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In early 1946, George Orwell published a laudatory review of Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel "We" set in a communist state 1000 years after the Russia's Bolchevik revolution. It is not surprising then that one finds in Orwell's 1984 views on communism that are very similar to that of Zamyatin. Zamyatin however wrote his book in 1921 whereas 1984 was written shortly after WWII. In the simplest way one could say that Orwell essentially accepts Zamyatin's view of Communist Russia but adds a section dealing with the Stalinistic purges of the 1930's.
Nonetheless there are some very interesting elements in Zamyatin's We that are not found in 1984 and which make it a very interesting read. Zamyatin unlike Orwell clearly acknowledges that the assumptions of Christianity about the human being could well be accurate. Much as Orwell hated communism he never suggested that Christianity was right about anything. Zamyatin also spends a great deal of time parodying the attempts of the Bolchevik regime in the 1920's to apply the doctrines of the American Industrial engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor in their new state which is not an issue that ever interested Orwell. Finally, Zamyatin castigates the Russian Futurists for their desire to turn man into a machine and for their ghastly, inhumane architecture. The Futurist movement was in history's dustbin by the time Orwell was writing and he ignored it as he wrote 1984.
Orwell's 1984 made a greater impact on me that Zamyatin's We simply because I read it first. The two novels are very similar. However, both works have important and unique strengths. Zamyatin's We deserves every bit to read as much as 1984.