George Orwell's Experience In The Spanish Civil War

195 Words1 Pages
George Orwell's experience in the Spanish Civil War, while fighting the fascists, showed a darker side to communism. He had unknowingly joined the Spanish Trotskyists, and when the Communists took over in 1937, found himself being hunted down by the Spanish Govenrment. He witnessed people he knew being shot, jailed or simply vanishing. According to Orwell, the hunt for anyone considered unorthodox coincided with the "great purges of the USSR". He states, "In Spain as well as in Russia the nature of the accusations (namely, conspiracy with the Fascists) was the same and as far as Spain was concerned I had every reason to believe that the accusations were false. To experience all this was a valuable object lesson: it taught me how easily totalitarian