We

George Orwell adapted the plot of 1984 — published in 1949 — from another novel published 25 years earlier. That earlier novel was entitled, simply, We. Scholar Peter Saint-Andre argues in an excellent article, “Zamyatin and Rand,” published in 2003 in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies that Zamyatin’s We was “quite likely” a formative influence on Ayn Rand as well.