The Englishman from Lebedian'

Front matter

THE ENGLISHMAN FROM LEBEDIAN — A LIFE OF

EVGENY ZAMIATIN

(1884-1937)

Table Of Contents

List OF [LLUSTRATIONS. o e eene Vill ĪNTRODUCTION. a 1. eoe ticos seh dnd enn nines tes ream etti 1 CHAPTER l: From LEBEDIAN’ TO ST PETERSBURG (1884-1906)... 6 CHAPTER 2: FROM ASTRAKHAN TO ARKHANGELSK (1906-1916). 25 CHAPTER 3: From PETROGRAD TO NEWCASTLE UPON Tyne (1916-1917)... 51 CHAPTER 4: PETROGRAD (1917-1921) e sss 86 CHAPTER 5: PETROGRAD/LENINGRAD (1922-1925)... 117 CHAPTER 6: LENINGRAD (1926-1929) es 154 CHAPTER 7: FROM KOKTEBEL TO THE WARSAW STATION (1929-1931)... 198 CHAPTER 8: From RiGa TO CaGnEs (1931-1932) ss 225 CHAPTER I: PARTS (1933-1937) ee eee ee au utu e nsus 258 onis ———————————M ANM 307 BIBLIOGRAPHY M ————H—Ó 357 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 373

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

. Front cover: cartoon of Zamiatin by Nikolai Radlov (1920s). . Portrait of Zamiatin by Iury Annenkov (1921).

Section 1 [between Chapters 3 And 4]

. The river Don at Lebedian': the garden of Zamiatin's home ran down to the river-bank on the right.

. Zamiatin's home on Pokrovskaia Street in Lebedian', rebuilt in

2009 to house the Zamiatin Museum.

. Zamiatin as a toddler (mid-1880s). . Zamiatin and his sister Aleksandra (early 1890s).

Zamiatin as a graduate of the Voronezh gimnaziia (1902).

. The student Zamiatin with his sister Aleksandra (early 1900s). . Zamiatin and his sister Aleksandra with their parents, Ivan

Dmitrievich and Maria Aleksandrovna (early 1900s).

. Zamiatin in St Petersburg (approx. 1910?).

. Liudmila Nikolaevna Zamiatina (1920s?).

. Zamiatin's design for a flexible dam (early 1910s?).

. The icebreaker Sviatogor (later Krasin), constructed in Newcastle during 1916-17 under Zamiatin's supervision.

. Zamiatin's 1916-17 home at 19, Sanderson Road, Newcastle upon

Tyne: the memorial plaque to him by the front door was placed there with the support of Iosif Brodsky.

. Zamiatin at the piano, examining a score of ‘Préludes’ by Scriabin

. Self-portrait by Iury Annenkov, during the freezing winter of

1919—20 in Petrograd.

. Illustration (1921) by Iury Annenkov for Zamiatin's story The Fisher of Men.

. Portrait of Aleksei Remizov by Iury Annenkov (1920). . Portrait of Kornei Chukovsky by Iury Annenkov (1921).

. Portrait of Aleksandr Blok on his death-bed, by Iury Annenkov (1921).

= Vil =

Section 2 [between Chapters 6 And 7]

. Portrait of Zamiatin by Boris Kustodiev (1923, O René Guerra). . Cartoon by Boris Kustodiev of Zamiatin (1927), for the latter's Biography of a Flea.

. Cartoon of Konstantin Fedin by Nikolai Radlov.

. Cartoon of Aleksei Tolstoy by Nikolai Radlov.

. Photograph of Zamiatin (1920s?).

. Photograph of Zamiatin (Leningrad, 1929).

. Photograph of Zamiatin in his study in Leningrad by A.A. Krolenko

. Zamiatin wearing plus-fours, playing with the monkey Whisky at

Boris Grigor’ev’s house in Haut-de-Cagnes (1932).

. Photograph of Zamiatin (1930s?).

. The Zamiatins' home at 14, rue Raffet, Paris (XVI).

