can you tell me what novel I've just described? Ah, I see a hand 28 00:02:44.240 --> 00:02:52.640 in the back of the room. Yes? George Orwell's 1984, you cry out, confidently. And your answer 29 00:02:52.640 --> 00:02:58.860 is correct, but only as far as it goes, which is, perhaps, not quite as far as you thought 30 00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:05.940 it would. That is a description of the plot of 1984, which was published, as we all know, 31 00:03:05.940 --> 00:03:08.240 in 1949. 32 00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:16.340 But Orwell adapted the plot of 1984 from another novel, one originally published 25 years earlier, 33 00:03:16.340 --> 00:03:18.660 in 1924. 34 00:03:18.660 --> 00:03:23.020 That earlier novel was entitled simply, We. 35 00:03:23.020 --> 00:03:28.540 It was the work of a not very well known Russian writer, Evgeny Zamyatin. 36 00:03:28.540 --> 00:03:34.340 Zamyatin was not very well known outside Russia when We was first published, and he was still 37 00:03:34.340 --> 00:03:41.300 Still Not Very Well Known in the West, 25 Years Later, When Orwell Published 1984. 38 00:03:41.300 --> 00:03:45.940 He Remains Not Very Well Known in the West, to this day. 39 00:03:45.940 --> 00:03:53.100 1984, by contrast, is extremely well known in the West today, particularly in England 40 00:03:53.100 --> 00:03:59.820 and the United States, where words and phrases like, News Speak, Double Think, Thought Crime 41 00:03:59.820 --> 00:04:05.660 and Big Brother is Watching You are familiar to millions who have never read the novel from which 42 00:04:05.660 --> 00:04:12.780 they come. And there is no getting around the similarities between 1984 and Zamyatin's We. 43 00:04:13.820 --> 00:04:20.220 The leader of the totalitarian state is called the benefactor instead of Big Brother, but the basic 44 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:26.860 events of the story are fundamentally the same. And we know that George Orwell did read We several 45 00:04:26.860 --> 00:04:34.020 Several years before he wrote 1984, as Natasha Randall, the translator of the current modern 46 00:04:34.020 --> 00:04:39.860 library edition of Zamiattin's novel, told an interviewer for New York City public radio 47 00:04:39.860 --> 00:04:47.860 station WNYC in 2006, Orwell made no secret of his admiration for We. 48 00:04:47.860 --> 00:04:54.100 Orwell certainly read it, actually he read it I think in the early 40s, so about eight 49 00:04:54.100 --> 00:05:23.760 Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, first published in 50 00:05:23.760 --> 00:05:53.760 1932 is extremely similar to we in a number of ways. Here's one. The world state in brave new world is a technocratic one, dedicated to industrial efficiency and mass production. In the words of one critic, the world state is built upon the principles of Henry Ford's assembly line, mass production, homogeneity, predictability, and consumption of disposable consumer goods. 51 00:05:53.760 --> 00:06:10.760 At the same time as the World State lacks any supernatural-based religions, Ford himself is revered as a deity, and characters celebrate Ford Day and swear oaths by his name, for example, by Ford. 52 00:06:10.760 --> 00:06:27.760 The world state calendar numbers years in the A.F. era, after Ford, with year 1 A.F. being equivalent to 1908 A.D., the year in which Ford's first Model T rolled off his assembly line. 53 00:06:27.760 --> 00:06:37.760 In Zamiattin's We, industrial efficiency and mass production are the bywords of life in the technocratic One State. 54 00:06:37.760 --> 00:07:05.300 The narrator and main character of Zamiattin's story, the engineer D-503, tells us that unquestionably the greatest genius of the ancients was Frederick Winslow Taylor, the original factory and office efficiency expert who invented time and motion studies and took pride in increasing the output of any workplace through what he called scientific management. 55 00:07:05.300 --> 00:07:20.300 Taylor's only fault, according to D-503, was that his thought did not reach far enough to extend his method to all of life, to every step, to the 24 hours of every day. 56 00:07:20.300 --> 00:07:28.300 Another example. In Huxley's world state, sex is freely available, and is in fact encouraged. 57 00:07:28.300 --> 00:07:34.300 But it is far from the monogamous sex we still regard as the norm in our own society. 58 00:07:34.300 --> 00:07:40.660 A popular slogan in the world state is, everyone belongs to everyone else. 59 00:07:40.660 --> 00:07:43.020 This is repeated incessantly. 