Name: ______Date: ______

English 10AMrs. Mason

Animal Farm Background Information

Difference between Capitalism and Marxism

Capitalism / Marxism
Self-interest
Competition
Investment
Profit
Supply and demand
Laissez-faire
Individual ownership of means of production- land, factories, and businesses / Good of community
Equal pay
 No classes
People as a whole own all means of production- land, factories, and businesses.
Government makes all economic decisions

Russian Revolution of 1917

By 1917, the bond between the tsar and most of the Russian people had been broken. Governmental corruption and inefficiency were rampant. People were unhappy, and economic instability was present.

March Revolution

Riots broke out, and Tsar Nicholas II was forced to relinquish the throne. Then, the Duma, Parliament, set-up a provisional government, but it faced rival against the Bolsheviks.

November Revolution

 This revolution was led by Lenin, the head of the Bolshevik Party, and was based upon Lenin’s writings on Karl Marx’s ideas.

 It marked the beginning of the spread of communism in the 20th century. Lenin’s program of “peace, land, and bread” won the party considerable support among urban workers and the soldiers.

 The Bolshevik Party overthrew the provisional government.

Russian Civil War (1918-1921)

 The Russian Civil War broke out in 1918 and brought death and suffering to millions of people.

 The war was fought between the Red Army (Bolsheviks), whose commander was Leon Trotsky, and the White Army (anti-Bolsheviks).

 The Bolsheviks’ victory (Communist victory) eventually led to the creation of the Soviet Union.

Trotsky/Stalin Rivalry

 After Lenin died in 1924, Trotsky and Stalin vied for power.

 In 1928, Stalin became the dictator of the Soviet Union.

Stalin’s Rule

 Stalin’s Five Year Plan

- He wanted to improve heavy industry (machinery), but to reach high quotas, there were limits on consumer goods, and the goods were low quality.

 Agricultural Revolution

- He forced peasants to give up ownership of their land and live on government-owned farms. Peasants refused to work, which lead to famine.

Great Purge- “Reign of Terror”

- He used a secret police force.

- He ordered people to be executed and sent people to forced labor camps.

 Proganda

- Stalin used propaganda to make him seem God-like and to make Communism seem great.

George Orwell

In 1903, Eric Blair was born in Bengal, India. Later, he moved back to England.

In 1921, he joined the Civil Service and went to Burma as a sergeant in the Indian Imperial Police.

He served in Burma from 1922 to 1927 but disliked exercising power over the Burmese (British imperialism).

In 1945, he published Animal Farm, which is an anti-utopian novel; it is cast in the form of an animal satire.

Anti-Utopian Fiction

 The name for this type of fiction comes from Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia, published in 1516.

Men in the 19th century believed in the perfection of mankind and in the real possibility of an ultimate utopia, a time when all men would be able to live together in the 20th century, but events undermined that idea.

The motive for this new kind of novel may arise from the certainty that man can now destroy not only himself as an individual but all mankind and that governments can bend people to any kind of purpose whatsoever.

 Usually, these novels are intended as a criticism of the times in which the author lived.

Orwell Writing Animal Farm

 When Orwell began to write the novel in 1943, he was in an uncomfortable position.

He had always been convinced that the Marxist Revolution of 1917 had been destroyed by Stalin.

Stalin’s character as a power-hungry assassin was clear.

Orwell’s greatest fear was that people would forget what happened. He wrote Animal Farm for an audience of the people and leaders of the Western democracy to remind them of the facts.

Orwell insisted that he had no intention of damaging the “socialist” cause; he intended to write a cautionary story for the democratic West, warning it against a dangerously alien form of “socialism,” Communism.

Name: ______Date: ______

English 10AMrs. Mason

Representation of Characters in Animal Farm

Old Major is Marx.

Old Major’s ideas to the oppression of animals by human beings are Marx’s capitalists, while the animals are the workingmen.

Major is also Lenin, especially before the Russian Revolution.

Jones is Czar Nicolas II.

Moses, the raven, represents organized religion.

The animal rebellion is the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Napoleon is Stalin.

Snowball is Trotsky.

Squealer represents no one figure but is Stalin’s propaganda agent.

Representation of Places

Pilkington and Foxwood Farms refer to Britain.

Frederick and Pinchfield Farm refer to Germany.

Representation of Events

The several attempts to build the windmill are similar to Stalin’s Five Year Plan.

The events of Stalin’s rule are reflected in Napoleon’s gradual enslavement of the animals.

╚ Napoleon even has his purges, his trials and executions as Stalin did, as well as his secret

police, the dogs.

The Teheran Conference at which Stalin sat down for the first time with the West is alluded to in the last scene of Animal Farm, the drunken party at which Napoleon and the other pigs join with the human beings.