Dystopia in Technicolor

Portraits of Society in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We

Long before it came time to write my senior thesis for my undergraduate degree, I knew I wanted to focus my studies on the work of Russian and other Slavic authors. I was so insistent on this that, having learned that there was no course that contained Russian work available at Bethany Lutheran College, I met with the head of the English Department and begged him for an independent study. He, being the infinitely kind and supportive mentor that he was, instead created a full course for me and allowed me to study the great Russian authors in discourse with other students. We studied some of the most famous names—Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov—, but also delved deeply into Lermontov, Nabokov, and finally Zamyatin.

Zamyatin is not a well known name outside Russian circles, and, in fact, may not be too well known to some Russians, since his work was banned in Russia for over fifty years after its publication (until the crumbling of the Soviet Union). After making his name as a playwright, Zamyatin wrote his first novel, the masterpiece We, and its influence is unbelievable. It is the first utopian novel, and it caused such a stir that George Orwell wrote his own utopian novel, (yes, that one: 1984) in response. Although there is much to discuss about the novel and its surrounding circumstances, today I am focused on a particular collection of artwork it inspired.

The utopia depicted in We is sterile, mathematical, and made entirely of glass. There is utter transparency in every room and every building. A great conflict in the novel is the remaining world outside the utopian city, which is described as feral and overrun by nature. This contrast is portrayed incredibly by the artist Eda Akaltun, who I came across while researching the novel. Her set of images complicate this idea of transparency and use color to portray the inner turmoil of the novel’s main character. The images seem to have multiple layers of meaning to them, as though hiding something in the open, as though portraying both the beauty and the turmoil of a sterile, glass society.

See the full collection on her website here, and keep it close at hand the next time you read Zamyatin’s novel.