Animal Farm : Research

• George Orwell, was the pen name of Eric Blair, a British political novelist and essayist. 
• Orwell was a socialist, and disliked the Soviet Union seeing it as a negative representation of socialist ideologies. 
• Animal Farm, was written in the style of Aesop's fables, to tell the history of Soviet Communism and thereby criticise Stalin's totalitarian regime. 
• Certain animals are based directly on Communist Party leaders: the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, for example, are figurations of Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. 
• With its general themes of oppression, suffering and injustice Orwell's novel could be seen as a powerful attack on any political or military power that seeks to control human beings unjustly. 

Censorship 

• The controversy of Animal farm meant it remained unpublished in the UK until 1945. As war-time allies the UK did not want to publish anything that could compromise soviet relations. 
• In the Soviet Union, Animal Farm was seen as a threat to Stalin's reputation, defaming him as a pig, and to Soviet communism. It was forbidden to circulate after its publication in 1945, in the UK, and this ban continued until the late 1980s after the collapse of the soviet union.