60 00:07:43.020 --> 00:07:49.000 The formation of families is discouraged, marriage is regarded as antisocial, and, as 61 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:55.720 one perceptive critic of Brave New World describes it, both sexual competition and emotional 62 00:07:55.720 --> 00:08:00.240 romantic relationships are obsolete. 63 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:06.280 In The One State of Zamiattin's We, first described in print eight years before Brave 64 00:08:06.280 --> 00:08:10.200 New World, things are remarkably similar. 65 00:08:10.200 --> 00:08:12.380 Everyone belongs to everyone else. 66 00:08:12.380 --> 00:08:17.000 If you want to have sex with someone, all you have to do is register for that person 67 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:22.800 with The One State, and that person will show up at your room at a pre-arranged time with 68 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:28.040 a pink ticket for you to tear in half before you get down to business. 69 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:33.000 You'll have 30 minutes to take care of business and you'll find that any kind of privacy is 70 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:35.440 in pretty short supply. 71 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:41.240 This is how translator Natasha Randall described the physical appearance of the one state in 72 00:08:41.240 --> 00:08:45.640 that 2006 WNYC interview. 73 00:08:45.640 --> 00:08:55.640 The world he creates in we is very clean and very blue and it's an urban state where essentially 74 00:08:55.640 --> 00:09:09.640 All of mankind has been driven inside of one great big green wall, and all of nature is banished to the outside of those walls, so you won't find a flower or an animal within this green wall. 75 00:09:09.640 --> 00:09:22.640 And all the buildings in the one state, which is this urban state, are transparent, so one of the nicest lines in the book describes looking up at these transparent buildings 76 00:09:22.640 --> 00:09:39.300 As D-503 puts it, we live in full view, perpetually awash with light, in among our transparent 77 00:09:39.300 --> 00:09:42.480 walls woven from the sparkling air. 78 00:09:42.480 --> 00:09:45.540 We have nothing to hide from one another. 79 00:09:45.540 --> 00:09:51.880 Even the citizens of the one state, however, do feel the need for a little privacy on occasion. 80 00:09:51.880 --> 00:09:55.440 As Natasha Randall notes in Zamyatin's novel, 81 00:09:55.440 --> 00:10:00.880 There are actually times when individuals are allowed to lower blinds in their room, 82 00:10:00.880 --> 00:10:05.880 and that's when someone arrives with a pink ticket. 83 00:10:05.880 --> 00:10:12.880 So we know Orwell read and admired We before he wrote 1984, and we don't know for sure 84 00:10:12.880 --> 00:10:18.400 whether Huxley read it before writing Brave New World, but it seems likely. 85 00:10:18.400 --> 00:10:24.100 We also don't know for sure whether Ayn Rand read Zamyatin's novel before writing her own 86 00:10:24.100 --> 00:10:31.560 story of totalitarianism in the far future, Anthem, which was first published in 1938, 87 00:10:31.560 --> 00:10:35.840 fourteen years after the first publication of We. 88 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:40.820 Rand revised Anthem slightly a few years later for the second edition, which appeared in 89 00:10:40.820 --> 00:10:43.480 1946. 90 00:10:43.480 --> 00:10:47.460 Did she read We before 1938? 91 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:53.460 In an excellent article, Zamiattin and Rand, published in 2003 in the Journal of Ayn Rand 92 00:10:53.460 --> 00:11:00.620 Studies and now available online, Peter St. André argues that Zamiattin's We was quite 93 00:11:00.620 --> 00:11:04.720 likely a formative influence on Ayn Rand. 94 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:10.920 He points out that We was completed in 1921, the same year Rand entered the University 95 00:11:10.920 --> 00:11:16.620 of Petrograd as a student of history, philosophy and literature. 96 00:11:16.620 --> 00:11:24.580 Zamyatin's college years, 1921 to 1924, were, as St. André notes, the years of Zamyatin's 97 00:11:24.580 --> 00:11:28.720 greatest fame and influence in Petrograd. 