Summary Of Russell Baker's Animal Farm

“Soviet communism paid a heavy price for what it did to Orwell in Spain. Out of that came Animal Farm. An attack on the myth of the nobility of Soviet Communism” states Russell Baker, author of the preface to George Orwell’s Animal Farm (Orwell vi). In this statement, Baker is referring to Orwell’s experiences in while he fought in the Spanish Civil War. Even though Spain was far away from Russia, it didn’t escape Stalin’s influence. Because of Communist influence in Spain, many of Orwell’s friends were “shot, and others spent a long time in prison or simply disappeared” (vi). Inspired by his experiences in Spain, he wrote Animal Farm, an allegory for the Russian Revolution. In this novel, he used animal characters and events on a fictional farm to represent

One reason for this is how he captured Stalin’s goal to industrialize the U.S.S.R. In real life, Stalin’s industrialization plan included forced collectivization of agriculture and the government having control of the economy. His plans are very similar to Napoleon’s. In order to increase the farm’s production, the pigs, who represented the Soviet government, took control of everything. Napoleon’s cruelty also accounts of the accuracy of this portrayal. Throughout the book, Napoleon works the animals until they’re exhausted and hungry. He fools them into thinking that everything was fine on the farm and that they were prospering. Only the pigs were benefiting from the efforts of the others. Napoleon shows no regard for the animals that work hard to make the farm prosper. Joseph Stalin had a similar attitude towards the proletariat. His government took almost everything that citizens produced. This led to the starvation and suffering of the people of the U.S.S.R (Joseph Stalin). Since Napoleon’s and Stalin’s main objectives and actions match, it’s obvious that Orwell wrote a very accurate representation of Stalin in Animal