In Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel We, what is the name of the glass-walled state ruled by the Benefactor?

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In Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel We, the glass-walled state ruled by the Benefactor is called OneState.

OneState is a highly mathematical society in which citizens live according to official schedules and are identified by numbers rather than ordinary personal names. The glass architecture symbolizes the regime's ideal of complete visibility: private life is treated as a form of disorder, while synchronized behavior is presented as rational and beautiful.

The Benefactor is the state's supreme ruler, and the novel's narrator, D-503, is a mathematician who helps build the Integral, a spacecraft intended to spread OneState's ideology beyond Earth. D-503's encounter with imagination and individual desire drives the story's rebellion.

Zamyatin wrote We in the 1920s, and it was first published in English in 1924; the Russian original was not legally published in the Soviet Union during his lifetime. The novel strongly influenced later dystopian fiction, including works by Huxley and Orwell.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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