These objections will be valid for the Dostoevsky scholar who strives to elucidate with the greatest possible accuracy the evolution of Dostoevsky's novels. The general reader and student will overlook these flaws and will enjoy the adventurous journey into the labyrinth of one of the great creative minds in world literature. Professor Wasiolek and his collaborators deserve every praise for having undertaken the arduous task of introducing the English reader to these documents of Dostoevsky's creative evolution.

R. Neuhauser The University of Western Ontario

Alex M. Shane, The Life and Works of Evgenij Zamjatin, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968. 302 pp. $7.95.

The Bolshevik Revolution may have loosed "new ideologies" and an adherence to a "socialist orientation," but to very many writers of the 1920's the Revolution came to mean experimentation with word and form. This characteristic was true not only of such pre-revolutionary writers as Blok, Bely or Remizov, the middle- of-the road "fellow travellers" like Pilniak, Zamiatin or Babel, but also of pro- Soviet enthusiasts like Maiakovskii, Vsevolod Ivanov or Lidia Seiffulina. The great flowering of Russian letters in the 1920's was originated, stimulated and nurtered in numerous splinter groups, studios, or one might even say, literary schools. In general, the new literature followed the direction of linguistic innovation, and/or the introduction of the colloquial and often regional idiom. To younger writers, particularly to the highly gifted group which called itself "The ", the Revolution took on the meaning of trying "new things" in a "new way" and having the freedom to meet this challenge without coercion from either the "right" or "the left". Lev Lunz, one of its most active members, aptly summed up the views of the "Brothers" when he stated that "a work of art must be organic, authentic and have its own peculiar life". The 1920's produced some of the finest writing of the first fifty years of the Bolshevik regime and catapaulted Russian literature into modernism. For his role and influence in this, Evgenyi Zamiatin can take no small credit. Even the hostile (to him), History of the Russian Soviet Novel (1958), briefly mentions Zamiatin as a "decadent" writer "who exerted a definite influence on younger writers" and grudgingly admits that shortly after the Revolution his works were accepted as "almost masterpieces." Evgenyi Zamiatin's career began in 1911. By profession a naval engineer and designer of ice-breakers, he started as a writer on technological subjects and his training in technology carried over into his writings, especially in the use of geometric forms, with which his works are so richly endowed. He believed that "aesthetic forces were subject to laws like physics and hydraulics" and therefore insisted on "the purposeful selection of words," which paradoxically came to be described as "ornamental prose." As a young man, Zamiatin joined the Bolshevik party, was arrested by the Tsarist government and sent briefly into exile. When with the coming of the Revolution, Zamiatin started to have serious misgivings about the he did not, like so many other members of the intelligentsia, abandon his native land, but stayed on and actively participated in the Soviet literary scene until 1931. Zamiatin's fears that Communism was bound to degenerate into "State Slavery" made him write his famous (in the West) science fiction novel We (My). This anti-utopian, satirical account of collectivized society anticipated Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984. We was banned and never published in the , but appeared in Prague in 1927 in the Czech language and two years later in the monthly, Volia Rossii, in Russian. Towards the end of the 1920's, with the tightening of ideological lines, life for Zamiatin became unbearable and the continuous harassment and censor- ship prohibitions by petty literary bureaucrats left this writer without an outlet for his work. It was then that he,addressed himself to Stalin in the now famous "Letter," asking permission to leave Russia "because of inability to create in an atmosphere of persecution". To everyone's surprise (but no doubt with Gor'kii's strong intervention), permission to leave the Soviet Union was granted to both Zamiatin and his wife. This is how he came to spend his last years in a self-imposed exile in Paris. His death in 1937 received no notice in the Soviet press and Zamiatin soon joined the fast-growing list of eminent "literary non-persons" in the U.S.S.R. Professor Alex N. Shane's biography of Zamiatin is all the more significant since this highly original and talented author is hardly known in the West for works other than We (a book of his stories The Dragon: Fifteen Stories, published by Random House in 1967, may partially alleviate this), and to the reading public of his own homeland he is no longer even a name. This is where the western scholar can make his greatest contribution to Slavic Studies and this is, of course, where Professor Shane is making his. Is Zamiatin a Soviet writer? Shane raises this point and in quoting the authoritative Soviet Professor L. I. Timofeev that a "Soviet writer" is not "a geographical concept," but "from beginning to end a political concept" leads us to conclude that within the framework of Timofeev's definition Zamyatin does not qualify for this honor (sic!). How then should Zamiatin be classified? He was born and lived the major part of his life in Russia, wrote all his works in the , for the Russian public, not even having much contact with emigres during the last few years of his life abroad. It is indeed a sad com- mentary that Soviet policy still finds it necessary to exclude as "dangerous" so important and talented a Russian writer and persists long after his death in either spewing venom on his name or crowning him with an impenetrable pall of silence. Shane divides his study of Zamiatin into three parts: Part I, "Zamjatin's Life and Activities"; Part II, "A Critical Analysis of All His Known Fiction"; Part III, "Bibliography." Part III, A Bibliography of Zamjatiana comprises an impressive listing of entries of practically everything that has been written by Zamiatin and on Zamiatin in Russian, English and other Western languages, and Shane taking special pride in this Part points out (and rightfully so) that this is "the single most extensive bibliography published to date". (p. 232) However, here is where this reviewer must hasten to add that A Bibliography of Zamjatiana (or rather its arrangement) is self-defeating in its goals of assisting either the scholar or the curious general reader. A Bibliography of Zamjatiana is also divided into three sections: Section I, "The Works of Evgenij Zamjatin" (with several appropriate subdivisions); Section II, "Translations of Zamjatin's Works (and its several subdivisions; Section III, "Secondary Sources" (also, with several subdivisions)a monumental list of 800 bracketed entries. Now comes the pivotal question: how is one to find a reference to a footnote? If, for instance, one should desire to consult the reference to footnote "1" of the "Introduction", he first must turn to a section of this book called: "Notes". There he will encounter a cryptic number or numbers, more often than not enclosed in brackets, and only after careful decoding will he arrive at the conclusion that the number in the "Notes" is a key to "The Bibliography of Zamjatiana", and that only there, at long last, will he find the much sought after source.