George Orwell is a British writer and publicist, a man who, like many representatives of the European intellectual elite, was an ardent supporter of leftist views, but then became completely disillusioned with socialism. In the Soviet Union, Orwell's books could get you a prison sentence.

George Orwell is a pseudonym; the writer's real name is Eric Arthur Blair. He was born in 1903, in Bengal (part of India), in the family of a minor British official who served in the Opium Department. In 1904 he returned with his mother to Great Britain. The future writer received his primary education at St. Cyprian, from 1917 to 1921 attended Eton College, where he received a personal scholarship. Already at the age of 11, his poem was published in one of the English newspapers. From 1922 to 1927, the future writer served in the colonial police of Burma, but Orwell's quarrelsome nature led to his resignation. Much later, this part of his life will be reflected in the writer’s work (“Shooting an Elephant”). In 1927 he returned to Europe.

From that time on, Orwell began active writing; he wrote prose and journalism. He earns his living by doing odd jobs. He leads a poor, hard existence, sometimes vagrancy. One day Orwell got very drunk on purpose so that he could end up in prison and find out what it was like there. The writer takes on any low-paying job: dishwasher, auxiliary worker, second-hand bookseller's assistant. He later depicted this period in his book Down and Out in Paris and London. It was also at this time that his literary pseudonym was born. During this period, he became close to representatives of left-wing political forces. In 1936, the writer got married, and six months later he left for the war in Spain, as a special correspondent for one of the English publications. After some time, he joins a partisan detachment consisting of Trotskyist socialists. Orwell's wife followed him to Spain.

He was in the war for six months, then received a serious wound to the throat. Orwell became seriously disillusioned with left-wing ideas as he encountered internal strife among the movement's leadership. His former comrades were declared “Trotskyists” and the Spanish communists themselves began to hunt for them. Orwell had to flee Spain. It was then that his views began to change, and gradually from a socialist he began to turn into a bourgeois liberal and an ardent anti-communist. In Spain, Orwell was exposed to Stalinist-style communism and came to hate it. Later he will describe the events of the Spanish Civil War, in which he happened to participate (the story “Memory of Catalonia”).

After the outbreak of World War II, Orwell served in the militia, worked for the BBC, where he hosted an anti-fascist program and was a correspondent for the British newspaper Observer.

At the end of 1943, he began writing the story Animal Farm. It describes the Soviet Union and all the events that occurred after the 1917 revolution without any embellishment. The satire was so murderous and frank that the story was refused to be published in England and the USA (the USSR was an ally against Hitler). Animal Farm was first published in 1945. This year, the writer's wife suddenly dies, and he moves to a small island, where he begins to work on the main work of his life - the novel "1984".

“1984” is a cult dystopian novel that shows what a state following a totalitarian path of development can turn into. There is no bright and wonderful future in Orwell's novel, it depicts a society in which the state controls everything: the economy, politics, the media, a person's personal life and even his thoughts and actions. Many words and expressions from the book have long become recognizable quotes. In the USSR, the books “Animal Farm” and “1984” were called nothing less than “ideological sabotage aimed at undermining the Soviet system.”

Eric Arthur Blair was born in the city of Motihari, India, whose territory at that time was a British colony. His father held one of the ordinary positions in the Opium Department of the colony administration, and his mother was the only daughter of a tea merchant from Burma. While still a child, Eric, together with his mother and older sister went to England, where the boy received his education - first in primary school Eastbourne, and then at the prestigious Eton College, where he studied on a special scholarship. After graduating from college in 1921, the young man devoted himself to service in the Burma Police for five years (1922 - 1927), but dissatisfaction with imperial rule led to his resignation. This period in the life of Eric Blair, who very soon took the pseudonym George Orwell, is marked by one of his most famous novels, Days in Burma, which was published in 1936 under a pseudonym.

After Burma, young and free, he went to Europe, where he eked out a living from one odd job to another, and upon returning home he firmly decided to become a writer. During this time, Orwell wrote an equally impressive novel, Pounds of Dashing in Paris and London, which tells the story of his life in two of Europe's largest cities. This creation consisted of two parts, each of which described the brightest moments of his life in each of the capitals.

Beginning of a writing career

In 1936, Orwell, already a married man, went with his wife to Spain, where the Civil War. After spending about a year in the combat zone, he returned to the UK involuntarily - a wound to the throat by a fascist sniper required treatment and further removal from hostilities. While in Spain, Orwell fought in the ranks of the militia formed by the anti-Stalinist communist party POUM is a Marxist organization that has existed in Spain since the early 30s. An entire book is dedicated to this period in the writer’s life - “In Honor of Catalonia” (1937), in which he talks in detail about his days at the front.

