George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel where all human activity is monitored by the government and independent thought is entirely suppressed. Some interpret this novel as an attack on Joseph Stalin’s rule while others read it as a pro-Communist novel. 1984 was banned by the Soviet Union for alleged anti-Soviet themes and nearly banned by the United States and the UK for alleged pro-Communist themes and explicit sexual content. The novel has also been accused of anti-Semitism, a hostility against Jews.
1984 was written in 1949, shortly after the end of World War II and at the onset of the Cold War. The Soviets had reneged on their agreements and began to impose totalitarian rule on territories in Eastern Europe. The world
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They established a containment policy – stopping the spread of communism (Sailus 5). This was directly opposite to the Soviet Union’s policy of encouraging the spread of communism, especially in Eastern Europe and Asia (Sailus 5).
1984 is set in a totalitarian state that is very similar to Russia under Stalin. A lot of the censorship, oppression, and removal of individual power refers to the regime under Stalin’s rule. Just like in 1984, power was secured in Russia through propaganda and control of the economy, media, and educational system ("1984, by George Orwell: Compare 1984 Human Rights Violations" 2). The novel is warning about the dangers of totalitarianism and communism. It anticipates the future under a totalitarian state where all individuality is destroyed in order to promote the government’s needs over the individual’s.
At the time, the Soviet Union sought trust and loyalty from the people. They preferred that Orwell’s accusations of propaganda and mass brainwashing in a totalitarian state would be kept quiet. 1984 was banned in the Soviet Union because it shows people the danger of giving the government all the power and the other anti-communist ideas it