Snowball and Napoleon as Trotsky and Stalin

USSR and How Communism is Affiliated with Animal Farm

The Bolshevik revolution in Russia came about in much the same way the revolution at Manor Farm comes about in Orwell’s Animal Farm. Under tsarist Russia, the peasant class was not very prosperous and there were many unsatisfied people. Lenin was one of the early Bolshevik leaders who took up the plight of the working class and called for revolution: Lenin was inspired by Marx, and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 was the moment when Marxist-trained Communists seized power and institutionalized the revolution. If Lenin offered up the original dream for Communism, inspired by Marx, Trotsky became the mouthpiece for that vision and the potential new leader of it in Russia. However, Stalin emerged as more powerful and—craving still more power—chased Trotsky away and led a purge of all opposition in order to consolidate his grip on the USSR. Under Stalin, Russia was brutally united but the early ideals of the Marxists were betrayed, and the revolution turned Russia into the USSR became simply a power play. Stalin ruled with an iron fist, not caring at all for the common worker but rather only for the preservation and maintenance of his own authority. From this point of view, it is easy to see how Orwell’s Animal Farm reflects the sequence of events in Russia, with Old Major representing Lenin, Snowball representing Trotsky, and Napoleon representing Stalin.

Orwell’s novel begins with Old Major relaying a dream he had to the other animals. The dream is a vision of the way things could be on the farm if the all the animals worked together to take power away from Farmer Jones. This vision is essentially that of Lenin, as he spoke through the Bolshevik papers and circles about how society should be organized. What Old Major describes in the first scene of the novel is the same as what Marx and Engels described in their Communist Manifesto. Lenin simply repackaged that manifesto and used it as a rallying cry for the disaffected and downtrodden workers and peasants in tsarist Russia. The Russian Revolutionaries had a great deal of financial support—unlike the animals in Orwell’s novel—but the ideals described by Old Major and Lenin were basically cut from the same cloth. One big difference, however, is that in the novel it is Napoleon who unleashes the security state on the farm and uses it against the unsuspecting Snowball; in real life, Trotsky helped bring about the secret police—the Cheka—in the USSR (O’Malley).

The Soviet system would not have survived without the Cheka, as it performed the secret purges that Stalin commanded and removed many opponents or people Stalin considered threats to his power (Paxton). This led to an environment of brutalism and oppression—much like that experienced by the animals on Animal Farm once Napoleon took over. Stalinism was a brutal force that forbade all independent thought, all independent action, and all independent ideologies—there could be no future or life but that which Stalin approved. It made for a miserable life for many millions of people in the USSR: people were impoverished, food was scant at times, and there was nothing anyone could do about for fear of being arrested (Fitzgerald). In Orwell’s novel, the situation is the same: the animals are deemed valuable only in terms of their utility and not in terms of their inherent worth as creatures. For instance, when the heroic horse becomes hobbled, he is sold off to the glue makers without any farewell salute—and Napoleon’s Squealer lies and says the horse is actually going off to receive medical treatment. There was no appreciation shown for all the hard work and dedication and commitment to the cause the horse had shown: he was just seen as a useful animal—and when he was no longer useful, he was gotten rid of. Stalin was the same way: he had no problem liquidating the kulaks by the millions.

The Soviet system also required propagandists to keep the masses on the same page—and this, too, is reflected in Orwell’s novel through the character of Squealer. Squealer is the one who tells the lies, engages in deceit, and twists logic in order to manipulate the other animals into supporting Napoleon. Squealer has no problem justifying the changing of the rules of Animal Farm in order to make it seem as though Napoleon were living up to some communist ideal when the fact of the matter is that he is betraying the ideals presented by Old Major at the beginning of the book. Squealer wants to share in the power, and the propagandists in the USSR were much the same: they knew that if they did not promote Stalin’s line they would be shunned from society or imprisoned or worse. So while they might not have shared in Stalin’s power they at least produced propaganda that Stalin would approve.