However, British publishers did not appreciate the book and subjected it to severe censorship - Orwell had to “cut out” any statements that spoke of terror and complete lawlessness that was happening in the republican country. The editor-in-chief was adamant - in the conditions of fascist aggression, it was under no circumstances possible to cast even the slightest shadow on socialism, and even more so on the abode of this phenomenon - the USSR. The book finally saw the world in 1938, but was received rather coldly - the number of copies sold during the year did not exceed 50 pieces. This war made Orwell an avid opponent of communism, deciding to join the ranks of the English socialists.

civil position

Orwell's writings from early 1936 onward, as he himself admitted in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), had anti-totalitarian overtones and extolled democratic socialism. In the eyes of the writer, the Soviet Union was one complete disappointment, and the revolution that took place in the Land of the Soviets, in his opinion, not only did not bring to power a classless society as previously promised by the Bolsheviks, but on the contrary - even more ruthless and unprincipled people were “at the helm” than before. Orwell, without hiding his hatred, spoke about the USSR, and considered Stalin to be the real embodiment of evil.

When news of Germany's attack on the USSR became known in 1941, Orwell could not have imagined that very soon Churchill and Stalin would become allies. At this time, the writer kept a war diary, the entries in which tell of his indignation, and then surprise himself: “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I would have the opportunity to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!”, Well, I did!” - he wrote after a while.

Orwell sincerely hoped that as a result of the war, socialists would come to power in Great Britain, and ideological socialists, and not formal ones, as often happened. However, this did not happen. The events unfolding in the writer’s homeland and in the world as a whole depressed Orwell, and the constant growth of the influence of the Soviet Union even drove him into a protracted depression. The writer was finally crippled by the death of his wife, who was his ideological inspirer and closest person. However, life went on and he had to put up with it.

The author's main works

George Orwell was one of the few authors of that time who not only did not sing odes to the Soviet Union, but also tried to describe in all colors the horror of the Soviet system. Orwell’s main “opponent” in this conventional competition of ideologies was Hewlett Johnson, who received the nickname “Red Abbot” in his native England - in every work he praised Stalin, expressing his admiration for the country that was subordinate to him in every possible way. Orwell still managed to win, albeit formally, in this unequal battle, but, unfortunately, posthumously.

The book Animal Farm, written by the writer between November 1943 and February 1944, was an obvious satire on the Soviet Union, which at that time was still an ally of Great Britain. No publishing house undertook to publish this work. Everything changed with the beginning of the Cold War - Orwell's satire was finally appreciated. The book, which most saw as a satire on the Soviet Union, was largely a satire on the West itself. Orwell did not have to see the huge success and millions of copies of sales of his book - the recognition was already posthumous.

The Cold War changed the lives of many, especially those who supported the politics and the system Soviet Union– now they either completely disappeared from the radar, or changed their position to a sharply opposite one. Orwell’s previously written but unpublished novel “1984” came in very handy, which was later called “the canonical anti-communist work”, “the Cold War manifesto” and many other epithets, which were undoubtedly recognition of Orwell’s writing talent.

"Animal Farm" and "1984" are dystopian films written by one of the greatest publicists and writers in history. Telling mainly about the horrors and consequences of totalitarianism, they, fortunately, were not prophetic, but it is simply impossible to deny the fact that at the present time they are acquiring a completely new sound.

Personal life

In 1936, George Orwell married Elin O'Shaughnessy, with whom they went through many trials, including the Spanish War. The couple has their own children long years life together never got one, and only in 1944 did they adopt a one-month-old boy, who was named Richard. However, very soon the joy gave way to great grief - on March 29, 1945, during the operation, Elin passed away. Orwell suffered the loss of his wife painfully; for a certain time he even became a hermit, settling on an almost deserted island on the coast of Scotland. It was during this difficult time that the writer completed the novel “1984”.

A year before his death, in 1949, Orwell married a second time to a girl named Sonia Bronel, who was 15 years younger than him. Sonya at that time worked as an assistant editor at Horizon magazine. However, the marriage lasted only three months - on January 21, 1950, the writer died in the ward of a London hospital from tuberculosis. Shortly before this, his creation “1984” saw the world.

• Orwell is actually the originator of the term "Cold War", often used in the political sphere to this day.
• Despite the clearly expressed anti-totalitarian position expressed by the writer in every work, he was for some time suspected of having connections with the communists.
• The Soviet slogan, heard by Orwell at one time from the lips of the communists, “Give a five-year plan in four years!” was used in the novel "1984" in the form of the famous formula "twice two equals five." The phrase once again ridiculed the Soviet regime.
• IN post-war period George Orwell hosted a program on the BBC that covered a wide variety of topics, from political to social.

