is not an ounce of spontaneity in them, and, especially in the later
work where he is more or less free from reminiscences of Remizov,
they produce the impression of mosaic laboriously set together. They
are overloaded with pointedly suggestive metaphor and symbolically
expressive detail, and in their laborious and disproportionate
elaborateness they remind you of the deliberate ugliness of a
painting by some German "Expressionist." [Footnote: Zamyatin was
during the war a shipbuilding Engineer in the Russian service at
Newcastle. He has written several stories of English life which are
entirely in his later "expressionist" manner (_The Islanders_,
Berlin, 1922)].

When the Revolution came and brought Russia that general
impoverishment and reversion to savagery and primitive manners which
is still the dominant feature of life in the U.S.S.R., literature was
at first faced with a severe crisis. The book market was ruined. In
the years 1918-1921 the publication of a book became a most difficult
and hazardous undertaking. During these years the novel entirely
disappeared from the market. For three years at least the Russian
novel was dead. When it emerged again in 1922 it emerged very
different from what it had been in 1917. As I have said, the surface
"literature" of pre-Revolutionary date was swept away altogether. The
new Realism of Remizov and Bely was triumphant all along the line.
The works of both these writers were among the first books to be
reprinted on the revival of the book-trade. And it soon became
apparent that practically all the young generation belonged to their
progeny. The first of these younger men to draw on himself the
attention of critics and readers was Pilniak, the author of the
present volume, on whom I shall dwell anon in greater detail.