George Orwell’s Animal Farm and The Russian Revolution

… One day I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck

me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as

the rich exploit the proletariat.

George Orwell (1947)

George Orwell

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a British political novelist and essayist whose pointed criticisms of political oppression propelled him into prominence toward the middle of the twentieth century. Born in 1903 to British colonists in Bengal, India, Orwell received his education at a series of private schools, including Eton, an elite school in England. His painful experiences with social elitism at Eton, as well as his intimate familiarity with the reality of British imperialism in India, made him deeply suspicious of the class system in English society. As a young man, Orwell became a socialist, speaking openly against the excesses of governments east and west and fighting briefly for the socialist cause during the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939.

Orwell’s Death

• George Orwell (Eric Blair) suddenly dies on January 21, 1950 due to a hemorrhaged lung caused by Tuberculosis.

• He widowed his second wife, Sonja Bronwell, to whom he was only married to for less than a year.

Karl Marx

"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without

ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."[

Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownership of the

means of production. It holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat

(common people) and the establishment of a communist society in which private ownership is abolished over time and the means of

production and subsistence belong to the community.

Karl Marx• Marx believed the workers (proletarians)

were the true producers of wealth. But the capitalists (bourgeoisie) owned the means of production – land and industry. Therefore, the capitalists made huge profits while the workers earned just enough to survive. Not fair!

• Marx called for “workers of the world” to unite against their capitalist oppressors.

• Marx believed that eventually the proletariat would become so numerous and so impoverished that they would rise up against the capitalist system throughout the world.

In Animal Farm …

Old Major = Karl Marx

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production;

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

The Romanovs

Russian society in the early twentieth century was bipolar: a tiny minority controlled most of the

country’s wealth, while the vast majority of the country’s inhabitants were poor and oppressed

peasants.

Probably most of the young viewers who saw the movie "Anastasia" believed that they were seeing just another Hollywood fable with no connection to historical events. However, in reality, almost all of the characters depicted in that movie were real people (with the exceptions of Dimitry and Vladimir, the two con men, and Bartok, the talking bat). On July 17, 1918, the Czar, his wife, Alexandra, their five children and four family attendants were herded into a cellar room by their Bolshevik captors and killed in fusillade of bullets and stabs of bayonets. According to a report by the Czar's chief executioner, two of the bodies taken from the Yekaterinburg cellar were burned, and the rest buried. The missing bodies belonged to the Romanov heir, Alexei, who was 13 when he was killed, and one of his sisters, either Maria, then 19, or her 17-year-old sister Anastasia. The bodies were dug up in 1991 for DNA testing and reburied in 1998. The bones of a young girl were found and DNA proves that the bones belonged to a member of the Romanov royal family, but there are those who cling to the belief that Anastasia may have survived and may still be living.

Anastasia?

Communism arose in Russia when the nation’s workers and peasants, assisted by a class of

concerned intellectuals known as the intelligentsia, rebelled against and overwhelmed the wealthy and powerful class of capitalists and

aristocrats. They hoped to establish a socialist utopia based on the principles of the German

economic and political philosopher Karl Marx.

In Das Kapital, Marx advanced an economically driven interpretation

of human history, arguing that society would naturally evolve—from a monarchy and aristocracy, to capitalism, and then finally to

communism, a system under which all property would be held in

common. The dignity of the poor workers oppressed by capitalism would be restored, and all people

would live as equals. Marx followed this sober and scholarly

work with The Communist Manifesto, an impassioned call to

action that urged:

In the Russia of 1917, it appeared that Marx’s dreams were to become reality. After a politically complicated civil war, Tsar Nicholas II, the monarch of Russia, was forced to abdicate the throne that his family had held for three

centuries.

Vladimir Ilych Lenin, a Russian intellectual revolutionary, seized

power in the name of the Communist Party. The new regime

took land and industry from private control and put them under

government supervision.

This centralization of economic systems constituted the first steps in restoring Russia to the prosperity it had known

before World War I and in modernizing the nation’s primitive infrastructure, including bringing electricity to the

countryside. After Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky jockeyed

for control of the newly formed Soviet Union. Stalin, a crafty and manipulative

politician, soon banished Trotsky, an idealistic proponent of international communism. Stalin then began to consolidate his power with brutal

intensity, killing or imprisoning his perceived political enemies and

overseeing the purge of approximately fifty million Soviet citizens.

ANIMAL FARM

Parable: usually a short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle

Allegory: the expression of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about

human existence

Fable: a narration intended to enforce a useful truth; one in which animals speak and act like human

beings

ANIMAL FARM IS A…

ANIMAL FARM

CONEXT

Unlike many British socialists in the 1930s and 1940s, Orwell was not enamored of the

Soviet Union and its policies, nor did he consider the Soviet Union a positive

representation of the possibilities of socialist society. He could not turn a blind eye to the

cruelties and hypocrisies of Soviet Communist Party, which had overturned the semi-feudal system of the tsars only to replace it with the

dictatorial reign of Joseph Stalin. Orwell became a sharp critic of both capitalism and

communism, and is remembered chiefly as an advocate of freedom and a committed

opponent of communist oppression. His two greatest anti-totalitarian novels—Animal Farm

and 1984—form the basis of his reputation. Orwell died in 1950, only a year after

completing 1984, which many consider his masterpiece.

