Animal Farm vs. Actual Historical Events and Characters
1. Old Major ______Marxism (Lenin)
2. Jones ______Czar Nicholas II
3. Moses______Organized Religion (Russian Orthodox Church)
4. Animal Rebellion______Russian Revolution of 1917
5. Napoleon ______Stalin
6. Snowball______Trotsky
7. Squealer______Pravda
8. Napoleon's dogs______Secret Police
9. Foxwood Farm (Pilkington)______England (Churchill)
10. Pinchfield Farm (Frederick) _____Germany (Hitler)
11. Battle of the Cowshed______Anti-Revolutionary Invasion of Russia
12. Battle of the Windmill ______Battle of Stalingrad (German Invasion of Russia
during World War II)
13. Final scene______Teheran Conference
14. Animals other than pigs and dogs _____ the proletariat
15. Building of the windmill______five-year plan
16. Old Major's skull______Lenin's body
17. Chasing away Jones______disposal of Czar and family
18. Animal Farm ______Russia/USSR
19. Confessions and executions ______blood purges of 1936-38
20. Selling of the wood______Nazi-Soviet pact
21. Pigeons sent to incite other rebellions___ Communist Internationale
22. Four porkers reject Napoleon's ideas____ White Russians
23. Mollie the cart horse______the bourgeoisie
24. Mr. Whymper (broker)______foreign agents of the Comintern
25. Napoleon takes over the farm______Stalin becomes a dictator
26. Hoof and horn on flag______hammer and sickle
Brief History of Communism in Russia
* Distinct political parallels in the allegorical Animal Farm
* The capitalist system was flourishing in Europe and America in the mid-1800s, but the profits of businesses were generated at the expense of workers who labored 14 to 18 hours a day under unsafe conditions. There were no child labor laws, and wages were barely livable.
* In 1847, an international workers' group asked a German philosopher,Karl Marx, to draw up a plan for their organization.
* The group was called the Communist League, and its purpose was to unite the working classes of Europe.
* Marx foresaw a workers' revolt followed by a kind of paradise where each person would work according to his or her ability and receive according to his or her need.
* Worldwide economic equality
* Russia was being poorly mismanaged by a Czarist government, and most of the Russian people were still underpaid laborers on land owned by wealthy landlords.
* Leon Trotsky, a socialist revolutionary, was forced to flee Russia twice because of his anti-Czarist activities.
* In 1917, the Bolshevik Party, led by Nikolai Lenin, successfully overthrew Czar Nicholas II, and the Communist Party gained control of the government.
*At Lenin's death, there was a power struggle between Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Stalin gained control in 1926, and Trotsky went to Mexico, but was later assassinated.
* Stalin deported to Siberia all those who did not agree with him.
* His secret police also used arbitrary arrests, torture, and mass executions to maintain his dictatorship. Anyone could be a victim of these purges for no apparent reason.
* The idealism of the Revolution had turned into a system no less terrifying than rule by the Czars.
* There was no freedom in the new system, which was based on military bureaucracy. Forced labor created wealth for the few while their own conditions changed little or grew worse.
* Terrorist police prevented uprisings.
* The aim of totalitarianism is to make people less conscious, less able to make distinctions between truth and falsehood, and unable to draw logical conclusions.