George Orwell(George Orwell, real name Eric Arthur Blair, June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950), English writer and publicist.

Biography

Born in Motihari (India) in the family of a British sales agent. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, received a personal scholarship in 1917 and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma, then lived for a long time in Great Britain and Europe, earning a living at odd jobs, and then began writing fiction and journalism. Since 1935 he published under the pseudonym "George Orwell". Participant in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (book “In Memory of Catalonia”, 1938, essay “Remembering the War in Spain”, 1943, fully published in 1953), where he came into close contact with manifestations of factional struggle among the left:

there, in 1936, history stopped for me. I knew from childhood that newspapers could lie, but it was only in Spain that I saw that they could completely falsify reality. I personally participated in “battles” in which not a single shot was fired and which were written about as heroic bloody battles, and I was in real battles, about which the press did not say a word, as if they had not happened. I saw fearless soldiers denounced by the newspapers as cowards and traitors, and cowards and traitors sung by them as heroes. Returning to London, I saw how intellectuals built worldview systems and emotional relationships on these lies.

— Orwell G. Homage to Catalonia and Looking back on the Spanish war. - L.: Secker & Warburg, 1968, p. 234

Returning from Spain, he wrote a book about the Spanish Civil War, but his longtime publisher Victor Gollancz refused to publish it, citing the fact that the book could harm the cause of the fight against fascism.

Wrote many essays and articles of a socio-critical and cultural nature. During the Second World War he hosted an anti-fascist program on the BBC.

Died in London from tuberculosis.

People sacrifice their lives in the name of certain communities - for the sake of the nation, people, fellow believers, class - and realize that they have ceased to be individuals only at the very moment when the bullets whistle. If they felt even a little deeper, this devotion to community would become devotion to humanity itself, which is not an abstraction at all.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was a superb cartoon, capturing a hedonistic utopia that seemed achievable, making people so willing to be deluded into their own belief that the Kingdom of God must somehow be made a reality on Earth. But we must remain children of God, even if the God of the prayer books no longer exists.

— Essay “Thoughts on the Way” by J. Orwell (1943)

And here is the second thing I remember: the Italian from the police who greeted me on the day I joined it. I wrote about him on the first pages of my book about the Spanish War and I don’t want to repeat myself here. As soon as I mentally see in front of me - completely alive! - this Italian in a greasy uniform, it’s worth looking into this stern, spiritual, immaculate face, and all the complex calculations regarding the war lose their meaning, because I know one thing for sure: then there could be no doubt on whose side the truth is. No matter what political intrigues were woven, no matter what lies were written in the newspapers, the main thing in this war was the desire of people like my Italian to find a decent life, which - they understood - everyone deserves from birth. It’s bittersweet to think about what fate awaited this Italian, and for several reasons. Since we met in a military town named after Lenin, he apparently belonged to either the Trotskyists or the anarchists, and in our extraordinary times such people are certainly killed - not by the Gestapo, but by the GPU. This, of course, fits into the overall situation with all its enduring problems. The face of this Italian, whom I only saw fleetingly, remained for me a visible reminder of what the war was about. I perceive him as a symbol of the European working class, which is persecuted by the police of all countries, as the embodiment of the people - the one who lay in mass graves on the fields of Spanish battles, the one who is now herded into labor camps, where there are already several million prisoners...

... All the observations that can confuse, all these sweet speeches of some Pétain or Gandhi, and the need to stain oneself with baseness while fighting in the war, and the ambiguous role of England with its democratic slogans, as well as an empire where coolies work, and the sinister move life in Soviet Russia, and the pathetic farce of left-wing politics - all this turns out to be insignificant if you see the main thing: the struggle of a people gradually gaining consciousness with the owners, with their paid liars, with their hangers-on. The question is simple. Will people like that Italian soldier recognize the worthy, truly human life that can be provided today, or will this not be given to them? Will ordinary people be driven back into the slums, or will it fail? I myself, perhaps without sufficient reason, believe that sooner or later the ordinary person will win his struggle, and I want this to happen not later, but earlier - say, in the next hundred years, and not in the next ten thousand years. This is what was the real purpose of the war in Spain, this is the real purpose of the present war and possible future wars.

— Essay “Remembering the War in Spain” by J. Orwell (1943)

Creation

In the story “Animal Farm” (1945), he showed the degeneration of revolutionary principles and programs: “Animal Farm” is a parable, an allegory of the revolution of 1917 and subsequent events in Russia.

