This news is current as I read the novel, We (Мы). Written by Yevgeny Zamyatin in Soviet era Russia in 1924, it is the least read of the Russian classics. It’s a dystopian novel describing an oppressive totalitarian state, in which its subjects are made the joyless tools of industry and the state machine. Sound familiar? George Orwell was commissioned to write a review of a smuggled copy in the 1940s, and within six months of doing that, guess what? Yes, that’s right, he was inspired to begin work on “his” novel, 1984. What a coincidence, eh? And even more spooky, the few good bits of his awful book, were identical to those in already set out in We.