@mdhughes Dug up a review by George Orwell in 1946:
"Imprisoned by the Tzarist Gov. in 1906, and then imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in 1922 in the same corridor of the same prison, he (Zamyatin) had cause to dislike political regimes he had lived under, but his book is not simply the expression of a grievance. It is in effect a study of the Machine, the genie that man has thoughtlessly let out of its bottle and cannot put back again."