Zamyatin, Yevgeny

Zamyatin, Yevgeny (Ivanovich)

 or Yevgeny Zamiatin

(born Feb. 1, 1884, Lebedyan, Tambov province, Russia—died March 10, 1937, Paris, France) Russian novelist, playwright, and satirist. Educated as a naval engineer, he combined a scientific career with writing. A chronic dissenter, he was a Bolshevik before the Russian Revolution of 1917 but disassociated himself from the party afterward. His ironic criticism of literary politics kept him out of official favour. His most ambitious work, the novel We (1924; not published in the Soviet Union until 1988), was the first anti-utopian novel and the literary ancestor of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four.