An anti-Utopian novel, 1984 attacks the idea of

totalitarian communism (a political system in which one ruling party plans and

controls the collective social action of a political

state) by painting a terrifying picture of a

world in which personal freedom is nonexistent. Animal Farm, written in 1945, deals with similar

themes but in a shorter and somewhat simpler format.

A “fairy story” in the style of Aesop’s fables, it uses animals on an English

farm to tell the history of Soviet communism. Certain animals are

based directly on Communist Party leaders: the pigs Napoleon and

Snowball, for example, are figurations of Joseph Stalin and Leon

Trotsky, respectively.

Orwell uses the form of the fable for a number of aesthetic and political

reasons. To better understand these, it is helpful to know at least the

rudiments of Soviet history under Communist Party rule, beginning with

the October Revolution of 1917.

In February 1917, Tsar Nicholas II, the monarch of Russia, abdicated and the socialist Alexander Kerensky became premier. At the end of October (November 7 on current calendars), Kerensky was ousted, and Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Russian Revolution, became chief commissar. Almost immediately, as wars raged on virtually every Russian front, Lenin’s chief allies began jockeying for power in the newly formed state; the most influential included Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev.

Trotsky and Stalin emerged as the most likely heirs to Lenin’s vast power. Trotsky

was a popular and charismatic leader, famous for his impassioned speeches, while the taciturn Stalin preferred to

consolidate his power behind the scenes. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin

orchestrated an alliance against Trotsky that included himself, Zinoviev, and

Kaminev. In the following years, Stalin succeeded in becoming the unquestioned

dictator of the Soviet Union and had Trotsky expelled first from Moscow, then

from the Communist Party, and finally from Russia altogether in 1936. Trotsky

fled to Mexico, where he was assassinated on Stalin’s orders in 1940.

In 1934, Stalin’s ally Serge Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad,

prompting Stalin to commence his infamous purges of the Communist Party. Holding “show trials”—trials

whose outcomes he and his allies had already decided—Stalin had his opponents officially denounced as participants in Trotskyist or anti-

Stalinist conspiracies and therefore as “enemies of the people,” a label

that guaranteed their immediate execution. As the Soviet

government’s economic planning faltered and failed, Russia suffered under a surge of violence, fear, and

starvation.

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

Born Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in 1879, he changed his name to Stalin, meaning "Man of Steel," while still young.

Joseph Stalin• While most Russian leaders belonged to

the middle-class, Joseph Stalin was born into the peasant class.

• Unlike Trotsky, Stalin was not well-educated and could not discuss Marxist theory on a sophisticated level.

• Stalin was named General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922. He was in charge of dull paperwork for the Communist party.

• Though this position seemed unimportant, Stalin used his position as secretary to gain supporters for his future rise to power. He eventually defeated Trotsky in the struggle for power. In Animal Farm …

Napoleon = Joseph Stalin

Stalin used his former opponent as a tool to placate the wretched populace.

Trotsky became a common national enemy and thus a source of negative

unity. He was a frightening specter used to conjure horrifying eventualities, in comparison with which the current

misery paled. Additionally, by associating his enemies with Trotsky’s

name, Stalin could ensure their immediate and automatic elimination

from the Communist Party.

Leon Trotsky• Trotsky was a brilliant intellectual and

speaker who organized the Red Army and led it to victory against the White Armies in the Civil War of 1918-1919.

• Trotsky and Stalin disagreed on Russia’s future. Trotsky wanted the Communist revolution to be worldwide. Stalin wanted to protect the Soviet Union from outside forces (keep communism in the USSR).

• Stalin defeated Trotsky at the Communist Party Congress in 1927 and gained control of the secret police.

• Trotsky was chased away by the KGB (secret police) and fled to Mexico City, where a Soviet agent killed him with an axe in 1940. In Animal Farm …

Snowball = Leon Trotsky

These and many other developments in Soviet history before 1945 have direct parallels in Animal Farm: Napoleon ousts Snowball

from the farm and, after the windmill collapses, uses Snowball in his purges just as Stalin used Trotsky. Similarly, Napoleon

becomes a dictator, while Snowball is never heard from again.

Orwell was inspired to write Animal Farm in part by his experiences as part of a group loyal to Trotsky during the Spanish

Civil War, and Snowball certainly receives a more sympathetic portrayal than Napoleon.

But though Animal Farm was written as an attack on a specific government, its general themes of oppression, suffering, and injustice have far broader application; modern readers have

come to see Orwell’s book as a powerful attack on any political, rhetorical, or military power that seeks to control human

beings unjustly

• SOOOOO….• Things are about to get

a little strange on Manor Farm.

