Z

Born into a middle-class background in

Lebedyan’, Tambov Province, Zamyatin

attended the gimnaziya at Voronezh and then

the Polytechnic Institute at St Petersburg,

training as a naval architect. He graduated,

despite imprisonment and exile for revolu-

tionary activities on behalf of the Bolsheviks,

travelled widely in connection with his work,

and published his first short story in 1908.

Best known of his early works was A

Provincial Tale (Uyezdnoye, 1913). He con-

tinued his dual professions of naval engineer-

ing and literature up to 1931, with his

mathematical training frequently influencing

his literary work. In 1916-17 Zamyatin spent

eighteen months in England, supervising the

building of ice-breakers at Newcastle-upon-

Tyne, and presenting a caustic picture of

English life in his stories The Islanders

(Ostrovityane, 1918, trans. 1978) and A Fisher

of Men (Lovets chelovekov, 1922, trans. 1977).

Returning to Russia just before the October

Revolution, Zamyatin proceeded to question

the direction of the revolution, and the future

for literature under it, in a series of pungent

stories and essays. His futuristic novel We

(My, written 1920, published in English,

New York 1924, and in Russian, New York

1952) was denounced as ‘a malicious

pamphlet on the Soviet government’ and was

never published in the Soviet Union. Under

increasing attack as an ‘inner e´migre´’,