The dystopian novel 1984 (1949) was a sequel to Animal Farm. Orwell portrayed a possible future world society as a totalitarian hierarchical system based on sophisticated physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear and hatred. This book introduced the infamous “Big Brother is Watching You,” and introduced the now well-known terms Doublethink, Thoughtcrime, and Newspeak.

Interesting Facts

* Despite the fact that many see satire of the totalitarian system in Orwell’s works, the authorities have long suspected the writer himself of having close ties with the communists. As the dossier on the writer, declassified in 2007, showed, the British counterintelligence MI-5 had been spying on him since 1929 and almost until the writer’s death in 1950. For example, in one of the dossier notes, dated January 20, 1942, agent Sgt Ewing describes Orwell as follows: “This man is spreading communist beliefs, and some of his Indian friends say that they often saw him at communist meetings. He dresses in bohemian fashion both at work and in his leisure time." "This man has advanced communist views, and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at communist meetings. and in his leisure hours"). According to the documents, the writer actually took part in such meetings, and he was described as “sympathizing with the communists.”

Biography

Creation

All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others.

- "Barnyard"

People sacrifice their lives in the name of certain communities - for the sake of the nation, people, fellow believers, class - and realize that they have ceased to be individuals only at the very moment when the bullets whistle. If they felt even a little deeper, this devotion to community would become devotion to humanity itself, which is not an abstraction at all.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was a superb cartoon, capturing the hedonistic utopia that seemed achievable, making people so willing to delude themselves into believing that the Kingdom of God must somehow become a reality on Earth. But we must remain children of God, even if the God of the prayer books no longer exists.

Original text(English)

People sacrifice themselves for the sake of fragmentary communities - nation, race, creed, class - and only become aware that they are not individuals in the very moment when they are facing bullets. A very slight increase of consciousness and the ir sense of loyalty could be transferred to humanity itself, which is not an abstraction.

Mr Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was a good caricature of the hedonistic Utopia, the kind of thing that seemed possible and even imminent before Hitler appeared, but it had no relation to the actual future. What we are moving towards at this moment is something more like the Spanish Inquisition, and probably far worse, thanks to the radio and the secret police. There is very little chance of escaping it unless we can reinstate the belief in human brotherhood without the need for a 'next world' to give it meaning. It is this that leads innocent people like the Dean of Canterbury to imagine that they have discovered true Christianity in Soviet Russia. No doubt they are only the dupes of propaganda, but what makes them so willing to be deceived is their knowledge that the Kingdom of Heaven has somehow got to be brought on to the surface of the earth. We have not to be the children of God, even though the God of the Prayer Book no longer exists.

- Essay “Thoughts on the Road” by J. Orwell (1943)

Everything turns out to be insignificant if you see the main thing: the struggle of the people gradually gaining consciousness with the owners, with their paid liars, with their hangers-on. The question is simple. Will people recognize the worthy, truly human life that can be achieved today, or will this not be given to them? Will ordinary people be driven back into the slums, or will it fail? I myself, perhaps without sufficient reason, believe that sooner or later the ordinary person will win his struggle, and I want this to happen not later, but earlier - say, in the next hundred years, and not in the next ten thousand years. This is what was the real purpose of the war in Spain, this is the real purpose of the present war and possible future wars.

George Orwell is the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, who was born in 1903 in the Indian village of Motihari on the border with Nepal. At that time, India was part of the British Empire, and the father of the future writer, Richard Blair, served in one of the departments of the Indian administration of Great Britain. The writer's mother was the daughter of a French merchant. Although Richard Blair faithfully served the British Crown until his retirement in 1912, the family did not make a fortune, and when Eric was eight years old, it was not without difficulty that he was assigned to a private preparatory school in the county of Sussex. A few years later, having demonstrated extraordinary academic abilities, the boy received a scholarship on a competitive basis for further studies at Eton, the most privileged private school in Great Britain, which opened the way to Oxford or Cambridge. Later, in the essay “Why I Write,” Orwell recalled that already at the age of five or six he knew for sure that he would be a writer, and at Eton the circle of his literary passions was determined - Swift, Stern, Jack London. It is possible that it was the spirit of adventure and adventurism in the works of these writers that influenced Eric Blair's decision to turn away from the beaten path of an Eton graduate and join the imperial police, first in India, then in Burma. In 1927, disillusioned with the ideals and the system he served, E. Blair resigns and settles on Portobello Road, in a quarter of the London poor, then leaves for Paris, the center of European bohemia. However, the future writer did not lead a bohemian lifestyle; he lived in a working-class neighborhood, earning money by washing dishes, absorbing experiences and impressions that the writer George Orwell would later melt into novels and numerous essays.

