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Animal Farm was a really important book for me. I picked it up aged about 10 or 11 and I remember being really struck by how easily the pigs were able to exploit the other animals' grievances with humans to secure their own power. It felt like a grown-up story with some quite powerful, disturbing meanings under the covers. So I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Russian Revolution. I didn't understand why, but did it, and then the book had a second, much bigger impact on me. And of course what a way to learn about allegory!

It was the first time I realized books could be dangerous, subversive, and truly educational as well as simply informative or entertaining.

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Totally, I agree! Even though George Orwell is more known for 1984 but his work truly shines with the Animal Farm. It is a children's book fwiw but every aspect of it is meant for the grown-ups. Outstanding!

Luckily if you're in Australia, you can read this book for free because it is public domain there.

[1] https://bubblin.io/cover/animal-farm-by-george-orwell (iPad-book)

[2] http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011.txt

Thanks for the link. It was fun reading it again for the first time in 30 years!

You're welcome! :-)

>>I told my English teacher about it and all she told me in response was to go look up the Russian Revolution.

You have to only look at the management hierarchy in your company. Pigs in the Animal Farm novel eat apples.

We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.

Why do you think your bosses get business travel, no limit credit cards, RSU, big bonuses and neat double digit monthly pay check.

It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.

>Why do you think your bosses get business travel, no limit credit cards, RSU, big bonuses and neat double digit monthly pay check.

Sorry, but i dont believe this is an accurate analogy. The reason is that otherwise they might leave for another opportunity. No-one is telling workers what the pigs are saying in AF.

That is true for every body in any company. But it happens only with the management.

One of the strangest things about that text is that very few of the folks I've talked to about it seem to feel that the issue with the pigs at the end is that there is a farmer.

That is to say, I very rarely find anyone who will agree that the book is anti-capitalist at teh same time that it's opposed to Stalinism.

I see the book continually taken happily anti-communist text. But the text is certainly not _just_ about the Soviet system under Stalin.

Over the years, the big impact of Orwell to me has been how readily people can look at systems that they consider to be Other than their own and critique them while eagerly ignoring the implications for their own situation. That is, everyone here thinks the sheep are dumb, but at least they went through a period of time where they tried to replace the farmer with a different pig... where I live in Texas, all the sheep just think they are the farmer.

To me it’s a warning that when you rightfully overthrow an authoritarian you have to be careful not to trade that authoritarian against another one. This seems to happen all the time. Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia and probably many more.

The word "revolution" is probably the most deeply ironic one in the whole of the English language. You fight and die to overthrow the oppressor only to end up back where you started.

And that meaning, "going round in circles" is tacitly encoded by it's very use.

TIL. Thank you. As a non-native english speaker, I've only now had this epiphany.

The only exceptions are revolutions guided by good ideas and solid values.

Just "overthrow the current leaders and then (??? magic happens here ???) and then we get a better society" doesn't work. You end up where you started or worse because usually the ideas haven't changed.

Intellectual revolutions must precede political ones.

This is why I'm kind of a dull boring centrist politically. I dont support any major attempt to rock the boat because there has been no intellectual improvements that might guide such a thing.

Most revolutionary thinkers don't think replacing the existing leaders will "magically" lead to a better society.

They have grievances with the existing systems, reason to believe those in power won't address those grievances, and reason to believe replacing those in power with people more sympathetic to their grievances will address them.

Also, there has been a boatload of revolutionary thought about how to make a better society over the last century or so. There are clear ways that our system is imperfect and clear ideas of how it could be improved. I'm not sure why you claim there are no "intellectual improvements" over the status quo.

> They have grievances with the existing systems, reason to believe those in power won't address those grievances, and reason to believe replacing those in power with people more sympathetic to their grievances will address them.

So they are doing exactly the same as those in power, which is taking care of themselves.

> The only exceptions are revolutions guided by good ideas and solid values.

Those are mostly not exceptions; successfully uprooting an existing power structure takes more than good ideas and solid values, and replacing it with something that will stably sustain itself both during the revolutionary emergency and afterwards without either falling apart or enabling a power hungry would be despot to exploit it to create an authoritarian regime takes far more than that.

Appeals to justice and the dignity of all things form the basis of an intellectual revolution. It’s just not televised.

I guess that's why the US revolution worked. They were going into the war with a full fledged constitution ready to go.

> I guess that's why the US revolution worked.

The US “Revolution” was a regional separatist movement led by the local elites and local governments that did not upend the basic local social, economic, or political power structure save for severing the latter from a remote central government (and the resulting new central system was replaced with something more closely approximating, and deliberately modeled on, the old one very shortly after the Revolution in the face of widespread perception of imminent failure otherwise.)

