What is the author's style in We by Yevgeny Zamyatin?

We is narrated in the first-person by a philosopher-mathematician who has had pretensions of becoming a poet in the past. He alternates present and past tense as he explains his situation or various cultural items to his imagined readers and actual events that have befallen him in the period between diary entries. The purpose of the diary is to help denizens of other planets to accept allegiance to the United State and adopt its uniform way of life.