J. Orwell’s first book “Burmese Everyday Life” (on the site “Days in Burma” translated by V. Domiteyeva - Burmese Days) was published in 1934 and tells the story of years spent serving in the colonies of the British Empire. The first publication was followed by the novel “The Priest’s Daughter” ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) and a number of works on a wide variety of issues - politics, art, literature. J. Orwell was always a politically engaged writer, shared the romanticism of the “Red 30s”, was concerned about the inhuman working conditions of English miners, and emphasized class inequality in English society. At the same time, he treated the idea of ​​English socialism and “proletarian solidarity” with distrust and irony, since socialist views were more popular among intellectuals and those who belonged to the middle class, far from being the most disadvantaged. Orwell seriously doubted their sincerity and revolutionary nature.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the writer’s socialist sympathies brought him into the ranks of the Spanish Republicans when civil war broke out there. He goes to Spain at the end of 1936 as a correspondent for the BBC and the London Observer newspaper. Orwell was fascinated by the atmosphere of equality and militant brotherhood that he felt upon his arrival in Barcelona. Socialism seemed to be a reality, and, after undergoing basic military training, the writer went to the front, where he received a serious throat wound. Orwell described those days in the documentary book “In Honor of Catalonia” (on the website “In Memory of Catalonia” - Homage to Catalonia, 1938), where he sang of friends in arms, the spirit of brotherhood, where there was no “blind obedience”, where there was “almost complete equality of officers and soldiers.” While in hospital after being wounded, Orwell would write to a friend: “I witnessed amazing things and finally really believed in Socialism, which was not the case before.”

However, the writer also learned another lesson. There, in Catalonia, a newspaper La Batalla, the organ of the Spanish United Marxist Workers' Party, in whose ranks J. Oruedel fought, back in 1936, condemned the political trials in Moscow and the Stalinist massacre of many old Bolsheviks. However, even before leaving for Spain, Orwell was aware of the mass processes, which he called “political murders,” but, unlike most English leftists, he believed that what was happening in Russia was not the “offensive of capitalism,” but a “disgusting perversion of Socialism.” .

With the passion of a neophyte, Orwell defended the original “moral concepts of socialism” - “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice,” the process of deformation of which he captured in the satirical allegory “Animal Farm”. Actions of some Republicans in Spain and brutal practices Stalin's repressions shook his faith in the ideals of socialism. Orwell understood the utopian nature of building a classless society and the baseness of human nature, which is characterized by cruelty, conflict, and the desire to rule over one’s own kind. The writer’s anxieties and doubts were reflected in his most famous and frequently cited novels - “Animal Farm” and “”.

The history of the publication of Animal Farm is complicated. (Animal Farm: A Fairy Story), this “fairy tale with political significance,” as the author himself defined the genre of the book. Having completed work on the manuscript in February 1944, Orwell, after the refusal of several publishing houses, was able to publish it only in 1945. Publishers were scared off by the openly anti-Stalinist (according to Orwell himself) nature of the book. But the war was going on, and in the face of the threat of fascist slavery, the Moscow political processes and the Soviet-German non-aggression pact were pushed to the periphery of public consciousness - the freedom of Europe was at stake. At that time and in those conditions, criticism of Stalinism was inevitably associated with an attack against the fighting Russia, despite the fact that Orwell defined his attitude towards fascism back in the 30s, having taken up arms to defend Republican Spain. During the Second World War, George Orwell works for the BBC, then as a newspaper literary editor, and at the end of the war as a reporter in Europe. After the end of the war, the writer settled on the coast in Scotland, where he completed the novel 1984, which was published in 1949. The writer died in January 1950.

In our country, the novel became known to a wide readership in 1988, when three satirical dystopias were published in different magazines: “We” by E. Zamyatin, “Brave New World” by O. Huxley and “Animal Farm” by J. Orwell. During this period, there is a revaluation of not only Soviet, but also Russian literature abroad and the work of foreign authors. The books of those Western writers who were excommunicated from the Soviet mass reader because they allowed themselves to make critical statements about us, those who were disgusted in our reality by what today we ourselves do not accept and reject, are being actively translated. This primarily applies to satirical writers, those who, due to the specific nature of their mocking and caustic muse, are the first to make a diagnosis, noticing signs of social ill health.

During the same period, a long-term taboo was lifted from another dystopia by George Orwell - “1984”, a novel that was either hushed up in our country or interpreted as anti-Soviet, reactionary. The position of critics who wrote about Orwell in the recent past can be explained to some extent. The whole truth about Stalinism was not yet available, that abyss of lawlessness and atrocities against classes and entire nations, the truth about the humiliation of the human spirit, mockery of free thought (about the atmosphere of suspicion, the practice of denunciations and much, much more that historians and publicists revealed to us , as told in the works of A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Grossman, A. Rybakov, M. Dudintsev, D. Granin, Yu. Dombrovsky, V. Shalamov and many others. At the same time, Stalin’s barracks socialism was perceived by many as an inevitability, a given, without alternatives: one born in captivity does not notice it.

