Historical Background To Animal Farm Essay, Research Paper

Karl Marx was a German scholar who lived

in the nineteenth century. He spent most of his life studying, thinking

and writing about history and economics. A many years of study, much of

it spent in England, he believed that he understood more deeply than anyone

who had ever lived before him why there is injustice in the world.

He said that all injustice and inequality

is a result of one underlying conflict in society. He called it a ‘class

struggle’, that is, a conflict bet the class of people who can afford to

own money- producing businesses, whom he called ‘capitalists’ or ‘the bourgeosie’,

and the class of people who do not surplus money to buy businesses and

who are therefore forced to work for wage whom he called ‘workers’.

Marx said that, because it was always in

the economic interest of capita to take advantage of or ‘exploit’ workers,

nothing could persuade capitalists change their ways. In other words, peaceful

progess toward equality and socia justice was impossible. The only way

to establish justice, he said, was for t workers to overthrow the capitalists

by means of violent revolution. He urged workers around the world to revolt

against their rulers. “Workers of the worl unite!” he wrote. “You have

nothing to lose but your chains.”

Another thing Marx taught was that organized

religion, the churches, help capitalists to keep the workers quiet and

obedient. Religion, according to Mar ‘the opiate of the masses’. The church

tells working people to forget about th injustice they meet in their lives

and to think instead of how wonderful it wi in the after- life when they

go to heaven.

Marx, with his colleague, Engels, spread

his ideas in two famous books, Capital’ and ‘The Communist Manifesto’.

In the early years of the twentieth century,

Russia was ready for the ide Marx. The Russian people were extremely discontented

with their ruler, Tsar Nicholas II, who had little interest in governing

and was neglecting the count badly. Making conditions even more miserable

for the people were the hardships the First World War and a particularly

cold winter.

By 1917, the Russian people were desperate

enough to accept a revolution. fact, they got two for the price of one,

the first in March when the Tsar was deposed and a provisional government

was set up. Then in November a political called the Bolsheviks led a further

rebellion which ousted the provisional government. The leaders of the Bolsheviks,

Lenin and Trotsky, began to build a Russia, one built on the ideas of Marx,

where everyone was equal, where all property was owned by ‘the people’

rather than by capitalists and where the wo were in control of the goernment.

Not long afterward, Communist Russia was

attacked by Britain, America and France, who wanted to get rid of the communist

government. They were afraid th workers in their own countries might be

inspired to imitate the example of Rus Trotsky, a highly intelligent and

energetic communist leader, led the defence Russia with great success.

After Lenin’s death in 1924, a power struggle

began between Trotsky and a leader within the Communist Party named Stalin.

While Trotsky was a brilliant intellectual and an idealist, Stalin was

a simpler, quieter sort of person, wh based his power not so much on plans

and ideas as on alliances with other memb of the Communist Party. While

Trotsky believed in Russia’s trying to assist wo all over the world to

rise up in communist revolutions against their bosses, S wanted Russia

to take care of its own business. The rivalry between the two leaders went

on for several years.

Eventually 1929 Stalin gained the upper

hand and drove Trotsky from Russia. Stalin later up a scheme to industrialise

the backward country which he called the Five-Yea Plan. It included a number

of Trotsky’s ideas which Stalin had previously opposed. As Russia developed

under Stalin, members of the Communist Party took for themselves many privileges.

All the original communist ideals of Marx received service, but it became

clearer and clearer that members of the Communist Party becoming a ruling

class that was not equal to non-members.

Most important of all to Stalin was ensuring

that he remained in power. H often used the most brutal tactics. Chief

among his creations were two highly effective political weapons – an efficient

propaganda machine which more and m promoted the idea of Stalin as a great,

nearly god-like leader, and a secret p force which kept the country quiet

through the use of terror. At one point dur his rule, he organized ‘Show

Trials’ in which many of the people he did not li strangely ‘confessed’

to very serious crimes and were executed or sent to har prison camps.

Eventually Stalin began trading with non-communist

countries of western Europe, although he continued to be hostile to Germany.

Then, in a shocking ab face in 1939, he suddenly signed a non-agression

pact with Hitler. Not long afterward, though, Hitler broke this agreement

and attacked Russia. In 1941 St was forced to enter World War II and make

an alliance with Britain and America

This takes us up to the time of the writing

of Animal Farm – 1944. As you see, nearly every event in the novel can

be traced directly to an event in Rus during the period from 1900-1943.

An interesting project is to list the events the novel and match them up

with the real events which Orwell intended to sati In fact, the story has

many, many similarities to the real historical events, of them very detailed.

For example, the digging up of Major’s skull, and the destroying their

own eggs, both refer to specific events that took place during the rule

of Stalin.