Women in the dystopian world...

Continuing on the theme of We as more than a dystopian mouthpiece for Zamyatin, Boris Lanin traces the history of women in Russian 'anti-utopian' literature. Lanin begins his analysis with We and its relationship to images of women in medieval times. Images of women were often found with the word 'diabulos' written underneath and I-330 belongs to the Mefi organization (Mefi from Mephistopheles). For Lanin this relationship of woman to demon suggests a deeper relationship to the genre than to overarching themes of 'the primordial corruptness of female nature.'

In Onestate, I-330 represents all of the society's prohibitions and is 'a strong-willed woman who is in love with [D-503] but who, incidentally, gets nothing from her beloved.' For Lanin, love and the 'unruliness of the flesh' are ways to combat the 'lifeless thought' enforced by the state and also ways of expressing the 'I.' Moments of lovemaking are personal and private, both of which are things the state in anti-utopian literature seeks to destroy. Intimacy becomes a means of rebellion by creating a new world that exists only for the people involved and not for the surrounding state.

Lanin also notes the hostility toward women in other works like Chevengur, Moscow 2042 and Makanin's The Escape Hatch. In Chevengur women are equated with the bourgeoisie and often with death (Kopenkin's desire for Rosa Luxemburg as conflict of Eros and Thanatos and this quote from a gypsy woman, 'А мы шли, шли - да и дошли а вы могили роете, а невест хороших у вас нету.') As Chevengur is a world without women, Lanin thinks all anti-utopias are necessarily anthropocentric and more so, 'androcentric,' worlds where only men are valued.