Apparently, one can get the “sacred horror” of the Soviet critic, who already read in the second paragraph of “1984” about a poster where “a huge face, more than a meter wide, was depicted: the face of a man about forty-five years old, with a thick black mustache, rough, but attractive in a masculine way... On each landing the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you stood, your eyes would not let you go. "BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU"- read the inscription” [hereinafter quoted from: “1984”, New World: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 1989. Translation: V.P. Golyshev], a clear allusion to the “father of nations” could dull the sharpness of critical perception works.

But the paradox is that in the essay “Why I Write,” Orwell defines his task as a critique of socialism from the right, rather than an attack on the left. He admitted that every line he had written since 1936 "was directly or indirectly directed against totalitarianism in defense of Democratic Socialism, as I understand it." "Animal Farm" is not only an allegory of the Russian revolution, but also tells of the difficulties and problems that can be encountered in building any just society, no matter what the beautiful ideals of its leaders. Excessive ambitions, hypertrophied egoism and hypocrisy can lead to the perversion and betrayal of these ideals.

The characters in Animal Farm, rebelling against the tyranny of farm owner Jones, proclaim a society where “all animals are equal.” Their revolutionary slogans are reminiscent of the seven biblical commandments, which everyone must strictly follow. But the inhabitants of Animal Farm pass their first idealistic phase, the phase of egalitarianism, very quickly and come first to the usurpation of power by pigs, and then to the absolute dictatorship of one of them - a boar named Napoleon. As the pigs try to imitate the behavior of people, the content of the commandment slogans gradually changes. When the piglets occupy Jones's bedroom, thereby violating the commandment "No animal shall sleep on a bed," they amend it - "No animal shall sleep on a bed with sheets." Imperceptibly, not only a substitution of slogans and a shift in concepts is taking place, but also a restoration status quo ante, only in an even more absurd and perverted form, for the “enlightened” power of man. gives way to bestial tyranny, the victims of which are almost all the inhabitants of the farm, with the exception of the local elite - members of the pig committee (pig committee) and their faithful guard dogs, whose ferocious appearance resembled wolves.

Painfully recognizable events take place in the barnyard: Napoleon's rival in an incendiary political debate, Snowball, nicknamed Cicero, is expelled from the farm. He is deprived of the honors honestly won in the historical Battle of the Cowshed, won by free animals over their neighboring farmers. Moreover, Cicero is declared a spy of Jones - and fluff and feathers are already flying on the farm (literally), and even heads are being chopped off by stupid chickens and ducks for their “voluntary” confession of “criminal” connections with the “spy” Cicero. The final betrayal of "Animalism" - the teachings of the late theorist, the hog named Major - occurs with the replacement of the main slogan "All animals are equal" with the slogan "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." And then the anthem “Live cattle, livestock without rights” is prohibited and the democratic address “comrade” is abolished. In the last episode of this incredible story the surviving inhabitants of the farm, with horror and amazement, contemplate through the window the pig feast, where the worst enemy of the farm, Mr. Pilkington, proclaims a toast to the prosperity of the Animal Farm. The pigs stand on their hind legs (which is also prohibited by the commandment), and their snouts are no longer distinguishable among the drunken faces of people.

As befits a satirical allegory, each character is the bearer of one or another idea and embodies a certain social type. In addition to the cunning and insidious Napoleon, the system of characters in Animal Farm includes the political projector Cicero; a pig named Squealer, a demagogue and a sycophant; the young filly Molly, ready to sell her newfound freedom for a piece of sugar and bright ribbons, because even on the eve of the uprising she was occupied with the only question - “will there be sugar after the uprising?”; a flock of sheep, appropriately and inappropriately singing “Four legs are good, two legs are bad”; old donkey Benjamin, whose worldly experience tells him not to join any of the opposing parties.

In satire, irony, grotesque and piercing lyricism rarely coexist, because satire, unlike lyricism, appeals to reason, not to feelings. Orwell manages to combine seemingly incompatible things. Pity and compassion are evoked by the narrow-minded, but endowed with enormous power, horse Boxer. He is not experienced in political intrigue, but honestly pulls his weight and is ready to work for the benefit of the farm even more, even harder, until powerful forces abandon him - and then he is taken to the knacker. In Orwell’s sympathy for the toiling Boxer, one cannot help but see his sincere sympathy for the peasantry, whose simple lifestyle and hard work the writer respected and appreciated, because they “mixed their sweat with the earth” and; therefore have a greater right to land than the gentry (lesser nobility) or the "upper middle class". Orwell believed that the true guardians of traditional values ​​and morality are simple people, and not intellectuals fighting for power and prestigious positions. (However, the writer’s attitude towards the latter was not so clear.)

