The biography of Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin is rich and full of interesting facts. No matter how much the state “broke” the writer, his spirit did not break, the poet continued to do what he loved and vehemently defended his positions.
Evgeny Zamyatin was born on January 20 (February 1), 1884 in the Tambov province, in the city of Lebedyan. His father worked as a priest and taught the Word of God, and his mother was a pianist. At the age of 4, the boy was already reading Gogol and serious literature instead of the primer.
In 1893, the parents sent the child to the Lebedyanskaya gymnasium, where the future poet studied until 1896. Then the family moved to Voronezh, and the young man graduated from the Voronezh gymnasium with a gold medal in 1902. At school, Zamyatin did an excellent job with the humanities, but mathematics was not given to him.
In 1902, the young man entered the Polytechnic Institute of St. Petersburg, the faculty of shipbuilding, where mathematical disciplines were studied in the first place. In 1905, Yevgeny Ivanovich joined the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP and, together with the students, participated in revolutionary life. For this, the future writer was arrested, but was soon released thanks to the efforts of his mother.
In the summer of 1905, Zamyatin was returning from Egypt and witnessed an uprising on the battleship Potemkin. For this, the guy was arrested again and sent to Lebedyan. Later he illegally returned to St. Petersburg and graduated from the university in 1908. Young Eugene was educated as a marine engineer. The next 2 years he worked as a teacher at the Faculty of Shipbuilding.
Zamyatin became interested in writing works in 1908, and then his first story "One" was published in the journal "Education". In parallel, he worked on another story - "Girl". In 1911, the authorities found the poet and exiled him to Lakhta for illegal residence. There he wrote the first story "Uyezdnoye", in which he revealed the problems of the world of the Russian province. Critics and writers noticed Zamyatin's work and praised it positively.
During the First World War, in 1914, the poet composed the story "In the middle of nowhere", where he spoke in vivid colors about the horror of the life of a military detachment in the Far East. For this, the authorities bring him to trial and exile him to Kem. After 2 years, Zamyatin is released and sent on a business trip to England. There he works by profession as the chief designer of Russian icebreakers and supervises construction. In parallel, he wrote the book "Islanders".
Yevgeny Zamyatin returned to Russia in September 1917 and 4 years later created the Serapion Brothers organization of young writers. After the October Revolution, the story “In the middle of nowhere” was published, which was banned at the beginning of the war.
In 1920, the poet wrote the novel We. The work did not comply with Soviet censorship and was not published. Without the consent of the author, the book was printed in America in English, Czech and French. The dystopian novel tells about the strict totalitarian control over the individual. Abroad, Zamyatin's work aroused great interest, and in the USSR it was criticized.
The Soviet authorities criticized and persecuted the writer, and in 1929 Yevgeny Ivanovich wrote a letter in which he asked for permission to leave the country. After agreeing in 1932, the poet moved to Paris, where he became the author of French newspapers. The main themes were the state of modern Russian prose and the art of the avant-garde. Despite his popularity in France, his works were not published in the Soviet Union.
In 1934, the poet was again accepted into the Writers' Union of the USSR. Members of the Union promoted communism and fought for peace and friendship among peoples. In 1935, Zamyatin took part in the anti-fascist Writers' Congress and was a member of the Soviet delegation.
In the bibliography of the Soviet writer there were 36 stories, especially the public remembered "The Cave", written in 1920. The work was created in the style of Zamyatin and tells about the terrible atmosphere of the Stone Age. Evgeny Ivanovich was inspired by ordinary life situations and wrote stories based on them.
Another significant fantasy story was The Dragon, which was written in 1918. He became famous for a huge number of metaphors, and the meaning is not immediately clear to the reader. It seems that the story is intended for children, but after reading it several times, the reader discovers a completely different meaning. The work describes the harsh period of 1918, when the Civil War began in Russia.
For 10 years, from 1928 to 1937, Yevgeny Zamyatin worked on the historical narrative "Scythians", but it was never completed. The last novel "Scourge of God" became a significant work of the writer. It tells about the time of the decline of the Roman Empire, and the leader of the Huns, Attila, became the Scourge of God himself.
Evgeny Zamyatin, Viktor Klyucharev and Lyudmila Zamyatina in the restaurant of the Evropeyskaya Hotel While in Paris, Zamyatin noticed that the cinema was developing, and tried himself as a screenwriter. So, together with Jacques Companese, the poet wrote the script for the film "At the Bottom". In May 1935, Evgeny Ivanovich turned to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio and provided them with four ready-made scripts: The Captive Tsar, Goya's Great Love, The Scourge of God and The Queen of Spades. The Americans did not agree to cooperate with the writer, and he tried to start working in other film companies.
