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.
   1. Beasts Of England was banned
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. Dies just before the rebellion.

1. means 'Man of Steel'
2. Responsible for 22 million deaths
   1. Napoleon kills Chickens, pigs and sheep.
      1. Doesn't care for Boxer after he fell he get sent straight to the knackers not the hospital where squealer had said he had been set to.
3. Wanted absolute power
   1. Napoleon killed threats to get power
   2. Took the puppies away from their mothers to be secretly trained to kill animals.
4. Distorted communist ideal of a 'Worker's Paradise' to a brutal dictatorship
   1. Animals have to work every day of the week also working long hours being watched all the time by napoleons pigs
5. Napoleon

1. Not allowed to Lenin's funeral
2. A good public speaker
3. Interested in education
4. Exiled by Stalin
   1. Chased by dogs out of the farm.
5. Snowball

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
         1. If something wasn't completed in time it was blamed on snowball
      3. If the harvest wasn't brought in on time they would go hungry and the fault, if it was an animal, that animal would be killed. this would happen at the later stages on the farm.
   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
         2. Gets squealer to report false figures and lies to the animals and the world outside the farm one reason was to fill the grain bins full of sand and covered them up with the grain that was on the floor. Mr whimper reported back saying that there was no food shortage on the farm but food had already been rationed twice.
      2. Grain rations were put in place
   3. The idea of the windmill and how it could revolutionise the farm with technology
2. The windmill

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
   2. Made animals confess to be communicating with Snowball
3. Napoleon drives Jones and Snowball out of the farm

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)
2. worked in Burma