In We-cultures, on the contrary, why do you need that kind of voice? It’s belonging to a group that’s valued: one should act in the interests of social harmony. ‘Free speech’ means you can say anything you like, but what you like will naturally be constrained by the effects it may have on others, and who will decide that? The ‘we’ will. But when does a ‘we’ become a mob? Is D’s description of everyone going for a walk in unified lockstep a dream or a nightmare? When does the so-harmonious, so-unified ‘we’ become a Nazi rally? This is the cultural crossfire we are caught in today.
Any human being is surely both: an I, special, discrete; and a We, part of a family, a country, a culture. In the best of worlds, the We – the group – values the I for its uniqueness, and the I knows itself through its relationships with others. If the balance is understood and respected – or so we fondly believe – there need not be a conflict.
But the One State has upset the balance: it has tried to obliterate the I, which nonetheless stubbornly persists. Hence poor D-503’s torments. D’s arguments with himself are Zamyatin’s arguments with the emerging conformity and voice-stifling of the early U.S.S.R. What was happening to the bright vision held out by the utopias of the nineteenth century, and indeed by Communism itself? What had gone so wrong?
When Orwell wrote 1984, Stalin’s purges and liquidations had already happened, Hitler had come and gone, the extent to which a person could be reduced and distorted by torture was known, so his vision is much darker than Zamyatin’s. Zamyatin’s two heroines are staunch, like Jack London’s, whereas Orwell’s Julia capitulates and betrays almost immediately. Zamyatin’s character S-4711 is a secret service operative, but his number gives away his alter ego. 4711 is the name of a cologne that originated in the German city of Cologne, which in the year 1288 staged a successful democratic revolt against Church and State authorities, and became a Free Imperial City. Yes, S-4711 is actually a dissident, bent on revolt. Whereas in 1984, O’Brien pretends to be a dissident, but is actually a member of the State police.
Zamyatin holds out the possibility of escape: beyond the Wall is a natural world where there are free ‘barbarian’ human beings, covered with – could it be fur? For Orwell, no one in the world of 1984 can leave that world, though he does permit a distant future in which this society no longer exists.
WE was written at a particular moment in history – the moment when the utopia promised by Communism was fading into dystopia; when, in the name of making everyone happy, heretics would be accused of thoughtcrime, disagreement with an autocrat would be equated with disloyalty to the Revolution, show trials would proliferate, and liquidation would become the order of the day. How could Zamyatin have seen the future so clearly? He didn’t, of course. He saw the present, and what was already lurking in its shadows.
‘Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,’ says Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. ‘But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.’ WE was a warning to its own place and time – one that was not heeded because it was not heard: the ‘diligent and reliable officials’ took care of that. The courses were not departed from. Millions and millions died.
Is it also a warning to us, in our time? If it is, what sort of warning? Are we listening?
LOG 1
BRIEF:
Announcement. The Wisest Line. An Epic.
I am simply copying down the announcement that appeared in today’s One State Gazette word for word:
IN 120 DAYS, CONSTRUCTION OF THE INTEGRAL WILL BE COMPLETE. THE GLORIOUS, HISTORIC HOUR WHEN THE FIRST-EVER INTEGRAL WILL BLAST OFF INTO OUTER SPACE IS NIGH. SOME THOUSAND YEARS AGO, YOUR HERO ANCESTORS VICTORIOUSLY SUBJUGATED ALL OF EARTH TO THE ONE STATE. YOUR CONQUEST WILL BE EVEN GREATER, FOR YOU WILL INTEGRATE THE INFINITE EQUATION OF THE UNIVERSE WITH THE ELECTRIC, FIRE-BREATHING POWER OF OUR GLASS INTEGRAL. YOU WILL ENCOUNTER UNFAMILIAR BEINGS ON ALIEN PLANETS WHO MAY YET LIVE IN SAVAGE STATES OF FREEDOM, AND YOU WILL SUBJUGATE THEM TO THE BENEFICENT YOKE OF REASON. IF THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WHAT WE BRING THEM IS MATHEMATICALLY INFALLIBLE HAPPINESS, WE WILL BE IMPELLED TO FORCE THEM TO BE HAPPY. BUT WE WILL TRY WORDS BEFORE RESORTING TO WEAPONS.
IN THE NAME OF THE BENEFACTOR, LET IT BE KNOWN TO EVERY NUMBER OF THE ONE STATE:
ALL THOSE CAPABLE OF DOING SO ARE HEREBY REQUIRED TO PRODUCE TREATISES, EPIC POEMS, MANIFESTOS, ODES OR ANY AND ALL OTHER WRITINGS CELEBRATING THE BEAUTY AND MAGNIFICENCE OF THE ONE STATE.
THESE WILL BE THE INTEGRAL’S FIRST CARGO.
ALL HAIL THE ONE STATE, ALL HAIL THE NUMBERS, ALL HAIL THE BENEFACTOR!
I write this and feel: my cheeks are burning. Yes: to integrating the profound equation of the Universe. Yes: to uncurving the coil of savagery, towards the asymptote, along the tangent – setting it straight: for the line of the One State is straight. Ours is the supreme, divine, exact and wise straight line – the wisest of all lines . . .
I am D-503, Builder of the INTEGRAL. Just one of the One State’s mathematicians. Accustomed to numbers, it is beyond the powers of my pen to fabricate the music of assonance and rhyme. I will simply try to record what I see and think – or, more precisely, what we think (yes, we – and in fact, WE will be the title of my contribution). But if these texts are to be derived from our life, from the mathematically perfected life of the One State, won’t they, in spite of me, be, of themselves, an epic poem? Yes: I believe and know this.
I write this and feel: my cheeks are burning. This must be what a woman feels when she first senses the pulse of a new little being inside her, tiny and blind. What I’m writing is me and, at the same time, it’s not me. For the many months ahead, this little being will feed on my vital juices, my blood – then, I will tear it away from myself in agony and lay it at the feet of the One State.
But I am ready – just like every, or almost every, one of us. Yes, I am ready.
LOG 2
BRIEF:
Ballet. Quadratic Harmony. X.
Spring. Honey-yellow pollen from some flower beyond the Green Wall blows in from the wild, invisible plains. This sweet dust dries out your lips so you have to keep licking them – meaning that probably, every passing woman’s lips must also be sweet (and man’s, too, of course). This somewhat interferes with logical thinking.
But the sky! Blue and unblemished by even a single cloud (the Ancients had such strange tastes! Their poets found inspiration in those disorderly, thick-witted piles of loitering vapour). I love – and I’m sure I can say this for all of us – we love a sterile, immaculate sky like today’s, which makes the whole world look like it’s made of the same immortal, shatterproof glass as the Green Wall and all of our other structures. On days like this, you can see everything down to its bluest depth, things you’ve never noticed before suddenly reveal their essential algebraic formulations – even the things you’re used to seeing every day.
Example: this morning, at the hangar where we are building the INTEGRAL, I was suddenly drawn to the machines. The spheres of the regulators spinning with eyes closed, in sweet oblivion; the cranks a-twinkle, bowing left and right; the balance beam with a proud swagger in its swinging shoulders; the slotting machine bouncing its bit in time with the soundless music. I was suddenly overtaken by the beauty of this grand mechanical ballet glittering in the weightless, pale blue sunlight.
Then