The personal life of the Russian poet is rather unremarkable.
As a student, Zamyatin met his future wife Lyudmila Nikolaevna Usova. The couple hardly saw each other due to constant exile and moving, and they had no children.
Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin died at the age of 53, on March 10, 1937. Death came unexpectedly, and its cause was an unknown serious illness that tormented the man.
The writer was buried in the Parisian cemetery in Thiers. In 1965, his wife Lyudmila died. She was buried next to her husband, and the grave was made common.
Creation
Bibliography
Evgeny Zamyatin was born on January 20 (February 1), 1884 in the city of Lebedyan, Tambov province. Father is an Orthodox priest, mother is a pianist.
From 1893 to 1896, Zamyatin attended the Lebedyanskaya gymnasium, and then studied at the Voronezh gymnasium, which he graduated in 1902 with a gold medal. In the same year, Evgeny Ivanovich signed up out of stubbornness (at school he did not always get good grades in mathematics, unlike Russian) at the shipbuilding department of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. 4 years later, Zamyatin becomes a Bolshevik and takes part in the life of revolutionary student youth. There he met his future wife, Lyudmila Nikolaevna Usova (1883-1965). In the summer of 1905, when returning from a trip to Egypt through Odessa, he witnessed an uprising on the battleship Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky. In 1906, Zamyatin was arrested and sent back to Lebedyan. In the same year, he illegally returned to St. Petersburg and graduated from the institute.
During World War I, Zamyatin spoke from anti-war internationalist positions, in 1914 he was brought to trial and exiled to Kem. In March 1916, having served his exile, Yevgeny Zamyatin was sent to England to participate in the construction of Russian icebreakers at the shipyards of Newcastle, Glasgow and Sunderland; visited London. He was one of the main designers of the icebreaker "Saint Alexander Nevsky", which received the name "Lenin" after the October Revolution. In September 1917, Zamyatin returned to Russia.
During the Russian Civil War, while remaining a staunch socialist, Zamyatin criticized the policies of the Bolshevik government. In particular, in March 1919, he, along with many famous artists (A. A. Blok, A. M. Remizov, R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik, K. S. Petrov-Vodkin) was arrested during the workers provoked by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries unrest in the factories of Petrograd.
After the critical wave that followed the publication in 1929 in the emigre press in an abridged form of the novel “We”, which led to his withdrawal from the Union of Writers of the USSR and a virtual ban on publication, he writes a letter to I. V. Stalin with a request to allow him to travel abroad and gets a positive response. In 1934, already being an emigrant, which was unprecedented, he was again admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR, and in 1935 he participated in the anti-fascist Congress of Writers in Defense of Culture as a member of the Soviet delegation.
The writer died on March 10, 1937 in Paris. He was buried at the Paris Cemetery in Thie (division 21, line 5, grave 36).
In 1908, Zamyatin left the party and wrote his first short story, Odin. Two years later, the aspiring author teaches at the shipbuilding department, works as an engineer and at the same time finishes the story "The Girl". In 1911, Zamyatin was expelled from St. Petersburg for illegal residence. Yevgeny Ivanovich is forced to live in Lakhta, where he writes his first story, Uyezdnoe. This work attracts the attention of connoisseurs of literature and other writers, including Gorky. "In the middle of nowhere" - Zamyatin's next story - also receives good reviews from critics.
In the spring of 1916, engineer Zamyatin was seconded to England, where he created the Islanders and the Catcher of Men. Returning, Yevgeny Ivanovich organizes a group of young writers "Serapion Brothers". The members of this group were Mikhail Zoshchenko, Konstantin Fedin, Vsevolod Ivanov, Veniamin Kaverin, Nikolai Tikhonov and others.
In 1920-1921, under the influence of Wells' fantasy, Zamyatin worked on the novel "We", which is one of his main works. The decision to write the novel was influenced by a utopia written by the then ideologists of Proletkult A. Bogdanov and A. Gastev. In this novel, engineer D-503 describes his life in a city-state under the rule of the "Benefactor". At the beginning of D-503, one of the many numbers (as people are called), enthusiastically describes the organization - based on mathematics - of the life of society. He does not even think about the fact that it is possible to live differently: without the "Green Wall", apartments with glass walls, "State Newspaper", "Bureau of Guardians" and the almighty "Benefactor". But after meeting with I-330, he is part of a group of revolutionaries seeking to continue the revolution and destroy the existing system in the city. This novel influenced later dystopian novels by George Orwell (1984, published in 1948), R. D. Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, 1953) and O. Huxley (Brave New World, 1932). ). In Russian, "We" was published in 1952 in New York by the Izdatelstvo im. Chekhov, in Russia for the first time came out only in 1988.