98 00:11:28.720 --> 00:11:35.180 He was, at that time, St. André writes, a hero to writers young and old, admired for 99 00:11:35.180 --> 00:11:41.740 his fierce independence and literary individualism, for he was virtually the only literary figure 100 00:11:41.740 --> 00:11:54.260 Zamyatin was in those years a highly public literary and philosophical presence in Petersburg, 101 00:11:54.260 --> 00:11:59.700 and it is quite possible that Rand read some of his stories and essays, or attended one 102 00:11:59.700 --> 00:12:02.540 of his many public lectures. 103 00:12:02.540 --> 00:12:08.740 It also seems probable, St. André continues, that Rand read Zamyatin's Wee in the English 104 00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:17.380 Translation by Gregory Zilborg, published in 1924, for in a 1934 letter to her agent 105 00:12:17.380 --> 00:12:23.380 regarding the manuscript for We the Living, she said, I have watched very carefully all 106 00:12:23.380 --> 00:12:28.180 the literature on the new Russia that has appeared in English. 107 00:12:28.180 --> 00:12:34.300 If she did read We during the 20s or 30s, Rand probably read it in English. 108 00:12:34.300 --> 00:12:38.060 It was not published in Russian during that time, you see. 109 00:12:38.060 --> 00:12:42.680 It was not published in Russian, in fact, until 1952. 110 00:12:42.680 --> 00:12:47.820 It was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. 111 00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:53.700 After finishing the novel in 1921, Zamyatin found that no publisher was willing to risk 112 00:12:53.700 --> 00:12:55.220 publishing it. 113 00:12:55.220 --> 00:13:01.500 He circulated it in manuscript around Petrograd, but according to translator Natasha Randall, 114 00:13:01.500 --> 00:13:06.700 a teenage university student majoring in history was unlikely to have seen it in 115 00:13:06.700 --> 00:13:08.460 that format. 116 00:13:08.460 --> 00:13:12.460 It probably was read by the circle of writers in St. Petersburg at the time, 117 00:13:12.460 --> 00:13:18.140 but it won't have gotten very much further. 118 00:13:18.140 --> 00:13:25.180 By 1924 the situation had not only not improved, it had actually become worse. 119 00:13:25.180 --> 00:13:28.700 The Bolshevik government had banned WII. 120 00:13:28.700 --> 00:13:34.220 Now it wasn't just a matter of publishers being too cowardly to bring the book out. 121 00:13:34.220 --> 00:13:41.500 Now it was a certainty that Zamyatin's book would not be printed and sold in the Soviet Union. 122 00:13:41.500 --> 00:13:50.180 Natasha Randall says there is irony in this because Zamyatin had run afoul of the Tsar's censors early in his career 123 00:13:50.180 --> 00:13:56.380 and had become a Bolshevik himself out of a desire to bring down the Tsar's government. 124 00:13:56.380 --> 00:14:03.780 He was a very ardent revolutionary. In fact, what Zamiatin was, though, was a person who 125 00:14:03.780 --> 00:14:10.260 believed in permanent revolution, that once people decide that change no longer needs 126 00:14:10.260 --> 00:14:17.220 to occur, that that's where the problem begins. So when the revolution started to stagnate 127 00:14:17.220 --> 00:14:22.220 was when Zamiatin became very disenchanted with it. And he wrote these brilliant essays, 128 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:42.220 Silence in his native land by the Bolsheviks, desperate for readers, Zamyatin consented to an offer to publish his novel in English translation. 129 00:14:42.220 --> 00:14:51.220 It was this English language edition, brought out in London in 1924, that was the first appearance of We in print. 130 00:14:51.220 --> 00:14:57.940 Ayn Rand spent a few days in London en route to America from Petrograd in 1926. 131 00:14:57.940 --> 00:15:01.940 She might have picked up a copy of Wee while she was there. 132 00:15:01.940 --> 00:15:06.980 Or she might have read that very same British edition of Zamiattin's novel in the United 133 00:15:06.980 --> 00:15:11.260 States later in the 20s or in the early 30s. 134 00:15:11.260 --> 00:15:16.660 For even if Rand hadn't been in a position to read Wee in manuscript while a student 135 00:15:16.660 --> 00:15:18.940 at Petrograd University. 136 00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:22.660 She certainly knew Zamyatin by reputation. 137 00:15:22.660 --> 00:15:28.580 As Peter St. André points out, Zamyatin was a highly public literary and philosophical 138 00:15:28.580 --> 00:15:35.080 presence in Petrograd in the early 20s, when Ayn Rand was a college student, already dreaming 139 00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:40.220 of escaping from the Soviet Union and moving to America. 