Secondary Sources on Zamiatin's We

Canadian – American Slavic Studies 45 (2011) 447–488 brill.nl/css

Secondary Sources on Zamiatin’s We

Brett Cooke Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA [email protected]

Until Perestroika the reception of We was, perhaps characteristically, asym- metrical. Like other classics of twentieth century Russian literature it was largely appreciated only in the West; after all it was the fi rst book banned in the USSR. As with Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (also banned), Mikhail Bulgakov’s Th e Master and the Margarita (unknown until 1962), and Andrei Belyi’s Petersburg (neglected due to incompatibility with Soviet demands), it was largely studied only by readers on our side of the Iron Curtain, especially in NATO countries. Indeed, it was fi rst published in English; the full original only appeared in 1952, twenty-eight years later, when it, once again, played a role in the Cold War. In addition, Zamiatin’s novel enjoyed the status of a classic of science fi ction and utopian literature, especially after the publication of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four (1949). Commonly included in science fi ction curricula, it attracted the attention of professors of Western, especially English, literature. With a few notable exceptions, all of the Cyrillic entries were published after the novel fi rst appeared in Russia in 1988. Russian language scholarship has caught up and overtaken that of the rest of the world, at least in terms of the number of titles. Th at the novel can be legally appreciated by native readers of its own language is a long-overdue development, but a gap between the two cultures persists, perhaps now more for reason of the availability of mate- rials and the relative lack of scholarly interchange – a situation this bibliography is intended to redress. Listed here are all substantial readings of the novel available as of summer 2010. Generally omitted are introductions, book reviews, and passages in literary histories. A few entries are included only on the basis of second-hand information (these are marked with an *). Authors cited by Latin letters are placed fi rst, followed by those published in Cyrillic. I am grateful to the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/221023911X567650 448 B. Cooke / Canadian – American Slavic Studies 45 (2011) 447–488 research libraries at Columbia University, Stanford University, Yale University, and the Universities of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, as well as to Alexander Galushkin and Lu Zheng for their assistance. Special thanks are due to the Interlibrary Loan Department of the Sterling Evans Library at Texas A&M University.

Bibliography

Aginsky , Vera . “Th e novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin: parody and politics / Роман Мы Евгения Замятина: пародия и политика.” D. M. L. thesis , Middlebury College , 1999 .*1 Ainsa , Fernando . “Antes de 1984,” Plural , 15 , No. 8 [176] ( 1986 ): 37 - 41 . Aldridge , Alexandra . “Brave New World and the Mechanist/Vitalist Controversy,” Comparative Literature Studies , 17 , No. 2, part 1 ( 1977 ): 116 - 132 . ———–. “Myths of Origin and Destiny in Utopian Literature: Zamiatin’s We , ” Extrapolation , 19 , No. 1 ( 1977 ): 68 - 75 . ———–. “Origins of Dystopia: When the Sleeper Wakes and We,” in Clockwork Worlds: Mechanized Environments in Science Fiction , edited by Richard D. Erlich , Th omas P. Dunn ( Westport, CT : Greenwood , 1983 ), pp. 63 - 84 . ———–. “Th e Scientized Imagination: Zamiatin’s We ,” in her Th e Scientiﬁ c View in Dystopia ( Ann Arbor : UMI , 1984 ), pp. 33 - 44 . Amey , Michael D. “Living Under the Bell Jar: Surveillance and Resistance in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We , ” Critical Survey , 17 , No. 1 ( 2005 ): 22 - 39 . Andrews , Edna . “Text and Culture: Continuous Discontinuity in Lotman and Zamiatin,” Russian, Croatian and Serbian, Czech and Slovak, Polish Literature , 49 , No. 4 ( 2001 ): 347 - 369 . Angeloﬀ , Alexander . “Th e Relationship of Literary Means and Alienation in Zamiatin’s We ,” Russian Language Journal , 23 , No. 85 ( 1969 ): 3 - 9 . Anger , B. “1984 et Nous Autres : des oeuvres complémentaires.” Th esis, Paris , 1982 .* Armytage , W. H. G . Yesterdays Tomorrows: A Historical Survey of Future Societies ( London : Routledge & Kegan Paul , 1968 ), pp. 160 - 164 . Arthur , Donald Byron . “Evgenij Zamjatin: literature and revolution.” M. A. thesis , University of Oklahoma , 1966 . Ball , Martin . We by Yevgeny Zamyatin: Notes ( Melbourne : CAE Book Groups , 2004 ).* Barker , Murl. G . “Onomastics and Zamiatin’s We , ” Canadian-American Slavic Studies , 11 , No. 4 ( 1977 ): 551 - 560 . Barnsley , J. H . “Two Lesser Dystopias: We and A Clockwork Orange , ” World Future Society Bulletin , 18 , No. 1 ( 1984 ): 1 - 10 . Barratt , Andrew . “Th e First Entry of My : An Explication,” Essays in Poetics , 4 , No. 1 ( 1979 ): 55 - 75 . Reprinted in Th e Structural Analysis of Russian Narrative Fiction , edited by Joe Andrew and Christopher Pike ( Keele, England : University of Keele Press , 1984 ), pp. 96 - 114 .

1 ) Th e asterix indicates that I have not had ﬁ rsthand contact with this source. Bibliographical information for it depends on secondhand sources and inclusion in this list is based on my sur- mise that it includes substantive commentary on We.