Quick summary of the story
The book starts with a meeting of animals on the Manor Farm. Old Major, the old boar inspires the animals to start working on a rebellion. He teaches them a song called Beasts of England in which he sings about the tyranny of man and about the day that he is certain will come. The animals may not live to see the actual rebellion as it may happen few generations later but they must do everything to overthrow the dominance of “parasites” (humans) on the farm. Right after his death the two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon take command of the farm and start preparations for the rebellion. A day comes when they can’t stand the irresponsible owner of the farm Mr Jones and his lack of concern about their feeding anymore so they run him out of the farm. From now on the pigs rule the farm which they rename to “Animal Farm”.
The Seven Commandments are written down with all the new rules. The most significant is: “All animals are equal”. Man is the ultimate enemy. There are attempts to educate the animals but not many of them are clever enough to remember the alphabet. Many disputes happen between Snowball and Napoleon. They both seem to strive for the best possible improvements of the life on the farm. However, Napoleon uses his pack of dogs to drive him off the farm and takes the lead. Napoleon also makes use of his spokesperson Squealer to pass his commands to the animals. Squealer constantly encourages the animals to work harder and speaks highly of their leader Comrade Napoleon. The animals are easily persuaded that the life is better than it was under the rule of man, while it seems to be the exact opposite. Their rations get lowered and there is more work.
The rules are broken by the pigs and thus they simply ...
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...just out of curiosity. A banal news at first sight but it indicated what was to come in the next years: systematic campaign focusing the people’s attention on the material side of everyday life in Soviet Union, on the growing material prosperity.”
[Miroslav Kouba, Dagmar Magincová, Ivo Říha, Univerzita Pardubice,167; translated by Ivan Hrušovský]
In both the book and in the Russia the shortages were brutal while the society was producing more, only the elite was benefitting from that….DOPSAT STR.90 EVERYDAY STALINISM
The Animal Farm
Pravda was a Russian political newspaper.
Propaganda department of Lenin's government worked for Stalin to support his image used any lie to convince the people to follow Stalin benefited from the fact that education was controlled
Vyacheslav Molotov was Stalin's protégée and head of Communist propaganda
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Totalitarismus str. 31
He goes with some other workers to a state run farm outside of Magnitogorsk to help repair tractors he remarks, “everything, in fact, had been thought of, he said, 'except good land and men to work it'.”7 This was the issue with Stalin's “revolution from above” be built these grand cities that were essentially just large plants like Magnitogorsk, but the people lived in horrible conditions, the collectivized farms that were meant to support the food supply for the workers of Magnitogorsk had bad land and nobody to work to the farms. In theory Stalin's plans could work, but the people, the land, the infrastructure could not feasibly attain the end result that was needed, it just wasn’t possible. For Stalin's plans to have worked he needed to be in the right place and the Soviet Union, and the unforgiving landscape just was not it. Things got so bad that Scott writes, “ the new Bolshevik government sent inspectors to every village to look for hoarded bread.”8 Scott writes, “ during the early thirties the main energies of the Soviet Union went into construction. New plants, mines, whole industries, sprang up all over the country” but he also recalls, “the new aggregates failed to work normally.
Russia's industries were beginning to develop and the number of people living in towns was increasing. These people were the urban working class of Russia and they were not as eager to accept the poor wages and conditions as the peasants were.
Stalin had an ingenious plan to help his country’s economy get back on track. He called this plan the Five Year Plan which consisted of four parts. First was a plan to increase industrial output in five years because Russia was far behind the Great Powers of Europe. Second was the end of NEP, New Economic Plan, in Russia. NEP was another way of saying collectivization. Third was more focused to the increase of steel production, which they were able to do by five hundred percent. And lastly was his commitment of investing one-third of the government’s income to industry.
