We (novel)

We (1920) is a novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences with the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. We is a dystopic satire, generally considered to be the grand daddy of the genre and direct inspiration for 1984 and Brave New World. It takes the totalitarian and conformative aspects of Communism to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state that believes that free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizen's lives should be controlled with mathematical precision. The story is told in the diary of "D-503" (the hero's name), in which he describes his work building a spaceship The Integral, whose purpose is to seek out and convert any extraterrestial civilizations to the happiness that the One State has discovered, and his misadventures with a resistance group that seeks to do away with the Benefactor and his regime.

The novel was banned by Stalin and got Zamyatin arrested, though he eventually was exiled to Paris.