John Gray, Jan 27, 2021, 'New Statesman':
"...We is distinctive in linking the inhuman world it depicts with what many regard as the defining human attribute – the power of reason to reshape society. Zamyatin’s objection to utopias was not that a perfect society is unachievable. It was the very idea of perfection that he rejected. He believed the single-minded pursuit of a rational model of society ended in tyranny. But it was not political repression that most troubled him. He was more concerned with the impact of rationalism on the soul. Human creativity was inextricably bound up with disruptive passions. Utopian schemes were dystopian by nature.
Here Zamyatin followed Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864) – the seminal dystopian text. For Dostoevsky’s “underground man”, a society founded on logic and science (if such a thing was possible) would be a spiritual prison. The capacity for irrational love and sacrifice, for choosing conflict and suffering over peace and happiness, was an essential part of human freedom..."