A committed socialist, Orwell saw Stalin’s dictatorship as a betrayal of true socialist principles. Orwell believed that the Soviet Union’s ally status blinded many Westerners to the corruption of its regime. Orwell wrote Animal Farm during World War II, when the Soviet Union joined the Allied powers to fight Nazi fascism. As in Russia under Stalin, life on Animal Farm includes show trials and executions, deceptive propaganda, and revisionist history.
Neighboring human-run farms symbolize capitalist countries that either desired the downfall of the Soviet Union or sought to form alliances with it. The farm dogs represent the brutal Soviet police, and the sheep, the ignorant and unthinking masses. Jones represents the Russian Czar Nicholas II, whose mismanaged leadership led to the communist takeover. The old boar Major is a Karl Marx-like figure who inspires revolution. Napoleon is a stand-in for Stalin, while Snowball, the idealistic pig whom Napoleon overthrows, is an analog for Leon Trotsky. Many characters and events in the book suggest real-life counterparts. Orwell’s allegory parallels the events of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent regime of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (1879-1953).
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