A STORY ABOUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING (Rakaz o samom glavnom)
by Evgenii Zamiatin, 1923

"A Story about the Most Important Thing" ("Rakaz o samom glavnom") is one of Evgenii Zamiatin's most interesting and unusual works of fiction. It demonstrates a cosmic breadth of theme, an action running on several planes, and a combination of lyrical and epic features that is more typical of a full-fledged novel than of a short story. Symptomatic of this thematic richness, which is characteristic of Zamiatin and other Russian "ornamental" writers, is the shifting, relativistic narrative voice that alternates between authorial omniscience and embodiment in the form of various protagonists—animal, human, and extraterrestrial. All of this reinforces Zamiatin's theory of literature in a revolutionary age, as he develops a narrative style and technique apposite to a post-Einsteinian era in which timescales are confused and relative and even the "most important thing" seems contingent and totally contextual. Nevertheless, all is ultimately unified and contained within a single philosophic vision, one sign of which is the employment throughout the story of a pervading and cohesive set of leitmotivs or formulaic phrases: curling ash on a cigarette, a lilac, a broken watch.

The story opens with the revelation of three different worlds. One is that of the lilac bush, "eternal, immense and boundless," in which a pink and yellow worm of the Rhopalocera genus lives out its final mute and agonizing hours before "dying" to become a cocoon. The single most important thing for the larva is to die, turn into a chrysalis, and then reemerge as a butterfly, thus enacting part of the eternal process of life. The second world is that of the Russian Revolution, in which a river spanned by a bridge connects the pro-Soviet peasants of Orlovka in their clay-colored shirts and the anti-Bolshevik peasants in the village of Kelbuy. The third world is that of a faraway star whose last few inhabitants are about to perish from lack of air.

Although the action in the worlds proceeds independently, the three planes of existence are shown to be intersecting and interacting. The Rhopalocera larva plummets down from a branch and lands in the lap of Talia as she talks with Kukoverov, the leader of the Kelbuy peasants. The larva's imminent death is echoed in the fate of Kukoverov, for whom time is also running out. He is captured by the Bolsheviks. In an earlier life Dorda, the leader of the Bolsheviks, and Kukoverov shared a cell as political prisoners. For Dorda, who is now a servant of the revolution, the most important thing is defeat of his opponents, and Kukoverov thus faces execution by his former friend. As a humane gesture, however, Dorda allows Kukoverov to spend his last night with Talia, and thus their love, the "most important thing" for this couple, is consummated before his extinction. Kukoverov has thoughtlessly overwound his watch. The spring snaps, and the hands whirl around madly, a hundred times faster than normal. Yet in his final moments with Talia he is lifted out of himself and experiences a mystic, illuminating sense of timelessness: "Hugely, easily, like the Earth, Kukoverov suddenly understands all. And he understands: yes, this is so, this is necessary. And he understands: there is no death."

The events on earth are mirrored by those on the dying star. The last four inhabitants are unnamed, identified only as a mother, man, woman, and blind boy. Echoing acts of revolutionary murder on earth, the man kills his blind brother so as to enjoy a few more breaths of life. Like Rhopalocera, the mother is prepared to die, yet she is full of sympathy for her son who murdered in order to survive. Meanwhile, he embraces the other woman. Like Kukoverov and Talia, "the two are one. And the other one, the older one, the Mother, stands over them. Her profile is etched against the red glow of the sky." As their lives end, the distant star itself hurtles on toward a final collision with the earth. The fates of the earth and star dwellers are thus made to coincide.

Despite its seeming conclusion in science fiction, the story is ultimately a reflection by Zamiatin on earthly, and more narrowly on Russian, history. Although time accelerates in this revolutionary age, the most important thing in human relationships is the timeless love of man and woman, and it is only this that offers an escape from time. In the final immolation scene Zamiatin's narrator steps back once again from the action and perceives a greater good that might one day emerge. But his message is one that belittles and ultimately negates any Bolshevik master plan for human history, even though it, too, offers a utopian vision. As star and earth are about to collide, "the Earth opens her womb wider—still wider—all of herself—in order to conceive, in order that new fiery creatures may come forth in the scarlet light, and then, in white warm mist—still newer, flowerlike forms bound to the new Earth only the slenderest stem. And when these human flowers ripen …"

—Christopher Barnes