Insanity as a Reason to Understanding Zamjatin's Contra-Utopian "We"
Zamjatin's novel,"We", is one of the most important works in understanding the intellectual and actual situation of early Soviet Russia. It is also a variation on "The Republic" of Plato. Some say that Zamjatin criticizes the reasonable foundation of Plato's utopia and, "based on Reason", also the Bolshevik dictatorship. According to the author, Zamjatin shows the transformation of reason into it's own opposition – irrational magical power. This power turns people into slaves within a moment, when the call to the reason becomes an invocation, which helps to govern others. Zamjatin struggled against all ideology. The problem isn't only in the understanding of Russia, it isthe system itself — a system of violence — which organizes the world according to the rules of a madhouse. In this madhouse, Reason is nothing more than the ravings of the insane. The western counterpart to this novel is George Orwell's "1984", written according to the paradigm in Zamjatin's novel.