The Algebra of Happiness: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We

Description

Article published in the «Quaestio Rossica» — 2015. — Issue 4 — pp. 19-39.Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We is one of the most important “Utopian-Dystopian” novels of the first half of the 20th century and was originally considered a criticism of the Communism established in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, during the so-called War Communism, with the loss ofrevolutionary thrust and new stifling social rules. As a result, critics have seen "We" as a dystopian novel, in part inspired by Dostoevsky’s Poem of the Great Inquisitor. Dostoevsky’s opposition between freedom and happiness is in fact deeply reflected in the mirror of Zamyatin’s "We" as the happiness of the Only State, which is really what people experiment in passively obeying the often unwritten laws issued by the Great Benefactor, is opposed to the burden of choice: the same freedom which the Great Inquisitor saves mankind from with the strict allegiance to the Church laws that, while betraying the message of the Gospel, frees mankind from sin, transferring it to the Church itself. However, it is possible to find a different interpretation of the opposition happiness/freedom that hinges on the idea of beauty weaved into the fabric of Zamyatin’s novel.