Stalinism

George Orwell A Comparative analysis George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and Shooting an Elephant (1938) both share two major characteristic features, namely politics and history. Animal Farm is mainly an allegory of the Russian Revolution which took place in 1917. All of the characters in the story represents the biggest names in the Russian Revolution and the early start of the Soviet Union. The farm itself is also supposed to represent the Russian Federation, which they fight for in the novel. Shooting an Elephant - also written by George Orwell, is based on facts as well. The narrator describes his experience while working as a police officer in “British Burma”. The whole story is a form of a metaphor for British imperialism. It’s about the evil of imperialism and how he feels that he is pressured to shoot the elephant by the mob of people, even though he is strictly against killing it. He even says “When a white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”. To start off with, I’m going to describe the main theme(s) of both texts. In Animal Farm, there’s tons of themes that you can identify. However, I’ve chosen my favourite theme, which I think describes Animal Farm best. The theme I’ve chosen is power & corruption. In the beginning of the story, Old Major gives a speech about the current leadership and how he wants it to change. Old Major was the eldest and most respected pig, therefore the other animals obviously trusted him. He used this trust,…

the mid 1920s created a power vacuum inside the Communist Party, which held the power in the newly formed Soviet Union. The hole that Lenin left was filled by Joseph Stalin, a revolutionary who had been a steadfast ally of Lenin for the past two decades. Effectively operating as a dictator, Stalin instituted an ideology and policies collectively known as “Stalinism” that allowed him to lead the country without any opposition. This was radically different from…

Kathleen Lyons History 102-03 Professor Ewing December 21, 2015 Stalinism vs. Marxism and The Communist Manifesto Marxism and Stalinism are two political and economical ideologies founded by Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin, respectively. As defined by Merriman Webster, Marxism is, “A theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society.” Stalinism is…

Boris Groys. The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. Translated by Charles Rougle. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992. 126 pp., $13.49 (paper). The Total Art of Stalinism is not only a historical book on art, but it is also a political provocation of the well-known histories of 20th century Soviet art and literature. Originally published in German, this book was the first major work of Groys to have been translated into English. This…

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”, from the mind of Irish author Edmund Burke, exemplifies one of the arguments George Orwell makes in his novel. 1984 written by George Orwell in the year 1949 is a warning about a negative utopia and follows a writer by the name of Winston Smith and his encounters with a dictatorship that is trying to control every aspect of its citizen’s lives. George Orwell warns about a society in which the individual expression is replaced by the…

where the elite class benefits by exploiting the working class. While all communist regimes have undergone a violent Stalinist or Maoist phase in their initial attempts at a socialist government, their paths have later diverged; some states, such as China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, have democratized and opened their doors to foreign influence and trade, while others, such as North Korea, remain trapped in an ongoing period of Stalinist stasis. By analyzing the internal and external influences…

The Soviet Union had grand plans that started with a grand idea and a socialist city. Magnitogorsk was conceived as a way to put the Soviet industry back on top, it was to be a big milestone. In Kotkin’s Stalinism, he gives us a detailed look at the process from conception to completion of the “Magnetic Mountain.” Kotkin paints a picture of how the best laid plans go by the wayside. The Soviet Union, and Stalin, were focused on being the most powerful country in the world. Leading up to this…

were quick to extradite Russia from the horrors of WWI by agreeing to the Brest Litovsk Treaty in 1918. Although this treaty did force the newly created Soviet Union to loose territory and to admit defeat during WWI, soviet leaders were able to morph this disgrace into a model that benefitted the new communist system. After all, it was the old capitalist order, according to the Bolsheviks, that had caused WWI; the new system was meant to raise the proletariat and Russia into a nation that would…

Although, George Orwell put his life on the line to fight in Spain, got shot in the neck, watch his friends get arrested, and had to flee the country as a wanted man, he still in the end was able to return to “the England (he) had known in (his) childhood”. Thus, in a way he was still an outsider to the situation. His family and way of life were not really at risk to the same extent as those in Russia and so Orwell’s understanding and explanation of the war is not as convincing and important as…

they are drugged and “render[ered]... docile” (Hickman, 2009, p. 145). A civilization incapable of intelligent thought, powerless to absolute control was Huxley’s ultimate fear. Huxley believed a tyrannical society, such as the one in Brave New World, could only be fixed once the public attained “wholeness and integrity” (Aithal 2010, para. 33). Historic Events that Relate to the Book Joseph Stalin’s rise to power during the late 1920s (Stalinism, 2001, para. 1) led Huxley to view a…