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Well, I reckon somebody needs to take the other side of the debate.
On the writing - I agree it's too long, and very dry. But remember this was person for whom English was not her original language. We can't all be Joseph Conrad. I think the length came from a urge to cover as many possibilities, variants, if you will, of how she felt socialism degraded the human spirit.
On the impact - It may be a huge, lumbering beast of a book, but like it or lump it, it had more impact on the course of human events than any other 20th century work of fiction. Now you may think that is a bad thing, but it is a true thing.
As for as the philosophy, anything I would say about it would only start a flame war, which I have no interest in. I will say this. If you watch your world collapse around you, have virtually everything you own taken away, be told that you have no hope of anything better than the squalid existence you have, don't expect such a person to write love letters about the philosophy that did it to her. She managed to leave the USSR in 1926, just as Stalin was consolidating power. Remember the context when reading her works...
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