TIME CAPSULE: The Surveillance State We Built
Smart cameras and mics in our pockets. CCTV on every corner. Algorithms that know us better than we know ourselves.
Are we already living in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We?
In the 1920 novel, citizens of the One State live in glass homes, watched constantly by an all-seeing authority. At least their sex time is scheduled in.
Today AI surveillance, social credit scoring, and anticipatory advertising seem like child’s play by comparison. But, we might be on the same path. It feels like we’re running fast to catch up.
The One State's promise: blissful stability in exchange for freedom.
From facial recognition to perfect humanoid companions, are we sleepwalking into a world that values control over individual agency?
Nearly a century later, We poses a question we can't ignore: How much of ourselves are we willing to surrender in exchange for security and “happiness”?
The Engineer Who Saw Through The Glass
"Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite."
In 1921, amid the aftershocks of the Russian Revolution, Yevgeny Zamyatin imagined a future his contemporaries dared not see. Born in 1884, this naval engineer-turned-writer initially supported the Bolsheviks but grew disillusioned as the regime tightened control.
Zamyatin witnessed the Soviet obsession with efficiency—factories, Taylorism, humans tuned like machines. Drawing from these experiences, We became a startling satire of a "perfect" totalitarian society.
The novel proved too radical for Soviet censors to stomach. Its portrayal of a glass-encased city of numbered citizens ruled by the all-powerful "Benefactor" directly challenged communism's utopian promises.
We had to be smuggled to the West, first appearing in English in 1924. At home, Zamyatin was vilified; by 1929, his works vanished from shelves.
In 1931, he daringly wrote to Stalin requesting exile rather than suffer a "living death" of silence—permission granted. He died in poverty in Paris in 1937.
His novel remained banned in Russia until 1988. Years before Stalin's terror or Orwell's 1984, Zamyatin had already mapped the machinery of the total state.
By exposing the logic of a regime trading freedom for happiness, Zamyatin created the blueprint for all dystopian fiction to come.
Know someone who’s sleepwalking into the One State? Wake them up by sending this post.
The Book
There are many editions of “We” available. The highest priced first edition on AbeBooks currently sells for US$8,500.
Left: First edition of the novel (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924) & Right: (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970)
PROPHETIC PASSAGES: Calculated Everything
The Happiness Paradox
"There were two in paradise and the choice was offered to them: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness... Fools that they were, they chose freedom."
In post-revolutionary Russia, the state promised a perfectly rational society where citizens would "happily" surrender freedom for stability and equality.
Today's security vs. privacy debate broaches a similar bargain. Governments justify surveillance as protection. Tech platforms design addictive experiences as "engagement optimization."
Zamyatin predicted our central dilemma: How much liberty will people trade for comfort? And can they ever reclaim what they surrender?
The Algorithmic Society
"Freedom? But that's just another word for 'what we cannot calculate.'"
Early 20th-century thinkers promoted "scientific management"—the belief that human behavior could be mathematically optimized. We takes this to its logical extreme: a world where every action is scheduled and emotions are regulated.
AI systems treat humans as data points to be managed, not individuals to be understood. Zamyatin's warning cuts deep: If algorithms define what is rational, what happens to the beautiful irrationality of human experience?
Life in Glass Houses
"How beautiful it is, our glass world, clean and innocent."
In We, privacy is abolished; citizens live in transparent apartments, perpetually observed by the Guardians. Drawing curtains is permitted only during state-sanctioned "sex hours."
China's social credit system monitors citizen behavior. Western corporations track digital footprints to influence choice. We volunteer our privacy for convenience—smart speakers, location tracking, facial recognition.
What happens when people no longer resist being watched—when they celebrate their own transparency?
The Soul as Disease:
"Yes, it is too bad. Apparently a soul has formed in you." ... "Incurable."
To the One State, developing a soul is a diagnosable illness. This chilling exchange—a doctor calmly treating individuality as pathology—reflects the totalitarian dream of perfect obedience.
We even imagines a "Great Operation" (literal brain surgery) to remove imagination. The state will stop at nothing to eliminate humanity's unpredictable spark.
Dissidents labelled "mentally ill". Algorithms smoothing the frictions of our day. Data-driven metrics rewarding conformism.
Whenever creativity becomes a problem to "fix," we edge closer to Zamyatin's world.
Breaking the Wall:
"The day has come for us to destroy that Wall and all other walls, so that the green wind may blow all over the earth, from end to end."
Zamyatin doesn't leave us in despair—he predicts rebellion. The "Green Wall" seals the sterile city off from nature. Here, the rebel leader I-330 calls on citizens to tear it down and let the wild "green wind" of freedom sweep the earth.