. Irina Kunina-Aleksander (1957).

. Konstantin Fedin and Maksim Gor'ky (1934).

. The grave of Zamiatin and his wife Liudmila in the cemetery at

Thiais (Paris).

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS: Annenkov Iury, Portrety (Petersburg [sic]: Petropolis, 1922): numbers 2, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

Radlov Nikolai, Voobrazhaemye portrety. Literaturnyi Leningrad (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Pisatelei v Leningrade, 1933): numbers 1, 23, 24. the portrait of Zamiatin by Boris Kustodiev (number 21) is reproduced by kind permission of M. René Guerra.

Zamiatin Evgeny, Zhitie blokhi (Leningrad: Knigoizdatel'stvo Pisatelei v Leningrade, 1929): number 22.

BDIC (Bibliothéque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine, Université de Paris X, Nanterre), Collection E. Zamiatine — F DELTA RES 614: numbers 10, 11, 12, 15, 25, 28. the photograph of Zamiatin by A. A. Krolenko (number 27) is reproduced here by kind permission of Sergei A. Krolenko. the picture of the icebreaker Krasin, originally Sviatogor (number 13) is O ITAR-TASS Photo Agency / Alamy.

University of Tambov (Zamiatin Centre): numbers 5, 7; Zamiatin Museum, Lebedian': numbers 6, 8, 9 (family photographs by kind permission of Nina S. Zamiatina). author's photographs: numbers 3, 4, 14, 30, 33. allefforts have been made to trace the remaining unattributed images, and the author will be pleased to respond to any queries about these.

2. Portrait of Zamiatin by Jury Annenkov (1921).

Synthetism deploys an integrated dislocation of planes. In Synthetism, those fragments of the world which are placed within one spatial-temporal frame have never arrived there by chance; they are fused together through synthesis, and sooner or later the shafts projected from those separate parts inevitably meet in a single point, something entire always emerges from those fragments. (From Zamiatin's essay "On Synthetism," published as the introduction to Iury Annenkov's 1922 album of pen and ink drawings, Portraits.)

Reconciling the irreconcilable, paradox—these offer the key to Evgeny Zamiatin's art of Synthetism, as well as providing an insight into the personality of one of Russia's outstanding writers of the Revolutionary epoch. The neo-Cubist planes of Annenkov's well-known 1921 portrait of Zamiatin conjure the contradictory aspects of a man who lived different lives simultaneously, yet succeeded for the most part in integrating them and — against the odds— in retaining his integrity.

This highly intelligent and cultured man had to refashion himself throughout his life. He transformed himself from a provincial boy into an urban sophisticate; from the clever son of a priest into a conspiratorial Bolshevik; from an engineer into a writer; from a Russian in England into his deliberately-assumed guise as an “Englishman” in the new Soviet era; from a submissive lover into a confident husband; from the author of prose into a dramatist and writer for the cinema; from a revolutionary into a moderate socialist; from the teacher of a new generation of working-class writers into the champion of free speech against proletarian dogma; from a Soviet citizen into an émigré in France; from the nostalgic chronicler of the Russian backwoods into the prophet of the industrial age.

Throughout all this, he remained true to himself. He was not an opportunist, but relished confrontation. An intimate investigation of his life reveals the moral and political nuances which defined his position in two worlds—the USSR in the 1920s, and France in the 1930s — where he was constantly being challenged to come out with declarative statements about his deepest beliefs. He never seemed to belong to his own time, he was always in opposition to the prevailing ideology and culture; nor did he ever quite belong to his own place— he fitted in neither to provincial Lebedian', nor bourgeois England, nor Soviet Leningrad, nor émigré Paris.