No war is fought without the struggle for resources, and with Russia still rapidly lagging behind in the international industrialisation race by the turn of the 20th century, the stage was set for social unrest and uprising against its already uncoordinated and temporally displaced government. With inconceivable demands for soldiers, cavalry and warfare paraphernalia, Russia stood little chance in the face of the great powers of World War One. Shortages of basic human necessities led to countless subsistence riots and the eventual power struggle between the ruling body and its people. From the beginnings of WWI to 1916, prices of essential goods rose 131 percent in Moscow and more than 150 percent in Petrograd. Additionally, historian Walter G. Moss stated that in September 1915 that “there were 100,000 strikers in Russia; in October 1916, there were 250,000 in Petrograd alone.” Moss continues to exemplify the increasing evidence of social unrest and connects the riots to a lack of resources when he goes on to point out that “subsistence riots protesting high prices and shortages… also increased.” ...
Mau, Vladimir. " The road to 'perestrokia': economics in the USSR and the problem of
Starting 1928, the Stalinist economic policy was characterized by a rupture with Lenin’s quasi-capitalist New Economic Policy. The need to protect the Union from eventual capitalist and imperialist wars necessitated the creation of a self-sufficient industry and agriculture freed from the constraints of the market. The industrial policy resembled that of a war economy focused on heavy industries such as steel, weapons and the industrial centers were relocated in remote areas such as the Urals and Siberia, rich in natural resources. In 1937, the part of small industries had fallen from a third in 1913 to 6 percent (Davies 1989, 1029). This process revealed to be extremely successful on a macroscop...
George Orwell (1903-1950 ), whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, India. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair was a civil servant for the British colonial government. In 1904 he moved with his mother and sister to England and was educated at Eton. He began to write at an early age, and was even published in college periodicals, but he did not enjoy school.
A wise boar, Old Major, expresses a dream of a world where animals live with no human oppression to the rest of the animals in Manor Farm. However, only three days after his speech, he dies, leaving three younger pigs to take over his place and lead the other animals toward Major’s dream. They create the Seven Commandments of Animalism, which set values against acting human-like, and paint them on the wall of the barn. One night, the animals succeed in rebelling against Mr. Jones, the owner of the farm. Initially, farming goes well after the rebellion. However, one of the power-hungry pigs, Napoleon, begins to run a totalitarian dictatorship with an eloquent pig, Squealer, by his side. He also trains puppies, whom he takes from their parents, into vicious guard dogs and uses them to enforce his plans. One by one, the Seven Commandments are broken and altered by Napoleon, who gradually acts more and more human-like. Finally, only one rule remains on the barn wall, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” (Orwell 133). Napoleon and the other pigs eventually walk upright, wear clothing, indulge in alcohol, and even sleep on beds (all of which were originally forbidden in the Seven Commandments), while the other animals work all day with little food. By the end of the book, the other farm animals can no longer tell the difference between the pigs and humans when other human farmers are invited over for dinner. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” (Orwell 139).
Sulimov, D. "The First Five Year Plan 1928 - 1932." Editorial. Literary Digest 18 Feb. 1933: n. pag. Soviet Rejoicing Over Fiver-Year Successes. The Literary Digest. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.
One of the main characters of Animal Farm is the heartless and merciless leader Napoleon. Napoleon is a leader that prefers to have things his way and not cooperate with others, in other words really obnoxious. For example “He declared himself against the windmill from the start. One day, however, he arrived unexpectedly to examine the plan. He walked heavily round the sled, looked closely at every detail of the plans and snuffed at them once or twice, then stood for a little while contemplating them out of the corner of his eye; then suddenly lifted his leg, urinated over the plans and walked out without uttering a word.”(Page 33, chapter5) Thus, this proves that Napoleon is an obnoxious pig because just because he was against Snowball’s windmill idea he urinated all over his work so he could get his way.
The novel “Animal Farm” was written by the author name George Orwell. Animal Farm is a novel based upon the lives of a society of animals wanting a better life for themselves living on the Manor Farm. The setting of the book is a farm called “Manor Farm”. The theme of this book is that the animals should make a stand; if they continue doing the same thing they will continue getting the same results. It is better to be free and starving, than to be fed and enslaved.
