Animal Farm CONTEXT

1. Royal Family were imprisoned, then exectuted
   1. Mr Jones - the previous 'ruler' was evicted from the farm
2. Russia changed its name to the USSR - United Socialist Soviet Republic
   1. Manor Farm changed to Animal Farm
3. Religion was supposed to be banned but it was eventually tolerated. Karl Marx called religion "the opium of the people" meaning it kept them docile and controllable.
4. Animal's revolution

Annotations:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin

1. Lenin died in 1924
   1. Old Major dies before Animalism is established
2. Political theorist - created Leninism - a form of Communism nased on the writings of Karl Marx
   1. Old Major invents Animalism
3. Old Major

1. means 'Man of Steel'
2. Responsible for 22 million deaths
3. Wanted absolute power
4. Distorted communist ideal of a 'Worker's Paradise' to a brutal dictatorship

1. Not allowed to Lenin's funeral
2. A good public speaker
3. Interested in education
4. Exiled by Stalin

1. Stalin tried to dramatically improve and restructure industry, agriculture and infrastucture
   1. Demanding productivity targets were set
      1. Rise of the Cult of the Worker Hero - Praising those who follow the party line and try to exceed targets
      2. Not meeting targets was blamed on treachery or sabotage
   2. 1928-34 Problems of production arise, with many animals dying and people going hungry
      1. Stalin controls the media and misreports productivity and employment figures
         1. George Bernard Shaw -the socialist author of Pygmalion was given a stage-managed tour of USSR and so misreported back to the West

            Annotations:

            • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw

1. Creates the Ministry of Persecution
2. The 'Purges' were incidents when Stalin would remove people who disagreed with him
   1. In 1934 there was a Party Congress where over 2000 attendened. In 2 years, over 1000 of the participants were dead

1. Privately Educated at Eton
   1. Rejected privilege and became a writer and journalist
      1. Wrote Road to Wigan Pier (1937) about working families in the North of England in poor mining communities
      2. Went to Spain in 1936 to fight for the communists against General Franco - a fascist. but disliked Stalin's influence on the communist troops who began to turn on their own members. Wrote Homage to Catalonia (1938)
      3. Wrote Animal Farm - A Fairy Story as an allegorical satire to criticise Stalin's methods (1944)