On the other hand, Zamiatin's life encompasses a richer range of experiences than that of many Russian writers of his generation. Coming from a deeply religious family in the small town of Lebedian' on the river Don, he won a coveted place in 1903 at St Petersburg’s prestigious new Polytechnic Institute to study maritime engineering. In the stagnant late years of Romanov rule he became caught up in the fervour of youthful revolutionary activism in St Petersburg, and was even imprisoned for a few months as a Bolshevik. This was when he got to know a fellow radical, the medical student Liudmila Usova, who would become his wife. But even as his technological studies were completed in 1908, he was writing his first story and, like Anton Chekhov and Mikhail Bulgakov, he would pursue a dual career for many years. For a decade he travelled the length and breadth of Russia inspecting the construction of dredgers, pumps and submarines, while simultaneously snatching time to compose acclaimed and controversial stories such as A Provincial Tale and At the Back of Beyond.

In 1916 his life entered a new phase, when he was sent to England for 18 months to supervise the construction of icebreakers on the river Tyne as part of the Allied war effort. His life in Newcastle inspired him to write entertaining satires of middle-class English society. He returned to Russia just in time for the October Revolution in 1917, but was denouncing the violence and authoritarian policies of Lenin and the Bolsheviks within weeks of the uprising. In 1919-20 he worked on We. The novel simultaneously warns against the dangers of social and sexual repression, and of the industrial mass production methods he had encountered in England, as well as prophetically anticipating the totalitarian nature of the Soviet state. For this reason it soon became obvious that the novel would not be publishable in the USSR.

Zamiatin returned in tweeds from his engineering work in England, to take up a central role in Soviet literary life during the 1920s as a highly efficient and professional editor, reviewer, and professor of creative writing, as well as the author of stories, articles, essays and plays. He suffered more arrests, this time “by the Bolsheviks,” rather than "as a Bolshevik,” and was nearly forced into exile abroad in 1922. Indefatigable as Maksim Gor’ky’s lieutenant in his visionary projects, designed to keep literature alive while simultaneously educating the new generation of working-class writers, he carried on the task even after Gor'ky left for Italy. He engaged in a decade-long struggle to defend literature against the encroaching interventionism and regulatory powers of the state authorities. He was a superb and innovative stylist, creating the new school of Synthetism (or “neo-Realism”). He knew everyone, corresponded with everyone, participated in countless organisations and journals. He also played poker and drank into the small hours with the leading writers, poets, artists, and musicians of the day.

During this period the Soviet government and security organs took an extraordinarily close interest in cultural affairs. On several occasions, it became apparent that Zamiatin's fate was determined by the outcome of wrangling within the upper ranks of the Cheka (later GPU): in 1919 and in 1922 when he was arrested, and contradictory instructions kept arriving from Moscow; and again in 1929, when he seemed to have gained permission to leave the country after a campaign of persecution of him by the proletarian writers' organization (RAPP), but was forbidden to travel at the last moment. Gor'ky wielded an extraordinary influence over Stalin at this time (it wouldn't last much longer), as reflected in the intensely detailed letters they exchanged for several years between Sorrento and Moscow, weighing up every detail of literary affairs, and determining the fate of dozens of writers. When Gor'ky returned to Russia in 1931, both Zamiatin and his close friend Mikhail Bulgakov made desperate appeals for him to help them get out of the country. Gor'ky interceded personally on their behalf with Stalin, and Zamiatin was allowed to leave for the West that November. Why did Zamiatin succeed where Bulgakov failed? Because Gor'ky, who had long ago come to feel that he was alien to him as a writer, nevertheless owed Zamiatin loyalty and gratitude as one of his most faithful and energetic colleagues in the early years of Soviet power. Maybe Stalin, like Gor'ky, was also in some awe of his breadth of education: here was someone who combined a mastery of technology with writing, a true "engineer of human souls" before his time.