Pigs walking on two feet, horses and sheep talking. This is how George Orwell satirizes human nature in his classic novel Animal Farm. Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The title of the book is also the setting for the action in the novel. The animals in the story decide to have a revolution and take control of the farm from the humans. Soon the story shows us how certain groups move from the original ideals of the revolution to a situation where there is domination by one group and submission by all the others. The major idea in this story is the political corruption of what was once a pure political ideal. Orwell uses satire to ridicule human traits in his characters such as Napoleon and Squealer. There are several different characters in the novel utilizing animals as symbols of people in real life during the Russian Revolution. Napoleon is the leader of the pigs that ultimately come to dominate the farm. The characteristics that we associate with pigs , lazy, greedy, and pushy are meant to symbolize the characteristics that the leaders of the Russian Revolution exhibited. Napoleon is admired by all of the animals because he is their leader. All of the animals believe that their leader wants to fulfill all of their needs. They also are convinced that Napoleon’s decisions are made the best interest of the animals. Napoleon’s piglike qualities are shown throughout the story. He exhibited greediness when he sold the dying horse, Boxer to a slaughterhouse for money so that he and the other pigs could purchase whiskey. Orwell ridicules human nature through Napoleon in the sense that he is trying to show how the greedy and power hungry eventually end in corruption.
There are several themes in Animal Farm, some including: Leadership and corruption, control of naïve working class, lies and deception, and dreams and hopes. The main themes in Animal Farm leadership and corruption. Animal Farm portrays the history of the Russian Revolution by retelling the development of communism. In the novel, by overthrowing Mr. Jones, the animals give the power to the pigs who take complete control of the farm. The struggle for superiority between Leon Trotsky, a Russian revolutionary, and Stalin, a Soviet statesman, is portrayed by the rivalry between the pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. In both cases, the less powerful one, Trotsky and Snowball, is eliminated by the more superior one, Stalin and Napoleon. Stalin's rule and abandonment of the founding principles of the Russian Revolution are portrayed when the pigs adopt human traits and behaviors, which they originally tried to escape. “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from ...
Snowball and Napoleon held a great deal of contrast between the way they each ruled over “Animal Farm/Manor Farm.” The only thing he did lack, was the ability of pursuasion to the other animals. Snowball had all the right ideas, all to better the whole farm. Napoleon, on the other hand, had a knack for stealing other animals’ ideas, then telling the rest it was his and getting credit for it. His ideas only seemed to benefit the pigs and not the animals. It was this, that led to the crumbling of the farm. Napoleons obsession with becoming the ruler is what got Snowball nearly killed by the dogs...in a plot made by Napoleon. Which then produced a whole new rebellion not of the animals to the humans, but of the animals to the pigs. So for these reasons, Snowball showed better qualities for leadership than Napoleon because he wasn’t selfish and thought about the future of “Animal Farm.” First, the dominated farm animals viewed Napoleon and Snowball differently at different times throughout the book. The way the animals reacted to each leader brought upon new problems of the farm. The animals respected Snowball, and believed that his teachings were all true and had a good cause. Although Snowball and Napoleon had superior qualities leadership, it was clearly Snowball who had the better qualities for running a farm. Under Snowballs’ rule, the animals were generally content with what was going on and were all for it if it was to better the farm. It was obvious that Napoleon had the better half of getting his own way on the farm. However, the animals had some problems with Napoleon but they didn’t know haw to express their feelings and show him that they didn’t like the way he ran things. It was the animals’ ignorance that helped keep Napoleon in rule for as long as it was. The responses were so different between the animals that it must have been a drastic change between Snowball and Napoleon.
Animal Farm is about rebellion against authority. The animals on the Mannor Farm are sick of being worked to death and getting small rations, so they decide to over throw the humans. They endure many hardships, including two human invasions. In the end the leaders, the pigs, turn into exactly what they had fought to over come.