Thank You, Mr. Translator, You Have Shone upon My Work with Light I Had No Idea About. The Novel We and Its Winding Path to the Reader
Abstract
"Species: Zamyatin Gender: Yevgeniy Class: bourgeois In the resort: kulak The result of transformation Footnote: the enemy" This epigram appeared in the Literary Papers on the 2nd of May in 1929. It became one of the reasons Zamyatin's departure from the leadership of the Russian Union of Writers.
This episode was neither the first nor the last in a series incitement, provocation and other interventions in the writer's life. His most famous novel We (1920) had not been published in Russian edition in the author's homeland until 1988.
After writing his novel Yevgeny Zamyatin tried to publish it in the Soviet Union, but he lost all hopes in 1924 and subsequently focused on its translation into other languages. It's interesting to mention publishing parts of this novel in the Prague literary magazine Volya Rossii.
It's magazine of Russian emigration, which in 1927 started to publish some chapters in Russian language, that were stated as a Czech translation of the original.