Zamiatin and Liudmila arrived in Paris in February 1932, and he spent his remaining years in France. His career as a writer went into decline, as financial exigencies forced him increasingly to rely on writing film-scripts for a living. On the one hand, Zamiatin remained a Soviet citizen and maintained links with the Embassy. His application to join the new Soviet Union of Writers in 1934 was— quite exceptionally —approved personally by Stalin himself in Moscow, and he attended the 1935 Anti-Fascist Congress in Paris, a blatantly pro-Soviet propaganda exercise. On the other hand, although he was explicitly tempted back to the USSR by several friends, including the ambiguous Konstantin Fedin, and met with many of those who were seduced into returning, he resisted their blandishments. Clearly, he would never align himself with the monarchist sympathies of the first-generation White émigrés; but he was also incapable of becoming a Soviet propagandist like many of his acquaintances. His frank correspondence with friends who were not living in the USSR traces his increasing dismay at developments back home, and his shrewd evaluation of their future direction. A wealth of documentary material in the form of correspondence and diaries, which has emerged from the archives in the post-Soviet age, has provided us with a deeply intimate portrait of a man who negotiated political pitfalls and uncertainties in France, as he had in Soviet Russia, with great surefootedness. His voice is sincere, witty and knowledgeable.

Zamiatin's renown abroad has largely been shaped by his anti-utopian novel We, completed in 1919-20. In a distant future, the collective has triumphed over the individual: the One State has imposed conformity on all its citizens, regulating their lives through scientific and mathematical precepts, and requiring absolute political allegiance. Although Aldous Huxley denied that he had come across We before he wrote Brave New World in 1931, George Orwell readily acknowledged that reading Zamiatin's novel had contributed to his own ideas for 1984, published in 1949 (and he rated Zamiatin far higher than he did Huxley). After his death in 1937, Zamiatin seemed fated to disappear into obscurity in the West, at the same time as he was being airbrushed out of Soviet literary history at home. George Orwell turns out to be the vital figure who, together with Professor Gleb Struve, determined to secure Zamiatin's reputation after the Second World War. We had been available in English and French translations since the 1920s, but in 1952 the full text of the novel finally appeared for the first time in the original Russian, published by an émigré publisher in New York. Like Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, Zamiatin's We reached a Russian readership (albeit in his case only those in emigration) a quarter of a century after its composition. It would be sixty-five years and more before it finally became available to Russian readers at home, at the very end of the Soviet era. Only now has We been recognised in his own country as a defining text, warning of the political and technological dangers of the future century. In the 21st century his works have gained their true status, enthusiastically adopted as set texts in Russian schools and universities, and his reputation as a classic Russian author is assured. He has fulfilled his own prophecy to the effect that the future of Russian literature lies in its past ("I am Afraid," 1921).

CHAPTER I: From LEBEDIAN TO ST PETERSBURG (1884-1906)

And so—I am free. I have left far behind me the dreary, unspeaking walls, the iron clang of the bolt on the door, the scrap of blue sky pitilessly bisected by the stern bars, the grim and tormented faces of my comrades, and those silent days, grey and cold as stone. All that has vanished, into that gulf we call the past. I am free. And instead of the prison vaults the azure sky of springtime stretches away above me; and instead of the stone silence of walls the wind whispers warmly and tenderly. I can no longer see our Struggle, with its harsh and proud face twisted by suffering. They don’t know how to struggle here. [...] Around me here there is cheap, trite contentment; people doze peacefully in their soft and cosy swamp... [...] I’ve already begun gradually to get down to work. For some reason music doesn’t draw me as it usually does, nor singing. I sit alone with my books, and with my... fantasies. My fantasies? Do you think that they will pass? But how will they pass if I don’t wish them to pass or rather, I cannot, do not have the strength to wish such a thing? How is a man who is ill to be cured, if he doesn’t wish to be treated, to take any medicine? Is it necessary to be treated?!

The writer of these words was a young man of 22, just released in March 1906 after a three-month spell in solitary confinement in a St Petersburg prison on suspicion of revolutionary activity. Above all he was anxious here to impress the girl he had met only weeks before his arrest with the nobility of his feelings. Now confined by the authorities to his family home over 1,000 kilometres away in Lebedian', as far away again to the south-east of Moscow as the capital is distant from St Petersburg, he was chafing with frustration.

