ABSTRACT
We is Evgenii Zamiatin's only completed novel, and its controversial nature with regard to the incipient, ideologically sensitive Soviet state caused it to undergo a bizarre publishing history. Written in 1920, it was immediately considered to be a malicious pamphlet on Soviet society; consequently its first publication came in an English translation (New York, 1924). An unauthorized and bastardized Russian version (with which Zamiatin was not involved, although this did not save him from severe tribulations, leading to his emigration to Paris in 1931) appeared in Prague in 1927. It was not until 1952, 15 years after Zamiatin's death, that a genuine Russian edition of the novel appeared (once again published in New York) . We remained banned, and indeed virtually unmentionable, in Soviet Russia until 1988, well into the Gorbachev era of glasnost'.
