“Politics have no relation to morals.” (Niccolo Machiavelli) Throughout history, a plethora of effective leaders has demonstrated inhumanity to retain power. Joseph Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a powerhouse of industrialization and military but did so ruling with terror, categorizing him with leaders like Machiavelli and Hitler: leaders with great efficacy but disgusting morals. Animal Farm, an allegory by George Orwell, tells of Napoleon’s tyrannical rule on a farm, a portrayal of Stalin’s rule. The novella provides readers not only with a dystopia parallel to the one Stalin created in the Soviet Union, but also the lies and distortions of the truth that Napoleon and Stalin use to maintain their hegemony.
Stalin and Napoleon both have a spokesperson, an acolyte, who conceals the totalitarianisms citizens are imprisoned in by presenting the community with a twisted truth. Squealer, Napoleon’s propagandist, is the reflection of Stalin’s, Vyacheslav Molotov. Both give the audience with just
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What is blocking the light? Tyranny. Yet, the leaders blame a non-existent force, a scapegoat, for making the citizens live in a world of darkness. Scapegoats are the one of the most strategic playing-cards in the game of politics; they extinguish the masses’ doubt in their leaders. Napoleon avoids his well-deserved obloquy throughout the book with the ‘help’ of Snowball, “Snowball, Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion” (pg. 44); here, Squealer turns black into white, Napoleon’s faults into Snowballs faults . Meanwhile, Stalin uses Leon Trotsky as a scapegoat for all the problems in the Soviet government. Stalin escapes the scrutiny of the masses, claiming that Trotsky meddled with parts of the government that were then,
Myths, surrounding Stalin have played a major role in the construction of Stalin’s reputation, in both a positive and negative way. This essay will look at Plate 1.5.8 in the illustration book, and discuss how the myth of Stalin presented in this image differs from earlier and later mythic presentations of him.
Napoleon’s disastrous reign only supports Orwell’s idea that revolutions always fail, tyrants are only replaced, and a new government is never established. Napoleon is a cruel ruler who, fearful of Snowball’s return, executes all the animals who “confess” to being in league with Snowball. Napoleon uses Squealer as a propaganda spreader to the other animals of the farm. Squealer tells the animals how wonderful life is on the farm, when in fact they
The Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.
Whether Orwell is recreating the ghastly atmosphere of fear and torture in Nazi Germany or in the most repressive part of the Stalinist regime, we see clearly the opposition between the charismatic leader and his inner corps of privileged lieutenants, and the collective mass of dehumanised persons who are no longer individuals. Paradoxically,
In the Novel animal farm by George Orwell he tells a story about a farm that is taken over by animals, an allegory of the Russian revolution. In this essay I will show how Napoleon represents Stalin and what he did during the Russian revolution.
George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm is a great example of allegory and political satire. The novel was written to criticize totalitarian regimes and particularly Stalin's corrupt rule in Russia. In the first chapter Orwell gives his reasons for writing the story and what he hopes it will accomplish. It also gives reference to the farm and how it relates to the conflicts of the Russian revolution. The characters, settings, and the plot were written to describe the social upheaval during that period of time and also to prove that the good nature of true communism can be turned into something atrocious by an idea as simple as greed. This essay will cover the comparisons between Animal Farm and the Russian Revolution. It will also explain why
To begin with, this book educated the reader about the past. Everyone in the Soviet Union looked up to the leader, Stalin, even though he wasn’t a good leader at all. He caused many problems for the citizens including uncomfortable living conditions. This book educates the reader by showing that back then even when people were treated badly, they still had to look up to their leader even though he was the cause of all
Stalin like Hitler “used propaganda, censorship, and terror to force his will on the Soviet people. Government newspapers glorified work and Stalin himself. Secret police spied on citizens, and anyone who refused to praise Stalin and the state faced severe punishment, even death” (“The Soviet”, n.d.).
The novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell, was an allegory about the Russian Revolution in which the author used a farm and it’s members to symbolize major characters and their actions. In this composition, I will reveal to you many of Joseph Stalin’s important contributions and how they relate to the actions of Napoleon from Animal Farm. I will break this topic down into the following three parts, their rise to power, how they maintain power, and how they use and abuse their authority.
The Russian Revolution and the purges of Leninist and Stalinist Russia have spawned a literary output that is as diverse as it is voluminous. Darkness at Noon, a novel detailing the infamous Moscow Show Trials, conducted during the reign of Joseph Stalin is Arthur Koestler’s commentary upon the event that was yet another attempt by Stalin to silence his critics. In the novel, Koestler expounds upon Marxism, and the reason why a movement that had as its aim the “regeneration of mankind, should issue in its enslavement” and how, in spite of its drawbacks, it still held an appeal for intellectuals. It is for this reason that Koestler may have attempted “not to solve but to expose” the shortcomings of this political system and by doing so
Many of Man's struggles are usually the result of societal standards, control, and punishment. These struggles are present in both One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Through setting and internal monologue, both authors depict the effects of the brutalities of communism on Man's spirituality.
Solzhenitsyn envisioned and captured the persona of the Soviet prison labor camp system by describing as a chain of hidden islands amongst the USSR landscape. Solzhenitsyn sees himself lifting the shroud that the Soviet regime tried to hide the gulags behind by telling his story of his time in the gulags. Reading his book gave the reader the sense of reading a forbidden text, something surrounded in secrecy. Solzhenitsyn develops themes throughout the book. These fetid and morbid “islands” would see millions of unfortunate visitors forced to slave away at one of the world’s largest and fastest infrastructure and industrialization builds in the history of mankind perpetuated by the will of Stalin and his secret police the NKVD. In this beautifully and treacherously written story, Alexander Solzhenitsyn goes from his glory filled days as a distinguished officer to just an exhausted instrument of the Soviet state.
This phenomenon is not unique to Russia or Animal Farm: it happens throughout the world. Governments have done similar things to improve their standing by blaming an invisible enemy. The purges and show trials with which Stalin eliminated his enemies and cemented his power mirrors the false confessions and executions of animals that Napoleon distrusts after the windmill collapse. Stalin’s tyrannical rule and abandonment of the founding principles of the Russian Revolution are represented by Napoleon’s turn to violent government and the adoption of human traits and behaviours.
The purpose of this analysis is to show how the themes of the novel are loosely based on the events in the soviet union, and the similarities between the world of big brother and Joseph Stalin’s communistic leadership.
In this way, Orwell portrays the ways in which the Russian people were influenced by figureheads and ideological saints. ‘Napoleon’, another of Orwell’s characters, portrays the role of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin – ‘Man of Steel’. The novel identifies Stalin’s ambition to lead and control the masses, winning over his more intelligent and influential counterpart, Leon Trotsky, who is represented by ‘Snowball’. ‘Napoleon’ also identifies himself with the French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Orwell considered to be a repressive power seeker and dictator.