Lebedian’ is a small provincial town in the very heart of European Russia. At the time of Evgeny Ivanovich Zamiatin’s birth on 20 January 1884? the place numbered around 800 houses with something like 6,000 inhabitants, a number which even in the present century has grown to not many more than 20,000. The little town spreads over the hilly slopes leading down to the upper reaches of the river Don which, still fairly narrow, has not yet acquired a formal embankment, and is still bushy, full of reed banks, little islets and ducks. Typically the homes of the local merchants and other townsfolk were extended with small verandas facing the road, where families would sit to drink their tea in hot weather. Zamiatin's father Ivan was good with his hands and did much to improve their modest one-story wooden house on dusty Pokrovskaia Street, creating an orchard out of the garden which tumbled down the steep slope right to the edge of the Don: the district, bordering on the black-earth region, is known for its abundant varieties of crunchy, juicy apples. There was a tennis court down by the river too, and bathing nearby. Later Ivan would build a second house next to their own for Evgeny's only sibling, his younger sister Aleksandra (1885-1957), when she married.’

Lebedian's situation on the Don, at the point of intersection between five different provinces (Tambov, Voronezh, Riazan', Orel and Tula), had established its significance as a thriving market town, and since the late seventeenth century a major horse fair would be held there three times a year, with exotic stalls, traders, card-sharps, and gypsies. Ivan Turgenev described the lively event in Lebedian', one of the brief sketches in his 1852 Hunter's Notebook: "When they had concluded their deals, they hurried off to the inns or the taverns, depending on their rank... And all of them bustled about, swarming and shouting, quarrelling and making it up, cursing and laughing, up to their knees in mud." In a letter to "Katia" (possibly a cousin) written when he was eight, Evgeny says his mother has bought him a new ball for 75 kopeks at the January fair, held to mark the Feast of the Epiphany, and that they also purchased a new pony. The family must have been quite comfortably off by the standards of the day: in the same letter he tells her that his father has been made Chairman of the Famine Committee, and has bought some scales so as to be able to distribute the oats and rye provided by the authorities to the village priests, who would deliver it to the hungry. The railway reached the town that same year, in 1892.*

In his several short autobiographical accounts of his early life, Zamiatin portrayed himself as a bookish, solitary child who could proudly read the newspaper headlines to his parents by the age of four: reading and writing, like spelling, came to him "astonishingly easily, instinctively."? A couple of lengthy and very affectionate letters to his "Dear mama," written even before he had learned to separate his words properly, have been preserved. In one, written in the late 1880s or early 1890s, he reports that his sister Sanya or Sasha (Aleksandra) has been poorly with her glands, that the goat is pregnant, that the asters in the jar have begun to come up, and that he is eating eggs and drinking milk because he is fasting. His mother, Maria Aleksandrovna, née Platonova, (1864-1925) was the daughter of the local priest; she had received a good education, had a gift for music, and liked to play Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schumann. Zamiatin recalled lying on his stomach, reading under the piano, while hens and a piglet scratched around in the dust on the street outside the window framed with geraniums. His father, Ivan Dmitrievich Zamiatin, (1853-1916), was also from a clerical family, in nearby Lipetsk. In 1883, the year of his marriage, he was appointed priest for the church of the Pokrovskaia parish in Lebedian’, taking the post over directly from his father-in-law, who died that same year. The young couple therefore established their married life in Maria's family home, where the household continued to include her widowed mother Anastasia (1836-1914), and her younger sister Varvara (Varia; 1872-1931). Ivan Dmitrievich is said to have been a kind man with a slight stammer, well-liked by his parishioners and steadily rewarded by the Church throughout his career for his exemplary service. The life of the household was dominated by religious observances, the reading of scriptures, a stream of visits from members of the congregation and local clerical figures, and family trips to nearby monasteries; or religious processions in the summer, “with the scent of wormwood, clouds of dust, and sweaty pilgrims, who scrambled on all fours beneath the icon of Our Lady of Kazan’, itinerant monks and nuns, and the holy fool Vasia the Antichrist, alternately proclaiming the pious and the unprintable..."7