Subsequent works by Zamyatin, including several plays, were not allowed by the Soviet authorities to the domestic public. In 1931, Yevgeny Ivanovich was allowed - with the help of Gorky - to go abroad. He has lived since that time in Paris and continues to work on short stories and screenplays, in particular, in collaboration with Jacques Compeneits, he writes the script for Jean Renoir's film "The Lower Depths". Zamyatin misses his homeland until his death.
Father is an Orthodox priest, mother is a pianist.
The question of his expulsion was discussed twice at the Politburo.
After the critical wave that followed the publication in 1929 in the emigre press in an abridged form of the novel “We”, which led to his withdrawal from the “Union of Writers” of the USSR and a virtual ban on publishing, he writes a letter to I. V. Stalin with a request to allow him to leave abroad, and receives a positive response. In 1934, already being an emigrant, which was unprecedented, he was again admitted to the Writers' Union of the USSR (at his own request, with the approval of Stalin), and in 1935 he participated in the anti-fascist Congress of Writers in Defense of Culture as a member of the Soviet delegation.
In the spring of 1916, the engineer Zamyatin was seconded to England, where he created the Islanders and the Catcher of Men. Returning, Yevgeny Ivanovich organizes a group of young writers "Serapion brothers". The members of this group were Mikhail Zoshchenko, Konstantin Fedin, Vsevolod Ivanov, Veniamin Kaverin, Nikolai Tikhonov and others. After the revolution, the aforementioned story "On the Middle of the Road" was published, which had previously been banned.
Apparently, Yevgeny Ivanovich was also influenced by the experience he acquired during his stay in England in 1916-1917. The subsequent anti-utopias of the English writers George Orwell ("1984", publ. in) and O. Huxley ("Brave New World",) are in many ways similar to the novel "We".
In this novel, engineer D-503 describes his life in a city-state under the rule of the "Benefactor". At the beginning of D-503, one of the many numbers (as people are called), enthusiastically describes the organization - based on mathematics - of the life of society. He does not even think about the fact that it is possible to live differently: without the "Green Wall", apartments with glass walls, "State Newspaper", "Bureau of Guardians" and
1884 in the Lipetsk region. His father was a boyar and had a great influence on his son. At the same time, he was a priest and taught at local educational institutions. Mother, Maria Alexandrovna, was a very educated and intelligent woman. She admired classical literary works, was fond of playing the piano. Evgeny Zamyatin adopted many maternal qualities and followed in her footsteps. He thought the same way and was interested in the same things as his mother. Relations with the father were not worse. They understood each other perfectly, and Zamyatin always listened to his father's advice.
Zamyatin's biography testifies that the writer devoted his whole life to making his parents proud of him. He dreamed of conveying his thought to the people, he wanted his works to be read and thought about.
Initially, Zamyatin entered the Lebedyansk gymnasium, his father taught at this educational institution at that time. Then, at the age of 9, the writer was sent to the Voronezh gymnasium, which he successfully graduated with a gold medal in 1902. After studying at the gymnasium, he went to study at the Polytechnic Institute at the Faculty of Shipbuilding. Simultaneously with his studies at the institute, he was engaged in agitation at rallies. The institute itself was located in St. Petersburg, but during the summer practice, the writer began to travel to other cities. Upon his return, Zamyatin spoke out in support of the Bolsheviks and actively promoted the leftist movement. For this, he was taken under arrest, and for several months of his life he was in solitary confinement. During this difficult time, he learned a foreign language (English) and tried to write poetry. Zamyatin had a lot of free time, and he decided to use it wisely. After 2 months he was sent to Lebedyan, but Eugene secretly returned from there to St. Petersburg. Then he was sent back again. In 1911 he graduated from the Zamyatin Institute. A brief biography and his life story are worthy of descendants to know about it.
Zamyatin's biography itself is very rich. Each period in his life brought him something new. Zamyatin was at the peak of his fame when his story "Uyezdnoye" was published in the magazine "Zavety". In this story, he wrote about the simple, routine life of Anfim Baryba, embittered and offended by the whole world. The work made a splash among readers.