The Godfather of Dystopia
Though overshadowed by its famous descendants, We created the blueprint for the modern dystopian novel:
George Orwell explicitly acknowledged We as inspiration for 1984, borrowing its themes of surveillance and thought control.
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World mirrors We's vision of engineered happiness through different means—pleasure rather than fear.
Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano extends Zamyatin's critique of technological determinism to automated production.
Ayn Rand's 1938 novella Anthem, with its nameless collectivist society, mirrors Zamyatin's themes.
Beyond these classics, We cast longer shadows up to today:
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, 1985: Inspired partly by We, it depicts a theocratic regime controlling women’s bodies and language—parallel to Zamyatin’s vision of a state-regulated society and surveillance culture.
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow, 2008: A near-future tale of teens resisting mass surveillance in San Francisco, echoing We’s theme of rebellion against a supposedly benevolent authority that employs oppressive tech.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, 2019: Explores how tech giants harvest personal data and exert “instrumentarian power,” unpacking surveillance and the trade-off between privacy and convenience.
Modern media like THX 1138 and Black Mirror trace their DNA back to We.
Zamyatin's One State is the ancestor of every fictional Big Brother, World Controller, and AI overlord since. His influence matters because those descendants continue to warn us—ensuring Zamyatin's legacy lives in each new cautionary tale.
The Happiness Algorithm
Zamyatin's We presents a society run on mathematical certainties—a place where happiness is calculated like an equation.
Every hour is scheduled by the Table of Hours; every human is a numbered cog. The logic is brutally simple: eliminate choice and you eliminate conflict and pain.
The Benefactor insists that by removing freedom (the unpredictable variable), the state achieves 100% happiness. It's a chilling calculus: Happiness = Freedom − X, where X is anything unplanned.
Citizens are safe from making "wrong" choices—but also stripped of creativity and love. "WE" replaces "I" as the highest value. Personal desire is inefficient, threatening the collective.
Is it the purpose of technology to maximize user "happiness"—using AI to suggest what we buy, watch, and whom we date. We’ve been taught to believe that with enough data, society can be engineered into a frictionless paradise.
Zamyatin's novel reveals a piece we forgot: Humans aren't data points. Real happiness thrives on spontaneity, choice, even a bit of chaos.
Do we let automated systems decide everything for efficiency, or do we preserve room for free will (and mistakes)? Is it human to be comfortably numb?
CENTURY COLLECTION
Looking for more early dystopian classics? These works resonate with We:
The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster – This prescient short story imagines people living underground, isolated but for the all-powerful Machine that meets their every need.
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley – A future built on pleasure, conditioning, and consumerism. Huxley's World State controls through indulgence rather than force—a perfect foil to We.
Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand – Personal names and the word "I" have vanished; society speaks only of "we." Rand's libertarian take reads like We's dark twin, as her hero fights to rediscover individualism.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell – The definitive Big Brother nightmare. Reading We and 1984 back-to-back reveals a striking evolution—from Zamyatin's poetic nightmare to Orwell's grim realism.
Also check out:
Evgeny Zamyatin’s Essays: To understand Zamyatin’s thought, the collection A Soviet Heretic (translated by Mirra Ginsburg) is invaluable. It includes his famous 1921 essay “I Am Afraid” and the 1923 essay “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters,” where he boldly defends creative freedom under the Soviet regime.
Yevgeny Ivanov’s The Garin Death Ray (1926) and Alexander Belyaev’s Lord of the World (1929) are examples of early Soviet sci-fi that, unlike Zamyatin, were pro-regime or at least neutral. Comparing them with We highlights how unique Zamyatin’s critical stance was among his peers.
READER TIME MACHINE: Incremental Agreements
Would you trade freedom for guaranteed security?
In Zamyatin's One State, the bargain is explicit: surrender privacy, receive stability. Today, we make this trade in small increments with each terms-of-service agreement.
Happiness without freedom, or freedom with all its risks—which would you choose?
What's your breaking point? How much surveillance would you accept before rebellion becomes necessary? Share your thoughts—the Guardians are waiting.
Beauty is a Messy Reflection
A century after We was written, its warning remains razor-sharp: any society that kills the individual spirit in the name of order risks becoming a soulless machine.
Today WE are at a crossroads with technology and governance—temptations of total security versus the messy beauty of freedom. Zamyatin's enduring lesson: true happiness isn't something imposed; it's something each of us must be free to seek.
We serves as more than historical curiosity. It urges us to cherish our capacity for dreams, doubt and dissent as precious fuel for progress.
If this analysis sparked new thoughts, share it with a fellow reader or invite them to join the conversation.
And if you haven't already, subscribe to Ink & Time for more journeys through literary worlds that illuminate our own.