In other words, it mostly wasn't revolutionary and in the one way that it was it mostly failed.

It was a liberal revolution, but not a social one. It definitely shifted the power and I think calling it a revolution is justified. A bit of a side note, but I wholeheartedly recommend https://www.revolutionspodcast.com it starts with the English revolution, then moves to the US, then back to Europe for the French Revolution. There are a lot of episodes on the revolutionary XIX century in Europe and how the “question” slowly changed from the political one to the social one.

Careful, you're in danger of swallowing uncritically propaganda aimed at halting progress.

Yes, in any period of turmoil sociopaths will attempt to abuse all and every lever of power.

But over the centuries we have made a lot of progress.

Humanity needs to get _much_ better at how we organize ourselves and decide things and grant authority to others.

Russians have basically given up after riding this merry-go-round for the past almost two centuries.

True. Russians and also Poles have suffered a lot over the last centuries. From one bad situation to a worse one.

At least the Poles are doing ok now as part of the EU. I wonder if Russia could go properly democratic and join during my lifetime.

Russians are probably the least luckiest people in the world.

* they bore the brunt of Mongol invasion which utterly wiped the aristocracy at the time and set back the countries development by generations and depopulating the land. Luckily, the Mongols stopped there and didn't move further west, saving the populace of Western Europe

* Without warmwater ports, Russia lacked the capacity to participate in maritime trade that bolstered the economy of Western Europe

* Brutal and absolute monarchical rule suppressed any kind of representative government; Serfdom (essentially, slavery) was abolished only in the late 19th century

* Once it got its act together and started Industrializing in good stead... now comes the Crimean War, depleting morale, resources and will of the people

* Oh... was that not bad enough? World War 1, which strains the country so bad, that Germans successfully foment unrest and ultimately Revolution. The Revolution itself ends up being the best strategic decision by the Germans, and the Communist Government signs a treaty essentially ceding large parts of the country to the Central Powers

* But wait! That didn't mean the end of troubles for Russians, and they endure a prolonged Civil War fought not just on the Western theater, but also on their Eastern provinces. Red and White Russians fight each other constantly, appropriate resources from the peasants by force.

* The Country has barely recovered from all of this, Stalin comes to power. The madman purges experienced officers and intelligentsia leading to a very ineffective State and Military; he signs a pact leading to (temporary) peace as they know they can't fight the Germans

* Whoops, nope, the Germans invade anyways, reach as far as Moscow. Millions of Russians perish. St. Petersburg is besieged in one of the most destructive sieges ever, period

* At the end of the war, Russia has lost millions of its population, resulting in a demographic catastrophe that will affect it forever

* Once again, Stalin foolishly throws away a chance for friendship, and instead of working in good faith, we end up in the Cold War. The Soviet Union makes tremendous progress, but is no match for the economic and military might that comes with the vast (and now booming) population of the West. The Soviet Union was _offered_ aid as part of the Marshall Plan, and could have possibly used it for kickstarting their economy and supercharging economic growth but no

* Despite having a highly educated workforce, Soviets fail to capitalize on it, instead becoming the same repressive state they replaced. They fail to take advantage of the technological improvements and ultimately fall far behind

* the final kick: right after the fall of Soviet Union, when the people finally hope to be free and pursue and obtain the benefits of modernity, they're hit by an economic and social collapse. Again, the result is depopulation; crimes are high, lives are wasted by alcohol and tobacco.

And this is just the highlights. So... I do feel bad for the Russian people.

The Eastory channel on YouTube has done short (10 minute) animated videos of the eastern front of WWII - Germany vs Russia - tracking all army unit movements and the movement of the frontline, and summarising what each side was trying to achieve at each stage. (It's more interesting and watchable than my description sounds).

"here, 40k prisoners of war. 300,000 soldiers here. 500,000 POWs. Here, 1.2 million soldiers. Another 120k POWs." on and on and on. The scale of it is just unthinkable.

1941: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu3p7dxrhl8

1942: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pucJTYK7_Yo

1943/44: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA9QBHDtfCQ

But TBF, we're doing rather alright compared to Africa, India and some of South America. Because of heavy emphasis on engineering disciplines in the USSR and because oil now, I guess.

Though as years go by, I hate this snow mush more and more. With a passion.

You are talking about different Russia's.