Zamiatin remembered a few traumatic moments from his early childhood: at the age of eighteen months being held up to the window and watching the red sun on a day when he was ill, and apparently close to death; the feeling of desolation he experienced after getting separated from his parents in the crowd at church in nearby Zadonsk a year or so later; and his mother and aunt Varia hurriedly closing up the house when cholera patients were being transported along the street. He could also remember his pride at setting off in long trousers for his first day at the local gimnaziia, or grammar school. His father, Ivan Dmitrievich, had taught Latin and calligraphy in a number of local schools, and was now in charge of religious instruction there. At the age of eleven Evgeny compiled a magazine, Kaleidoscope, while recovering from measles. After five years at school in sleepy Lebedian', and with a certificate signed by his teachers (including his father) for a book prize "for excellent behaviour, effort and achievement," the young Zamiatin transferred at the age of twelve to start boarding at the gimnaziia at Voronezh, the provincial capital a hundred kilometres or so to the south.? Like Lebedian', Voronezh stands on the bustling river Don, one of Russia's major waterways.

Describing his Voronezh school years from 1896 to 1902, Zamiatin mentioned one occasion at school when, aged about fourteen, he decided not to tell anyone he had been bitten on the leg by a rabid dog until the two weeks in which the infection might make itself apparent had passed. This was a boyish test of his own character, during which time he kept the only diary he ever wrote. He was then rushed to Moscow for a course of injections, but all was well. At the age of seventeen he wrote to his sister Aleksandra, herself away at school in a different town, a solemn if affectionate letter: he described playing the piano and visiting the theatre, enumerated the top marks he had received for all his exams, told her how much he had enjoyed Grigory Danilevsky's 1863 novel Freedom (which highlighted the inadequacies of the 1861 Emancipation of the Serfs), promised to send her some suggestions for the essay she was due to write (he had one to do himself on the lyrical digressions in Gogol's Dead Souls), and then embarked, as she had requested, on a lengthy (and somewhat pompous) disquisition on the true nature of love.’ Despite the starred top marks he regularly received for Russian composition, "I didn't always find mathematics easy to get on with. Perhaps for that very reason (out of stubbornness) I chose the most mathematical course: the Shipbuilding Faculty of the Petersburg Polytechnic Institute." In actual fact, his reference from Voronezh noted his "excellent achievements [...], especially in Russian and the classics, and in mathematics."

Zamiatin acknowledged that the opportunities the shipbuilding course offered for students to travel the world had also provided a considerable incentive in his choice of higher education. And despite the fact that the nearest open sea was about 1,000 kilometres away both to the north and to the south, the river Don near Lebedian' and Voronezh had been a major centre for shipbuilding since the seventeenth century, so the subject was not an entirely remote one." He completed his school studies in Voronezh in 1902 with a “gold medal,” awarded for straight As in the final examinations —a medal he would soon have to pawn for 25 roubles in St Petersburg. He also received a certificate noting that there were no entries concerning him in the conduct record, and that "as for his moral conduct, Zamiatin (Evgeny) has been completely above reproach."? However, he was given a warning on his final day by one of the school officials about the behaviour of a former pupil, P.E. Shchegolev, who would later become an eminent literary scholar: “He also left here with a medal [...]. And now he has landed in prison. My advice to you is: 'don't write, don't follow that path.' This edifying advice didn't help me." Shchegolev was some seven years Zamiatin's senior, and would in fact become one of his close friends in St Petersburg.”

