OT: Orwell (Was: Why not Linux?)

[Christopher Browne]

On 9/2/06, Paul Osman <paul-trWFDORQd8hBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On 2-Sep-06, at 11:19 AM, Zbigniew Koziol wrote:
>
> > On Saturday 02 September 2006 10:57, Rick Tomaschuk wrote:
> >> On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 14:05 -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> >>> I have not read Animal Farm I'm afraid, but I do know
> >>
> >> Animal Farm is a satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. Major
> >> events in the book are based on ones from the Soviet Union during the
> >> Stalin era. (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> >> Animal_farm ...sorry I
> >> don't have Encarta)
> >
> > Well, wikipedia is certainly either not a fully trustfull source of
> > information.
> >
> > Was 1984 based on Soviet Union? I doubt that. I doubt also that the
> > Animal
> > Farm was.
> >
> > Orwell wrote rather about the possible evolution of the western
> > civilization.
> > Was he so wrong? In some sense no: 911 is an example.
> >
> > zb.
>
> Hard to say exactly what Orwell's feelings about the Soviet Union
> were. Depends on what time he was writing I think. In "Homage to
> Catalonia", he describes his experiences fighting with the Communists
> in the Spanish Civil War. He was a member of the POUM (Workers' Party
> of Marxist Unification) which was eventually outlawed by the
> Communist Party, leaving many members, including Orwell feeling
> betrayed. He also seemed to have a lot of sympathy for the Anarchists
> in the CNT/FAI, who obviously were not fans of the Communist Party in
> Spain or it's backers in the Soviet Union.

Actually, it's not hard to say what his feelings were.

He was pretty explicit about them in his preface to the Ukranian
translation of Animal Farm:

<http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/ukrainian-af-pref.htm>

> I think 1984 and Animal Farm were probably both based on his worries
> about totalitarianism in general... these views were probably shaped
> by both his outlook on Western Civilization and his experiences with
> Soviet backed Communists.

1984 was definitely ambiguous; Animal Farm was NOT.

>From the preface:

"I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for
itself, it is a failure. But I should like to emphasise two points:
first, that although the various episodes are taken from the actual
history of the Russian Revolution, they are dealt with schematically
and their chronological order is changed; this was necessary for the
symmetry of the story. The second point has been missed by most
critics, possibly because I did not emphasise it sufficiently. A
number of readers may finish the book with the impression that it ends
in the complete reconciliation of the pigs and the humans. That was
not my intention; on the contrary I meant it to end on a loud note of
discord, for I wrote it immediately after the Teheran Conference which
everybody thought had established the best possible relations between
the USSR and the West. I personally did not believe that such good
relations would last long; and as events have shown, I wasn't far
wrong."

There is nothing that is at all unclear about:
  "the various episodes are taken from the actual history of the
Russian Revolution"
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