140 00:15:40.220 --> 00:15:46.140 But whatever we decide about whether Rand read we in the 20s or 30s, there's simply 141 00:15:46.140 --> 00:15:53.120 Having no getting around the obvious similarities between Zamyatin's novel and Rand's Anthem. 142 00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:59.500 Both are set in the far future in a completely collectivized totalitarian society. 143 00:15:59.500 --> 00:16:05.020 Both are told in the first person by their main characters, in We by the mathematician 144 00:16:05.020 --> 00:16:14.380 and engineer D-503, in Anthem by the engineer Equality-72521. 145 00:16:14.380 --> 00:16:20.220 Anthem is the only work of fiction written by Rand to be written in the first person. 146 00:16:20.220 --> 00:16:28.540 In We, D-503 meets a woman, I-330, and is led inexorably down a path to rebellion against 147 00:16:28.540 --> 00:16:32.260 the government of the society in which he lives. 148 00:16:32.260 --> 00:16:41.940 In Anthem, Equality 72521 meets a woman, Liberty 53000, and is led inexorably down a path to 149 00:16:41.940 --> 00:16:47.080 to Rebellion against the Government of the Society in which He Lives. 150 00:16:47.080 --> 00:16:55.420 In the society in which Equality 72521 lives, the first-person singular pronoun, I, has ceased 151 00:16:55.420 --> 00:16:57.220 to exist. 152 00:16:57.220 --> 00:17:02.960 In D-503's society, in we, the pronoun is still in use. 153 00:17:02.960 --> 00:17:09.620 But the mindset of the two far-future societies is very much cut from the same cloth. 154 00:17:09.620 --> 00:17:17.100 Each morning, Zamyatin's D-503 writes, with six-wheeled precision, at the exact same hour, 155 00:17:17.100 --> 00:17:22.660 at the exact same minute, we, the millions, rise as one. 156 00:17:22.660 --> 00:17:29.060 At the exact same hour, we unimillionally start work, and unimillionally stop work. 157 00:17:29.060 --> 00:17:36.300 And, merged into a single, million-handed body, at the exact same table-appointed second, 158 00:17:36.300 --> 00:17:42.160 We bring spoons to our lips, we go out for our walk, and go to the auditorium, to the 159 00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:46.000 Taylor Exercise Hall, go off to sleep. 160 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:52.000 The small bright crystal bell in the bed's headboard rings, seven o'clock, it's time 161 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:53.480 to get up. 162 00:17:53.480 --> 00:18:00.000 On the right, on the left, through the glass walls, it's as if I'm seeing myself, my room, 163 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:05.380 my night-shirt, my motions, repeating themselves a thousand times. 164 00:18:05.380 --> 00:18:06.900 This cheers me up. 165 00:18:06.900 --> 00:18:11.300 One sees oneself as part of an enormous, powerful unit. 166 00:18:11.300 --> 00:18:18.180 We walk, one million-headed body, with a humble joy in each of us, similar, I imagine, to 167 00:18:18.180 --> 00:18:22.900 what molecules, atoms and phagocytes experience. 168 00:18:22.900 --> 00:18:29.060 The Christians of the ancient world, our only predecessors, as imperfect as they were, also 169 00:18:29.060 --> 00:18:31.320 understood this. 170 00:18:31.320 --> 00:18:35.020 Humility is a virtue, and pride is a vice. 171 00:18:35.020 --> 00:18:40.460 He is Divine and I is Satanic. 172 00:18:40.460 --> 00:18:47.060 Yevgeny Zamyatin was born in rural Russia on February 20, 1884. 173 00:18:47.060 --> 00:18:56.160 He died just a little more than 53 years later, in exile in Paris, on March 10, 1937. 174 00:18:56.160 --> 00:19:02.300 His only novel was not widely read during his brief life, nor is it widely read today. 175 00:19:02.300 --> 00:19:07.720 It has become one of those classics people would rather acknowledge as classics than 176 00:19:07.720 --> 00:19:10.380 actually sit down to read. 177 00:19:10.380 --> 00:19:15.700 But it has exercised an immense influence, especially in the English-speaking world, 178 00:19:15.700 --> 00:19:21.180 thanks to writers like George Orwell, who did read it, and writers like Aldous Huxley 179 00:19:21.180 --> 00:19:24.460 and Ayn Rand, who probably read it. 180 00:19:24.460 --> 00:19:32.460 By influencing their more famous dystopian novels, 1984, Brave New World and Anthem, 181 00:19:32.460 --> 00:19:38.380 We has made itself an honored place in the libertarian tradition. 182 00:19:38.380 --> 00:19:39.260 This is Jeff Rigenbach. 183 00:19:54.460 --> 00:19:56.460 www.fieggen.com