> they bore the brunt of Mongol invasion which utterly wiped the aristocracy at the time and set back the countries development by generations and depopulating the land. Luckily, the Mongols stopped there and didn't move further west, saving the populace of Western Europe

It's actual Russia (now called Rus` or Kievan Rus` in modern history), then Little Russia, now Ukraine.

> Without warmwater ports, Russia lacked the capacity to participate in maritime trade that bolstered the economy of Western Europe

It's bunch of various nations, then Great Russia, when part of them was captured by Russia, then Grand Duchy of Moscow, then Russian Empire (since 1860), now Russian Federation.

  Time span | Historical name | Modern name | Language then and now
   ?? - V   | Russia (Русся)  | «Old Russa» town | Old Norwegian, not exists
   VII-XII  | Russia (Русь)   | Kievan Rus`, Ukraine | Slavonic, Ukrainian
   XVII- pt | Russia (Россия) | Russian Empire, Russian Federation | Many, Russian (modernized Church Slavonic)

There was also the reign of Lenin. It started with the execution of the Tsar and his family, and culminated in the Red Terror. A quote from Martin Latsis when he was deputy chief of the Ukrainian Cheka sums it up:

>Do not look in materials you have gathered for evidence that a suspect acted or spoke against the Soviet authorities. The first question you should ask him is what class he belongs to, what is his origin, education, profession. These questions should determine his fate. This is the essence of the Red Terror.

* And also Russians have high suicide rates.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Russia

People always forget one of the craziest blows to Russians: sometime around 1648 tsar Alexei, under the influence of the Orthodox church, banned all secular music. I guess “music is of the devil” was named as the motive, but the actual cause likely were skomorokhs, or folk jokester-singers ― satire was always the strong suite in folk entertainment. So, in the 18th century Russian music had to start again, beginning with the ‘classical’ genre this time. I also suppose this is why folk singing is much better known than really old folk music (though a lot of songs too are late inventions by individual composers). Meanwhile, the church itself didn't have a tradition of music afaik, again preferring singing (rather monotonous, at that).

I myself have seen only brief mentions of this, and thus far couldn't find a definite source detailing this mess.

You need fire to forge steel

That's how it goes 9 times out of 10. I learned that from reading Why Nations Fail. It busted the whole myth of "progress" and replaced it with "change".

That’s real optimism there, assuming it goes well 10% of the time.

Not an assumption. Look at the world. Read history. Most times power structures are challenged the challenge isn't successful or it is overthrown and the same or worse power structures replace it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices

Shockingly less blue than you might hope.

10% is still optimistic. The Russian, French and Haitian revolutions all worked out pretty horribly and the American Revolution killed a ton of people and destroyed an enormous amount of property to avoid the terrors of Canada.

Washington was quite the exception. So many at the time predicted he would be a dictator, but he gave up power 3 times voluntarily, and set an amazing example.

And Egypt 2011

That episode just proves that Egypt's masters in the West don't really value democracy as much as they constantly claim to value it.

And West ! failed to accept real democracy when they saw that real democracy is very dangerous and unacceptable and not aligned with their interests.

There was never any real democracy there. It just changed from dictatorship to dictatorship to dictatorship.

I think you are talking about Egypt and @fdsak was talking about US & Europe

Your last sentence diminished the value of first sentence. The countries your mentioned are just different not authoritarian and probably are so because of too-much-fingering by imperialist countries.

I agree with you I think.

I took it as more an anti-authoritarian story than purely anti-capitalist or anti-communist. The anti-capitalist parts are fairly self-evident, at least to me: that's the rather brutal system the farmer has imposed on the animals at the start.

Booting the farmer out and starting again with the animal-owned collective sets the story up for the real message, which is that power corrupts and it is very easy for anyone attracted to power to co-opt legitimate grievance for their own ends. The return of the farmer brings a nice circularity to the story as well as giving the idea that the imposition of will on others is usually to their detriment. Capitalism or communism are basically indistinguishable to everyone existing without power or influence.

It is an allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The farmer represents the Tsarist autocracy. In a Tsarist autocracy all power and wealth is controlled by the Tsar (Farmer Jones). This is actually a long way from capitalism. In the end the pigs form what is referred to as an oligarchy.

It is more than that, however, both in authorial intent and without it.

So many people seem to want to name-check Orwell for anti-communist purposes without recognizing that the man himself fought for a revolutionary socialist militia in the Spanish Civil War. In other words, he put his actual life on the line for communism (in the non-Stalinist form he interpreted it as), and actually ultimately probably died from complications related to injuries he sustained in that conflict.