Zamyatin believed that the style of his works was very close to neo-realism, but despite this, he nevertheless turned his work into grotesque surrealism. Two years later, Zamyatin was summoned to the courtroom for his anti-war story "In the middle of nowhere." After this incident, the magazine in which his phenomenal work "Uyezdnoe" was published was confiscated. The well-known critic Voronsky expressed his opinion that, in essence, this story was a kind of political mockery, describing the events that took place after 1914.
His biography can tell about the heights and falls of the author. Evgeny Zamyatin was an experienced marine engineer. He traveled a lot, constantly traveled around Russia in accordance with the service plan. In 1915, the story "North" was written, in which he described all his emotions left over from the trip to Solovki. Already in 1916, Zamyatin was engaged in the construction of Russian icebreakers in England. These were shipyard icebreakers from Newcastle, Glasgow and Sunderland. He oversaw the entire building process in London. The author described his memories of this period of his life in the stories "The Islanders" and "The Catcher of Men". England became a new impetus for the author to rethink his ideas and life positions. The trip had a strong impact on the writer's work, his work and life in general.
Zamyatin had great respect for the people who contributed to the development of modern society, but this did not stop him from paying attention to the shortcomings of the Western society. In 1917 Zamyatin arrived in Petrograd. The biography says that he became one of the most popular authors of Russian literature at that time. Readers appreciated his works, critics spoke well of them.
Zamyatin had an extremely close relationship with the literary group. A brief biography of the author describes that he began to lecture at the Polytechnic Institute, spoke about the news of Russian literature in and was engaged in the development of youth in many other universities. Despite the fact that he worked with students, Zamyatin did not believe that he was able to realize some kind of large-scale undertaking, he did not see the potential of a creative person in himself. Since everything that surrounded him seemed meaningless to Zamyatin, people ceased to be people for him.
In the stories "Mamai" and "The Cave" the author expressed his point of view on communism. This idea for him was equated with the evolutionary stage of human development, the movement of a caveman to a higher being. So thought Zamyatin. The biography also confirms this belief of his.
Evgeny Zamyatin believed that it was necessary to explain to people that total changes in the modern world are based on the destruction of the moral qualities of a person. Against the background of such an opinion, Zamyatin published in America in 1920. His biography and work aroused interest in the West. Due to the fact that the work was written in Russian, the writer sent it to Grzhebin's Berlin printing company for its full translation into English. The novel was successfully translated, after which it was published in New York. Although the novel was not published in the USSR, critics reacted very harshly to it.
In the 1920s, Zamyatin's biography was marked by the release of new works. He has been working hard all this time. Wrote a number of plays: "Society of Honorary Ringers", "Atilla", "Flea". These works were also not appreciated, since not a single critic understood his ideology of life in the Soviet Union.
In 1931, Zamyatin realized that he had nothing more to do in the USSR, and went to Stalin to hand over his letter. The letter was about the possibility of moving abroad. He argued that the most terrible punishment that can only be for the author is a ban on creating. He had been contemplating his move for a long time. Despite all the contradictions, he loved his homeland very much and was a patriot at heart. So, he created the story "Rus", published back in 1923. It was a vivid proof of love for the motherland and an explanation of the point of view of such a great man as Yevgeny Zamyatin. The biography briefly reports that in 1932, with the help of Gorky, the author was still able to go to live in France.
When Zamyatin arrived in Paris, he lived there with Soviet citizenship. He was engaged in the promotion of Russian literature, cinema, theater abroad. The main story written by Zamyatin abroad is "The Scourge of God". It was the last work of the creator. He painted it in Paris in 1938. It was very difficult for Zamyatin to adapt to life in another country, the writer greatly missed his homeland, and all his thoughts focused on outside things, and not on creativity. He tried to give all the stories he wrote to the Russians, because he basically did not want to publish anything abroad. It was absolutely not his path. He carefully observed what was happening in parallel in Russia. Only after many years in the homeland they began to treat him differently. People realized what kind of author they had lost.
Biography of Zamyatin is very confusing and unpredictable. No one knew that in the end everything would turn out this way for the writer. In May 1934, Zamyatin was admitted to the Writers' Union, although this happened in his absence. And in 1935, he was actively involved in work in the Anti-Fascist Congress for the Protection of Culture, together with the Soviet delegates.
The author died on March 10, 1937. He was buried on the outskirts of Paris, in the cemetery in Thie. After these long difficult years, a belated recognition came when Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin died. His biography confirms that only after the death of the great writer, his works were really appreciated. He would be very proud that his efforts were not in vain, and the written works entered the history of world and domestic literature. He finally became famous. Unfortunately, the author himself did not live to see the day when the public was able to accept and understand his complex works.