Orwell is an English writer to the core. His “Englishness” was manifested in everyday life, in his “amateurism” (Orwell did not receive a university education); dressing in an eccentric manner; in love for the land (my own goat was walking in my own garden); close to nature (he shared the ideas of simplification); in adherence to traditions. But at the same time, Orwell was never characterized by “island” thinking or intellectual snobbery. He was well acquainted with Russian and French literature, closely followed political life not only Europe, but also other continents, always considered himself a “political writer.”

His political engagement manifested itself with particular force in the novel “1984,” a dystopian novel, a warning novel. There is an opinion that “1984” means the same thing for English literature of the 20th century as “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes, a masterpiece of English political philosophy, means for the 17th century. Hobbes, like Orwell, tried to solve a cardinal question for his time: who in a civilized society should have power, and what is the attitude of society towards the rights and responsibilities of the individual. But perhaps the most noticeable influence on Orwell was the work of the classic English satire Jonathan Swift. Without Swiftian Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, Animal Farm could hardly have appeared, continuing the tradition of dystopia and political satire. In the 20th century, a synthesis of these genres emerged - a satirical utopia, dating back to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We,” completed in 1920 and first published in the West in 1924. It was followed by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's 1984 (1949).

Isaac Deutscher in his book “Heretics and Renegades” claims that the author of “1984” borrowed all the main plots from E. Zamyatin. At the same time, there is an indication that by the time he became acquainted with the novel “We,” Orwell had already matured the concept of his own satirical utopia. American professor Gleb Struve, an expert on Russian literature, told Orwell about Zamyatin's novel, and then sent him a French translation of the book. In a letter to Struve dated February 17, 1944, Orwell writes: “I am very interested in literature of this kind, I am even taking notes myself for my own book, which I will write sooner or later.”

In the novel “We,” Zamyatin depicts a society that is a thousand years removed from the 20th century. The United State rules on Earth, having conquered the world as a result of the Two Hundred Years' War and fencing itself off from it with the Green Wall. The inhabitants of the United State - numbers (everything in the state is impersonal) - is ruled by the "skillful heavy hand of the Benefactor", and the "experienced eye of the Guardians" looks after them. Everything in the United State is rationalized, regulated, regulated. The goal of the State is “an absolutely precise solution to the problem of happiness.” True, according to the narrator (mathematician), number D-503, the United State has not yet been able to completely solve this problem, for there are “Personal Clocks established by the Tablet.” In addition, from time to time “traces of a hitherto elusive organization are discovered that sets itself the goal of liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State.”

The author of a satirical utopia, as a rule, is based on contemporary trends, then, using irony, hyperbole, grotesque - this “building material” of satire, projects them into the distant future. The logic of an intellectual, the keen eye of a writer, the intuition of an artist allowed E. I. Zamyatin to predict a lot: the dehumanization of man, his rejection of Nature, dangerous trends in science and machine production that turn a person into a “bolt”: if necessary, a “bent bolt” could always be “throw it away” without stopping the eternal, great progress of the entire “Machine”.

The time of action in O. Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” is the year 632 of the “era of stability.” The motto of the World State is “Commonality, Sameness, Stability.” This society seems to represent a new round in the development of Zamyatin’s United State. Expediency and its derivative, caste, reign here. Children are not born, they are hatched by the “Central London Hatchery and created in an educational center”, where, thanks to injections and a certain temperature and oxygen regime, alphas and betas, gammas, deltas and epsilons grow from the egg, each with its own programmed properties, designed to perform certain functions in society .

The hedonistic societies created by the imagination of Zamyatin and Huxley are mainly aimed at consumption: “every man, woman and child was obliged to consume so much annually for the prosperity of industry.” A whole army of hypnopedists are engaged in brainwashing in the “brave new world”, instilling in alphas, betas and everyone else, recipes for happiness, which, when repeated a hundred times three times a week for four years, become “truth”. Well, if minor upsets happen, there is always a daily dose of “soma” that allows you to detach yourself from them, or a “super-singing, synthetic-speech, color stereoscopic sensory film with synchronous olfactory accompaniment” that serves the same purpose.

