Animal Farm

Animal Farm is a novella by George Orwell, & is the most famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. Published in 1946, the book reflects events leading up to & during the Stalin era. Orwell, a democratic socialist, & a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Joseph Stalin, and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War.

Orwell wrote the book following his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, which are described in another one of his books, Homage to Catalonia. He intended it to be a strong condemnation of what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original socialist ideals. For the preface of a Ukrainian edition he prepared in 1947, he described what gave him the idea of setting the book on a farm: "...I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse 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, & that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat."

This Ukrainian edition was an early propaganda use of the book. It was printed to be distributed among the Soviet citizens of Ukraine who were some of the many millions of displaced persons thruout Europe at the end of WW2. The American occupation forces considered the edition to be propaganda printed on illegal presses, & handed 1,500 confiscated copies of Animal Farm over to the Soviet authorities. The politics in the book also affected Britain, with Orwell reporting that Ernest Bevin was "terrified" that it may cause embarrassment if published before the 1945 general election.

In recent years, the book has been used to compare new movements that overthrow heads of a corrupt & undemocratic government or organisation, only to eventually become corrupt & oppressive themselves as they succumb to the trappings of power & begin using violent and dictatorial methods to keep it. Such analogies have been used for many former African colonies such as Zimbabwe & the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose succeeding African-born rulers were accused of being as corrupt as, or worse than, the European colonists they supplanted.
The book also clearly ponders whether a focus of power in one person is healthy for a society. The book leaves the ending slightly ambiguous in this regard.

Perhaps the largest overriding theme in Animal Farm is the famous quote by Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."