People in the west dont know how to calibrate the experience of people in other societies, for the man in the street what really sucked was the economy, not the totalitarianism, because an argument for the same lack of control of ACTUAL political and economical power can be made for the citizens in western countries.
By the way, Zamyatin also wrote "Islanders" where he satirized, and criticized all the hypocrisy, frivolities and arrogance of the English middle classes which he apparently detested, but you rarely see that work lionized in The Guardian or here, I wonder why.
I wouldn't like to starve to death, but if I had to choose, I'd rather risk hunger from unemployment in 1930s England than dig the Belomor Canal in 1930s Russia.