Literay Fact Literay Fact 2541-8297 2542-2421 IWL RAS https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2026-40-320-347 Research Article Articles Did Huxley Know Zamyatin? Several Approaches to the Issue Golovacheva Irina V. editor@litfact.ru 2026 Aldous Huxley Evgeny Zamyatin “Brave New World ” “We ” borrowings similarities Zamyatin’s interviews “The Future of the Theatre ” “New World Drama” Copyright © 2026, IWL RAS 2026 This article offers a historical-biographical and comparative approach to the questions that have long preoccupied the readers of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1932). The first question is: Did Aldous Huxley know of Yevgeny Zamyatin and specifically of his utopia “We”? The second question is: Did Huxley read Zamyatin’s novel prior to 1931, i.e., before he started writing his own utopia “Brave New World”? The paper provides a comprehensive history of the issue by chronologically tracing the debate over Huxley’s presumed ‘plagiarism.’ The author views and critically assesses all the “pro et contra” arguments pertaining the hypothesis of Huxley’s borrowings from “We.” It is argued that Huxley learned about Zamyatin’s novel in 1927 from Rene Fülöp-Miller’s “The Mind and Face of  Bolshevism”, from the book devoted to politics, life and culture in the USSR which Huxley studied closely. The paper examines numerous similarities in the plots and imagery of the two utopias. The author claims that the parallels, however, do not give us any sufficient ground to assert Huxley’s conscientious borrowings from Zamyatin’s novel, much less his plagiarism. Rather, as the article argues, the similarities result from a ‘genetic’ kinship, namely, from the shared literary heritage of the writers. Indeed, both “We” and “Brave New World” owe much to H.G. Wells and F.M. Dostoevsky. 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