In applying to the Polytechnic Institute as part of its first ever intake in October 1902, Zamiatin was aiming for the very best: there were 500 applicants for the 25 places in the Shipbuilding Faculty, and those admitted had to come for interview with an outstanding academic record, a knowledge of foreign languages (he had studied Greek and Latin as well as French and German), and a reference confirming their “reliability.” The Institute, created under the auspices of the Finance Minister, Count Witte, to promote industrial and economic development, was housed in magnificent new buildings. AII the students lived in single rooms in comfortable hostels at Sosnovka, on the outskirts of the city, and the place was equipped with the facilities and teachers to train the élite of their generation. Like Pushkin joining the first intake of the Lycée at Tsarskoe Selo a century earlier, the future writer would be receiving the best education the country could offer. The Shipbuilding Faculty aimed to produce specialists “to whose native wits and talent higher education would open up new paths for discoveries and inventions.” He moved to the city in August 1902, to start life as a student there on 1 October. Within weeks of his arrival, however, he wrote to his sister Aleksandra to say he was anxious that he might have made the wrong choice in opting for shipbuilding rather than economics. It was not the difficulty that put him off, although he described his heavy routine of lectures from 9 until about 5, with a break for 90 minutes, on top of homework, but he did like the sound of the topics the economists were studying, which appealed to him more than mathematics. Anyway, he was going to sit in on a lecture for economists on medieval history before asking to change course.” But evidently he soon reconciled himself to his original choice.

A strength of purpose and an inclination to seek out the apparently paradoxical, less straightforward path are apparent in these glimpses of his early life, as they are in Zamiatin's reflections in that first letter to his girlfriend after emerging from prison in 1906 on the wisdom —or otherwise —of attempting to "cure" himself of his fantasies and creative impulses. The perverse pursuit of turbulent freedom rather than sedate happiness had been a key Dostoevskian theme, and would become an essential preoccupation in Zamiatin's writings as well. It perhaps comes as no surprise, therefore, that this child of a lower middle-class, pious provincial family, a modestly-ranked "hereditary honourable citizen" as the official designation put it, soon found himself caught up in the widespread revolutionary ferment of life in St Petersburg.’ Tsar Nicholas II’s reign had seen increased restrictions placed on such modestly democratic institutions as the zemstvo (local council) system, which had been introduced during the reform era of the 1860s; an aggressive policy of Russification had fostered regional discontent, and provided the fuel for anti-Semitic sentiments and the widespread pogroms of the turn of the century; and the emergence of a radicalised youth led to bonds being formed between oppressed workers and the well-educated but alienated left-wing political groups. This discontent was exacerbated when foreign adventure —an attempt to check Japanese ambitions with regard to China and Manchuria —ended in the Russian fleet's humiliations at Port Arthur in 1904 and Mukden and Tsushima in 1905.

Zamiatin was present on a white winter Sunday on Nevsky Prospect, the main street of St Petersburg, watching the clock with a large crowd: "And when the signal was given— one stroke, one o'clock—black shards of humanity flew in all directions along the Prospect, there were snatches of the Marseillaise, red banners, Cossack soldiers, yardsweepers, policemen... The first demonstration (for me) — was 1903. And the closer it came to 1905—the more feverish the turmoil, the noisier the gatherings." On 28 November 1904 he witnessed another demonstration on Nevsky Prospect calling for the creation of a Constituent Assembly (the first necessary step towards the introduction of democratic political structures); this was vigorously dispersed by the Tsar's loyal Cossacks, assisted by the police." Shortly afterwards, the year of the first Russian Revolution opened with the notorious events of 9 January 1905, known as "Bloody Sunday." An unarmed procession of strikers from the Putilov Works was marching towards the Winter Palace to present a petition to the Tsar. The crowd, nul led by a priest, Father Gapon, included many women and children, and carried icons and portraits of the Tsar. Nonetheless, the troops panicked and began to cut them down, killing over a hundred demonstrators and wounding many more as they trudged through the snow. The outrage prompted by these events sparked a wave of unrest and sympathy strikes throughout the country. Some Polytechnic students had taken part in the march; one had been killed, and his funeral was followed by resignations and disturbances at the Institute. Zamiatin, who had as usual been granted leave to return home to Lebedian' for the Christmas holidays, sent a telegram to the Institute to ask what would happen about the start of classes; he was told that there would be no question of classes beginning before 15 February that year. In fact, classes at the Institute were suspended for over eighteen months because of the unrest, resuming only in the autumn of 1906.*