Animal Farm and its Relationship to History

Animal Farm is a 1945 allegorical novella by English writer George Orwell. According to Orwell, the book reflects events that led up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then to the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union.

Orwell believed that the Soviet Union had become a brutal dictatorship built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror, and he wrote Animal Farm in an effort to illustrate this to the world. The controversial book was rejected by many British and American publishers, but once published, it was a success.

Here are some helpful resources that show the allegorical relationship of Animal Farm to events and people in the Soviet regime:

This short video provides a synopsis of the events of Animal Farm and draws parallels between the story and actual historical figures in Stalinist Russia.

Here is a helpful chart of Animal Farm characters and their counterparts in the Russian Revolution:

https://sites.google.com/site/gunzjrsite/world-perspectives/lindsey-s-worl

Another chart:

Animal farm – Comparison of Characters to the Russian Revolution from Tiny Mu