His writing changed after Spain. He saw the deliberate press distortions, and the Soviets installing listening equipment in the telephone exchanges. If anything, this gives him greater credibility. This is a review he wrote of /We/, which I dug up while thinking about your comment. http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/zamyatin/english/e_zamy

Nothing there in that review is inconsistent with the anti-Stalinist but revolutionary socialist views of the POUM militia he fought with in Spain.

Now, arguably "Emmanuel Goldstein" in 1984 is meant to be a kind of Trotsky figure (and his book within 1984), and the fact that Goldstein and his book are ultimately shown to be fake and created by the Party may be a kind of critique or renunciation of Trotskyism and similar currents. Hard to say.

Wow

For me one of the weirdest use of this book was a vegan (and animal rights supporter) friend who copy/pasted on Facebook the speech of Old Major, the eldest pig who incite the Revolution, who was explaining to the animals how bad the farmer was treating them. For her it was perfectly expressing her feeling that farming animals was a monstrosity and she was completely ignoring that the speech was designed by the pig to manipulate the listeners (the other animals) and that it was a metaphor of communism. So for her, the issue was indeed the farmer, not as symbol of capitalism, but simply as a farmer exploiting living beings. All symbolism was evacuated and all that remained was a rousing speech for animal rights.

I suppose all book interpretation eventually shows the ideology of the reader. It doesn't even have to respect the presumed intention of Orwell who, from what I know, never expressed any support for veganism or actual animal rights.

>Over the years, the big impact of Orwell to me has been how readily people can look at systems that they consider to be Other than their own and critique them while eagerly ignoring the implications for their own situation.

"Capitalism is terrible" is a pretty constant meme on the left in US politics right now, perpetuated by many people who have read that book.

>where I live in Texas, all the sheep just think they are the farmer.

Ah the classic "people that don't vote to tax the rich for entitlements think they are rich". If your model of how people vote depends on people being completely stupid, it's wrong.

Animal Farm can really be read as Orwell's retelling of Trotsky's "The Revolution Betrayed"

It is incredibly relevant to politics today. Galvanising people's anger to get them to support something completely unrelated that's not good for them at all, is something we see constantly. In Brexit, in Trump, but also in many other cases. People are easy to manipulate. And instead of a warning, people are treating Orwell's books as an instruction manual.

I think something similar, and even more scarier is 'The Lord of the Flies'.

Also perhaps 'Watership Down'.

Does anyone have any recommendations for reading up on the Russian Revolution? Books, videos, or otherwise.

It doesn't exist yet, but when Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast* wraps up the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution is the next stop. I'm really looking forward to it. Duncan does an incredible job of tying together the precursors, politics, social situation, and military campaigns into a coherent serial narrative.

* https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id703889772?...

Wow, how have I never heard of this podcast before? Looks amazing, thanks!

Thanks for posting this, I can't wait to give it a listen!

Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler, is another allegorical book about the Russian Revolution, more specifically the Moscow trials that followed. The book had a strong impact on me.

Great great book. I need to re-read it.

It’s a great book but I would recommend it to readers who are already somewhat familiar with the Russian Revolution and how Stalin seized power (defeating both the left and right-wing oppositions within the Bolshevik party) after the death of Lenin.

Hey there!

I'm not an historian or anything of that kind but I'm really interested about the Russian Revolution and I spent quite a few hours on finding the best books about it. My knowledge about those books mainly comes from r/askhistorians (highly recommended!) and academic journals such as the American Historical Review and the Slavic Review. I saw a few other people recommending Miéville's October and even Reed's Ten Days. Now, I'm not claiming those books are bad in any way (I own Reed's) but if you're interested in an historical analysis those are probably not your best shot. Miéville is a sci-fi author who describes himself as a socialist, so he is not trained as an historian and, at the same time, he's definitely simpathetic to the Revolution. Reed's book was written during the Revolution and is a great book if you look at it as a primary source, but it's definitely a partial one. If you're interested in a book of history, then I would recommend you either Fitzpatrick's "The Russian Revolution", which is a short (about 200 pages) book from one of the great pioneers of the revisionist school in soviet historiography. For a more recent (and longer) book I would take a look at S.A. Smith's "Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928". I want to make it clear: Miéville's and Reed's books are great, but one should approach them knowing the context. It's similar to another great book (highly recommended!) by Orwell: Homage to Catalonia. It's similar to Reed's Ten Days, but I would not recommend it as an history book. Hopefully, those recommendations should be enough, but if you have other questions feel free to ask. For a quick look about Soviet historiography, here is a _great_ article by Sheila Fitzpatrick (the author of one of the books I recommended above) reviewing 5 books that came out in 2017: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/sheila-fitzpatrick/whats-left

Once you know the context, you can appreciate more books like Reed's and Mièville too.

