Animal Farm

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No animal may drink alcohol "to excess" - Rated
A fairy tale or a nightmare? It all began with a dream by Major, a Middle White boar, of equality, and freedom from oppression. Maybe not in our life comrade, but eventually.

The dream brings a song. Intolerable conditions lead to revolution. As time passes things change; not exactly as planned.

There are two striking parts to this tale that stand out. First when Boxer is sent to the hospital and Benjamin reads the side of the van "Horse Slaughterer." Secondly there was a party in the farm house as the pigs were playing cards with the men, two aces of spades showed up. An argument ensues. Then a realization was drawn by the creatures outside looking in as they "...looked from pig to man, and man to pig, and from pig to man again..."

A book everyone should read - Rated
A simple but stunning allegory that explodes the myth of benign proletariat rule and demonstrates the corrupting influence of power.
It has rightly been seen as a commentary of Stalin's Soviet regime, but it could reflect any number of tyrant regimes throughout the world which imposes authoritarian rule on the general citizenry "for the good of the people".

Excellent thoughts and content. - Rated
This has to be one of the best books I have ever read in my life. Orwell vividly describes a behind the scenes look at communism and socialism. I have never seen this kind of interpetation in any of the books I have read. Kudos to Orwell for a classic masterpiece.

A great satirical allegory. - Rated
On 7th November 1917, lead by the Marxist philosopher Vladimir Ilych Lenin, who promised an immediate end to Russia's participation in a "bosses war", the Bolsheviks staged a successful coup d'etat in Russia. There followed three years of civil war during which time the White Russian army tried to overthrow the newly installed communist government.

Meanwhile there was unrest among the animals on Manor Farm. Old Major the prize Middle White Boar had had a vision. Before he death he spoke vigorously against the unfairness he perceived in the lives of the animals on the farm under the oppression of Man. He too foresaw a revolution.

In 1924 Lenin's death gave way to a new power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Trotsky believed in the acceleration of industrialisation and exporting the revolution throughout the world, which was in contrast to Stalin vision of "communism within one state".

In effect, Stalin won the battle of power but adopted the policies of Trotsky, who was forced in to exile in 1929 and later assassinated. Widely perceived as intellectually inferior to both Lenin and Trotsky, Stalin continued the revolution and began a totalitarian reign of terror in the territory that had now been renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Over on the Farm another power struggle was taking place between the two young boars, Napoleon and Snowball. Following a successful coup de ferme, the pigs, as the most intelligent among the animals, had "naturally" assumed authority and the farm had been renamed Animal Farm. Napoleon was "not much of a talker but with a reputation for getting his own way". Snowball was more vivacious, "quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character." The main issue of contention between the two pigs was Snowball's plan for the construction of a windmill. When the day came for all the animals to vote for whom they supported, it initially appeared as though Snowball had won them over with his unrivalled eloquence and vision of a windmill for the farm. But Napoleon then accused him of being a traitor and had him chased off the farm by his personally trained pack of hounds.

In the purges and pogroms of the 1930s Bolsheviks, military leaders and anyone perceived as a potential threat or liability to Stalin and his brutal regime were rounded up and killed as though of no more consequence than vermin on a country estate. While Pavlov's dogs salivated to the ringing of bells, Stalin's victims "confessed" in show trials whose outcomes had no less certainty than a Hollywood repeat.

Despite having signed the Soviet-Nazi Pact in 1939, Hitler launched his attack on the USSR on 22nd June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. And thus Britain once again became allied to the USSR in their efforts to thwart German domination, which was to cost a further, estimated 27 million Soviet lives.

It was to this backdrop that Orwell conceived (1937) and finally began to write (1943) Animal Farm. The parallels between his "fairy tale" and the history of the Russian Revolution are clear to see. Orwell himself comments that he dealt with the history "schematically" and that he felt it necessary to change some of the chronology "for the symmetry of the story".

This particular book is also a wonderful edition. The story itself is sandwiched between some fascinating insights in to the author's background and the context in which it was published.

The appendices feature Orwell's preface to the Ukrainian edition and his proposed preface to Animal farm, which was not originally published. The latter is predominantly a heart felt polemic against the forces which he perceived to have prevented the publication of his anti-Soviet novel, and particularly the British intelligentsia who had "swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda since 1941". As Symons informs us, the manuscript for Animal Farm was complete for publication in February 1944 but due its transparent criticism of a then British ally was rejected by four publishing houses. It was finally published by "Secker and Warburg", the "Trotskyite Publishers", in August 1945, three months after the War had ended in Europe.

It is worth noting that, whilst Animal Farm is ardently anti-Soviet, and although Orwell was outspoken in his criticism of those who lived in liberal capitalist societies and revered the USSR as model of revolution in cultural and ethical life, Orwell was at no time anti-Socialist. Whilst many have adopted Orwell as a reformed Socialist (particularly in the USA) who finally saw the error or his ways, this is in fact far from the truth. In 1937 he fought for the POUM - the Spanish Troskyists - in the Spanish Civil War, and he later wrote, with particular reference to Animal Farm and 1984 (published in 1949), "Every line I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against Totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it".

In Lord Skidelsky's biography John Maynard Keynes, the English economist, wrote: "The day is not far off when the Economic Problem will take a back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and head will be occupied where it belongs, or reoccupied by our real problems - the problems of life and human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion". Certainly that day has not yet arrived. Arguably, we are nearer now than Orwell was in his day but whether he would have perceived the sterile debates, between coalescing parties fighting over the middle ground, as a sign of progress or decay, one can only guess. However, it is hard to imagine that, even in today's complacently imperfect world with still such appalling levels of inequality and suffering, Orwell would not still have found issues about which he could write with passion and foreboding.

Sometimes George Orwell shouts, but more often he takes you aside and whispers in your ear; whispers distilled words that fuel your thoughts and might even revolutionise your mind.