Imagine living in a world where the word “freedom” was never in the dictionary of your mind, where you were told from a young age to follow only what the government says word for word, and where you watch your neighbors be deported in cattle carts one by one and never find out why or what happened to them. A dystopian world like this is depicted in George Orwell’s novel, 1984, where he attempts to predict a futuristic world in 1949 according to the trend of many countries during that time. Orwell based most of his novel off of the Soviet Union, then under the rule of Joseph Stalin, bringing issues of totalitarian governments into the spotlight. The novel 1984 effectively reflects what was happening in Stalin’s Russia in that they both center around political leaders that altered media to control the population and encouraged the brainwashing of children with their political ideologies. An important strategy Stalin used in controlling his people was to fully monitor the Russian media, just like how in 1984, the Ministry of Truth plays this corresponding role in altering the media to help the government keep its people under control. According to research done by the Miami University, “Joseph Stalin was particularly infamous for his micromanaging of many cultural institutions. He personally interfered in the writing of plays, novels, movies, and even music, enforcing a cultural homogeneity that encompassed his vision of the new ‘Soviet man’” (“History of Russian Journalism”).