Happy reading!

Thank you! Appreciate the recommendations and explanations. I've been wanting to approach the Gulag Archipelago but was looking to enhance my understanding of the historical context and political climate of the times first.

Yes approaching it with context is extremely important, as its the heavily influenced by the cold war. Consider that Gulag Arcipelago estimates about 60 million dead in the gulags, which is simply not accepted in today's historiography. 60 million would be equal to over one third of the Soviet Union's population, even before the Second World War.

Sci-fi author China Mieville recently wrote "October: The Story of the Russian Revolution".

I just finished reading this and loved it! As someone without much preexisting knowledge about the course of the revolution or anyone involved other than the Tsar and the main Bolsheviks, I found it to be very accessible and engaging. You really get a sense of the personalities of the main actors, especially Lenin.

I found Sheila Fitzpatrick’s The Russian Revolution 1917-1932 to be a well-written and fairly balanced account of the period. In her first chapter she goes as far back as the emancipation of the serfs to describe the societal context that led to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. The book is easy to read, not too long but is well referenced if you want to further explore.

Gresham College: Lenin and the Russian Revolution, lecture might be a good start. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/lenin-and-the-...

Trotsky's book on the revolution is a literary masterpiece on par with Thucydides, though it's obviously not the best choice for an objective or broadly-based historical picture.

I assume you mean "The Revolution Betrayed?"

  * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Betrayed

To The Finland Station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Finland_Station

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924, by Orlando Figes

Unfortunately not available in electronic form, but well worth the trouble of paper.

A People's Tragedy, while important as it has been widely read, is nowadays criticized quite heavily in the historiography of the Russian Revolution. Consider reading a few other books (like S.A. Smith's for a very recent one) if you want a different perspective.

Interesting, I did not know that. I see by your other comment that you've done more research into this than I have - I'll take a look at r/askhistorians. Thanks for the heads up and the suggestions.

I picked up A People's Tragedy after reading Figes's book on the Crimean War - do you happen to know if that book is similarly criticized? In other words, should I put a mental asterisk just next to A People's Tragedy, or next to everything by Figes?

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Figes' books in general, but with a few searches I came up with a few reviews. The first, on the LRB, is quite positive, but the author, Geoffrey Wheatcroft does not seem to have, based on his wikipedia page, much expertise on the topic. The other, published in Victorian Studies, is more academic, and is quite negative. The author, Andrew Lambert, cites numerous errors. His most important critique is that this book narrates what he calls the "old-crimean war", and that it largely ignores what are now considered some very important aspects of the war. If you want some alternative books, consider taking a look at this thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5v7ggr/what_...), where u/kieslowskifan, a user who I absolutely admire for his knowledge, recommends a few crimean war books to a fellow redditor. Happy reading!

I'm guessing you meant as an e-book, but it is out there as an audiobook

Trotsky's "My Life" is a good read.

I personally enjoyed reading Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed. The writer is as biased as it is talented.

For a feeling of what the early Soviet Union was like, I highly recommend We the Living by Ayn Rand. If you don't like her politics, I still recommend it to understand exactly what it was that she is reacting against.

That book is not exactly autobiographical. But she does draw very heavily on her own personal experiences to draw that time and place as accurately as she could. For example the purge that ended Kira's university education was not made up, and indeed would have ended Ayn Rand's career if she had been one year younger.

You're being down-voted for no good reason. If you want to understand what drove Ayn Rand to the extremes then "We the Living" is probably the best explanation there is.

A famous contemporary account is Ten Days that Shook the World. it was written by an American who, it's safe to say, was fairly pro-communist.

But really it's such a pivotal moment in modern history that you're not going to starve for material. It sounds glib, but in this instance you could do worse than start on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution

I highly recommend Homage to Catalonia if you liked Animal Farm. It really explains how Orwell became disillusioned with communism (while fighting for it).

Thats a quite simplistic way of interpreting.

He fought for socialism and he stayed a socialist - but he became a enemy of Stalinism.

The brotherhood and spirit of the socialist militia he was in, he praised as real and something he never experienced before or after.

Simplistic yes, but also true. He became throughly disillusioned with socialism because he felt that someone like Stalin would always take control of it.

My interpretation was that he was always anti-authority, but his experiences led him to believe that an authoritian figure will always try to grab power and it doesn't matter what `side` they say they are for, power is their aim.

True he liked the spirit of his socialist militia but by the end I think he felt its spirit had been crushed and abused by others.

Nice thanks for sharing that

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