The World Reconfigured: Consequences of the Russia-Ukraine War

Our weekly online conversations on the global consequences of Russia's war on Ukraine continue with a different sort of session--a book discussion of Evgenii Zamiatin's 1921 dystopian novel We.

 

 

Join us for a discussion with Steve and Cynthia on Evgenii Zamiatin/Zamyatin’s novel We. This 1921 novel was one of the first to focus on futuristic, science-based authoritarian dystopias. Try to read the book in advance, but come even if you can't. Available from Amazon, Audible, and many other booksellers. We will discuss the lessons we can draw from reading the novel just over 100 years after its writing. We recommend focusing on the themes of freedom and happiness. Readers should keep in mind the fact that Zamiatin was a "true believer" in Communism and member of the underground Bolshevik Party long before Lenin took power, but grew disillusioned enough to write this novel just four years after the Revolution. What is his message to readers?

 

For those who are interested in exploring even further, we recommend comparing We to Brave New World, written just ten years later. How do the mechanism of social control in the two novels compare? And for those who wish to get a sense of the way early Soviet leaders advertised the benefits of Communism and the power of the collective, we recommend the one-hour famous 1934 Soviet propaganda film "Three Songs of Lenin," commissioned by Josef Stalin to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of Lenin's death. That film is available on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiChKuy3DpM

 

Come join us for a lively interactive discussion.

 

This event is brought to you by the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the Department of History and the Program in Russian and Eastern European Studies at the College of the Holy Cross.

 

The series is hosted by Cynthia Hooper, Associate Professor of History and head of Russian and Eastern European Studies at the College of the Holy Cross and Steven Barnes, Director of the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History.

 

Register for the weekly Zoom Q&A here.