• Farmer Jones has just locked up the henhouse and stumbled off to bed, thinking all is well in his barnyard.

• He probably wouldn’t believe the events that are about to unfold in the barn.

• Old Major, Mr. Jones’s prize-winning boar, has just gathered the animals together for a meeting.

• Pigs, hens, horses, dogs, ducks, and goats congregate to listen to Old Major share his dream.

• Humans are the enemy, Old Major tells his fellow farm animals. They produce nothing, yet they own everything.

• Animals, however, work their whole lives for their masters. They receive only enough food to keep them working.

• Old Major believes that someday this will all change. – Animals will work

together to overthrow their oppressors.

– Animals will create their own farm where they will live and work in harmony, plenty, and equality.

– The days of slavery will end.

– The rebellion will come. – Every animal must be

ready!

The Plot

• The story of Animal Farm starts when Old Major gives a speech on revolution at Manor Farm.

• 3 days after the speech Old Major gives he dies and Snowball and Napoleon emerge as the leaders of Animal Farm.

• The “revolution” begins when Mr. Jones becomes too drunk to feed the animals, and after a day and a half without food they finally revolt.

• Soon after the revolution the pigs take the littler of puppies that have been born for “education”.

• The pigs soon show their own greed by keeping the entire apple crop and milk for themselves as reward for “supervising” the farm.

Plot

• Mr. Jones tries unsuccessfully to retake Animal Farm with some other farmers after their animals start acting badly as well.

• After a dispute over building a windmill Napoleon has the puppies he took attack Snowball and chase him from the farm, and then go through with the plan anyway.

• The pigs soon being trading with humans, and sleeping in the house, and the animals farms “rules” mysteriously keep seeming to change.

• Food shortages soon hit animal farm, and is again attacked by the neighboring farmers.

Resolution of Animal Farm

• Near the end of the story most of the older animals have died off, and Squealer soon begins to take over from Napoleon and walk on two legs.

• The name of the Farm is changed back to Manor Farm.

• In the final scene the pigs invite the humans over for dinner, and the humans remark that the farm’s animals do more work and consume less food that any other farm in England. The animals watching through a window outside are horrified when they realize the can no longer tell the Humans’ faces from that of the pigs.

Character Conext

What’s in a Name? Parallels between historical figures and Orwell’s characters

• Karl Marx = Old Major - Old Major is the originator of the idea that becomes the basis of the animal rebellion- however, like Marx, the ideals behind it are soon forgotten.

• Czar Nicolas II = Mr. Jones - Old Major describes Mr. Jones, and humans he represents as the only animals who consumes without producing. The Czar who fell to the communists and the aristocracy he represents collected rent from the peasants who tilled their fields without actually laboring himself.

• Josef Stalin = Napoleon - Exemplary of the tyranny that overtakes all humans when they accumulate too much power. His greed for more power and wealth overtakes any ideals he may have initially had- much as it did with Stalin, who ultimately can be connected to the deaths of millions of his own fellow citizens. Note Orwell’s choice of names. In pre-WWII Europe, Napoleon was considered the arch-villain.

More Parallels

• Leon Trotsky = Snowball - Leon Trotsky escaped from the Soviet Union after losing a power struggle with Stalin. Trotsky went into exile in Mexico, where he was later murdered by Stalin’s agents.

• The “Proletariat” (the laboring or working class) = Boxer Boxer is symbolic of the working class who does not have enough information or education to understand the ramifications and implications of decisions made by their bosses or leaders. Boxer believes Napoleon, and his refusal to question what doesn’t seem right ultimately costs him his life. Orwell saw this as parallel to the fate of much of the working class. Note that the use of a ‘workhorse’ parallel the Soviet Union’s workers, and the name which references the Boxer Rebellion of China- which marked the beginning of the process that eventually led to China’s turn to communism.

and still more parallels . . .

• Pravda (the newspaper that worked as the propaganda organ of the Party) = Squealer - Pravda was the propaganda arm of the Communist Party prior to the entrance of radio and television. Information was both highly controlled and highly managed, or ‘spun’. It was also the public face of Party policy.

• The KGB, or secret police = Dogs - The KGB was the enforcer of the Communist Party, and was deeply feared for their ability to carry out orders, no matter how odious.

Who is Who?

• Mr. Jones- Czar Nicholas II

• Old Major- Lenin

• Snowball- Trotsky

• Napoleon- Stalin

Who is Who?

• Dogs-KGB

• Windmill- 5 year plan of Stalin

• Major’s Skull-Lenin’s Body

• Battle of the Cowshed- Russian Civil War

Who is Who?• Frederick- Hitler

• Animal Executions – Stalin’s Purge

• Battle of the Windmill – World War II

• Card Game- Tehran Conference

• Pilkington- FDR