The society of the future in the novels of E. Zamyatin and O. Huxley is based on the philosophy of hedonism; the authors of satirical dystopias admit the possibility of at least hypnopaedic and synthetic “happiness” for future generations. Orwell rejects the idea of ​​even illusory social welfare. Despite advances in science and technology, “the dream of a future society—incredibly rich, leisurely, orderly, efficient, a shining, antiseptic world of glass, steel, and snow-white concrete” could not be realized “partly because of the impoverishment caused by the long history of life.” a series of wars and revolutions, partly due to the fact that scientific and technological progress was based on empirical thinking, which could not survive in a strictly regulated society" [cited from: New World, No. 3, 1989, p. 174], the contours of which Orwell, who had a surprisingly keen political vision, already discerned on the European horizon. In a society of this type, a small clique rules, which, in essence, is a new ruling class. “Frenzied nationalism” and “deification of the leader”, “constant conflicts” are integral features of an authoritarian state. Only “democratic values, the guardians of which are the intelligentsia,” can resist them.

Orwell's irrepressible imagination was fed by themes and plots not only of Soviet reality. The writer also uses “pan-European subjects”: the pre-war economic crisis, total terror, the extermination of dissidents, the brown plague of fascism creeping across European countries. But, to our shame, “1984” predicted much of our modern Russian history. Some passages of the novel coincide almost word for word with examples of our best journalism, which spoke about spy mania, denunciations, and falsification of history. These coincidences are mainly factual: neither a deep historical understanding of this or that negative phenomenon, nor its angry statement can compete in the power of exposure and impact on the reader with effective satire, which includes mocking irony and caustic sarcasm, caustic mockery and striking invective. But for satire to take place and hit the target, it must be associated with humor, ridicule, through the general category of the comic, and thereby cause rejection and rejection of the negative phenomenon. Bertolt Brecht argued that laughter is “the first undue manifestation of a proper life.”

Perhaps the leading means of satirical interpretation in “1984” is the grotesque: everything in Ingsoc society is illogical and absurd. Science and technological progress serve only as instruments of control, management and suppression. Orwell's total satire strikes all the institutions of a totalitarian state: the ideology of the party slogans reads: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength); the economy (the people, except members of the Inner Party, are starving, coupons for tobacco and chocolate have been introduced); science (the history of society is endlessly rewritten and embellished, however, geography is no more fortunate - there is a continuous war for the redistribution of territories); justice (the inhabitants of Oceania are spied on by the “thought police”, and for a “thought crime” or “face crime” the convicted person can not only be crippled morally or physically, but even “pulverized”).

The telescreen continuously “spewed out fabulous statistics, processing the mass consciousness.” Half-starved people, dull from meager living, from fear of committing a “personal or mental crime,” were surprised to learn that “there was more food, more clothing, more houses, more pots, more fuel,” etc. Society, the telescreen broadcast, was “rapidly rising to new and new heights.” [quoted from: New World, No. 2, 1989, p. 155.] In the Ingsoc society, the party ideal depicted “something gigantic, menacing, sparkling: a world of steel and concrete, monstrous machines and terrible weapons, a country of warriors and fanatics who march in a single formation, think one thought, shout one slogan, three hundred million people work tirelessly, fight, triumph, punish—three hundred million people, and all look the same.”

And again Orwell’s satirical arrows reach their target - we recognize ourselves, yesterday, “forging labor victories”, “fought on the labor front”, entering into “battles for the harvest”, reporting on “new achievements”, marching in a single column “from victory to victory” ”, who recognized only “unanimity” and professed the principle of “all as one”. Orwell turned out to be surprisingly prescient, noticing a pattern between the standardization of thinking and the cliché of language. Orwell's “newspeak” was intended not only to provide symbolic means for the worldview and mental activity of “Ingsoc” adherents, but also to make any dissent impossible. It was assumed that when “Newspeak” was established forever, and “Oldspeak” was forgotten, unorthodox, that is, alien to “Ingsots,” thought, in so far as it is expressed in words, would become literally unthinkable.” In addition, the task of “newspeak” was to make speech, especially on ideological topics, independent of consciousness. The party member had to utter “correct” judgments automatically, “like a machine gun firing a burst.”

Fortunately, Orwell did not guess everything. But the author of the novel-warning should not have strived for this. He only brought the socio-political trends of his time to their logical (or absurd?) end. But even today Orwell is perhaps the most widely quoted foreign writer.

The world has changed for the better (Hmm... is that true? O. Doug (2001)), but the warnings and calls of George Orwell should not be ignored. History has a habit of repeating itself.

Cand. Philol. Sciences, Associate Professor
N. A. Zinkevich, 2001

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N. A. Zinkevich: “George Orwell”, 2001
Published:
Animal Farm. Moscow. Publishing house "Citadel". 2001.