He wrote We in 1920-1921 but was not permitted to publish it. The Brethren supported Zamyatin’s declaration, in the essay ‘I Am Afraid’, that: “true literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and sceptics.” This group had different styles and approaches, but were united in their belief that writers should have creative freedom, and that literature should not be uniform and monochrome but varied, experimental and above all crafted. Whilst some writers believed that literature should be totally subordinated to socialism, Zamyatin became a leading figure in the Serapion Brethren. Hurrying back from a job in England, he served on the editorial boards of several publishing houses and taught at writing workshops. In his youth he was involved in a Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, and began a hazardous writing career in the years following the 1905 revolution, in which he was arrested, imprisoned and twice exiled before being granted amnesty in 1913.īy 1917 he was no longer a member of the Bolsheviks and threw himself into the great artistic and cultural ferment triggered by the Russian Revolution.
Yevgeny Zamyatin was born in Russia in 1884.
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