In this blog post, I examine why George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”—despite being a work that denounced the Soviet Union under Stalin—continues to evoke discomfort and self-reflection, particularly in South Korea, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
It’s been a very long time since I read and translated George Orwell (1903–1950)’s ‘Animal Farm’. Yet, I can’t seem to shake this uneasy feeling. Why do I feel this way?
Although ‘Animal Farm’ is a novel written in the form of a fable, it is widely known that the story is set in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Orwell wrote the following in his diary while conceiving ‘Animal Farm’:
“There is no better example of how morally and emotionally shallow our era has become than the fact that we have, to some extent, become defenders of Stalin. This loathsome murderer has become our ally, and the atrocities he committed—such as the purges—have suddenly been forgotten.”
As seen in the diary entry above, he could not bear the fact that Stalin, a murderer, had temporarily become an ally due to wartime circumstances, and he wrote ‘Animal Farm’ out of regret that the atrocities he committed—such as the purges—had been forgotten. This novel is a work intended to expose Stalin’s atrocities and the reality of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the setting and characters of ‘Animal Farm’ are directly rooted in the reality of that time. It would not be wrong to call it a thoroughly realistic novel written in the form of a fable.
“Manner Farm,” the precursor to ‘Animal Farm’, symbolizes the Russian Empire, while ‘Animal Farm’ itself symbolizes the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. Pilkington’s Foxwood Farm represents capitalist powers such as Britain and the United States, and Frederick’s Finchfield Farm represents Nazi Germany. The conflict between humans and animals in the work signifies the conflict between the ruling class and the ruled, and Old Major, who incites the animals to revolt, corresponds to Marx or Lenin. Mr. Jones, the former owner of “Manner Farm,” corresponds to Nicholas II of Russia. Napoleon, the Berkshire boar, symbolizes Stalin, while Snowball symbolizes Trotsky. Even small animals such as mice, rabbits, and sparrows are characters for whom objective real-world counterparts can be identified.
In short, while ‘Animal Farm’ takes the form of a fable, it is a novel that accurately reflects the reality from the Russian Revolution until Stalin came to power, and it is a work that denounces the process by which the revolutionary spirit in the Soviet Union was distorted and corrupted.
However, the Soviet Union—the very target of the novel’s denunciation and criticism—collapsed in 1991. From a common-sense perspective, one might be satisfied with praising the author’s foresight for accurately pinpointing the contradictions of the Soviet Communist Party system and predicting its future. One might feel reassured, thinking that a totalitarian regime like the Soviet Union was bound to collapse eventually, and that the reality depicted in ‘Animal Farm’ is merely a relic of the past. Yet, I cannot help but feel uneasy. It is somewhat paradoxical, but the true value of this novel lies precisely in the fact that even long after the Soviet Union’s collapse, reading it in South Korea—a free democratic nation—still makes us feel uneasy and compels us to constantly reflect on ourselves.
Let me ask a simple question. Just because the Soviet Union collapsed, does that mean the society depicted in this novel—or the behavior of the people who make up that society—has completely vanished from the face of the earth, or even from the Soviet Union itself? Have the lies, greed, and thirst for power evident in Napoleon disappeared? Have the foolish masses who fall for such false propaganda vanished? Have the henchmen of power and the parrot-like demagogues disappeared? Has the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in an ideal society where everyone enjoys a life of individual freedom? Has a society arrived where false propaganda no longer works and only the truth is accepted?
Absolutely not. The reason I felt uneasy while rereading and translating ‘Animal Farm’ was not merely because totalitarian regimes still exist in various parts of the world. It was because the content of this work kept overlapping with the reality of South Korea, a liberal democratic nation. Therefore, the world depicted in ‘Animal Farm’ is not limited to the Soviet Union or communist societies of a specific era. It is a scenario that can emerge at any time in human society, and it is a reality we must constantly be on guard against as long as humans live in communities.
The reason is simple: humans always harbor a totalitarian thirst for power; there will always be opportunists who ride the coattails of that power; and there will always be a foolishness that allows people to be deceived by such power. That’s right. It was precisely because the world depicted in ‘Animal Farm’ bore such a striking resemblance to our current reality that I felt uneasy.
We must not mistake George Orwell for a mere anti-communist simply because he wrote works criticizing the Soviet Union under Stalin. In fact, he was a socialist, and during the Spanish Civil War, he even participated in a Marxist-affiliated organization. Rather, it was precisely because he was a socialist that ‘Animal Farm’ could serve as a more scathing critique of the Soviet Union and as a work that critiques the totalitarian tendencies inherent in human nature.
Orwell was undoubtedly a socialist. However, as revealed through ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’, he was not a socialist blindly swayed by ideology. His socialism did not prioritize the interests of the collective over individual freedom. He was not someone who argued that individuals should be sacrificed for the sake of the collective. Orwell chose socialism because he hoped for a healthy society where individuals could enjoy freedom and equality.
He detested an unequal society dominated by the personal greed of a specific class, one that disregarded the freedom and happiness of all members of society. This was because he abhorred a society where individual greed forced the sacrifice and misery of the majority. What Orwell held onto until the very end was the dream of a society where individuals could lead dignified lives—not merely the ideology of “socialism” itself.
Rather, the socialism he pursued was one capable of sharply criticizing the reality in which the labels “socialism” or “communism” serve to crush individual freedom. The society he envisioned was one where members enjoyed freedom as individuals, took pride in calling it “my society,” and shared in the benefits the society generated.
To reiterate, his socialism is not the kind where individuals are sacrificed for the sake of the collective. His socialism is one that dreams of a society where equal individuals enjoy freedom and live with human dignity. It is a socialism where freedom and equality coexist, a socialism where individual freedom is paramount, and a socialism that rejects the suppression of individual freedom in the name of the collective.
It may seem contradictory and sound overly idealistic. Yet it was precisely because of that contradiction that he was able to abhor and criticize both the far right, such as fascism, and the far left, such as Stalinism. His socialism was not an attitude of blindly defending a specific ideology or political system, but rather a disposition that led him to constantly criticize all ideologies and systems that made a healthy society—where free human beings coexist—impossible.
Is there really a need to force such a person into the framework of “socialism”? What do ideologies or labels matter to someone who dreams such dreams?
Let’s ask one question here. Did he truly believe that the society he dreamed of was possible? Sadly, in my view, he was a pessimist. Recall the final scene of ‘Animal Farm’.
“Twelve angry voices burst forth, all sounding alike. Now it was clear what had happened to the pigs’ faces. The animals outside shifted their gaze from the pigs to the humans, and then back again to the pigs. But by then, it had become impossible to tell one from the other.”
It’s truly chilling. The pigs who led the rebellion against the humans have become beings indistinguishable from humans themselves. It’s even more heart-wrenching when you imagine the feelings of the animals watching this scene through the window. Up until now, even if it had been the result of deceptive propaganda and agitation, the animals had at least had some consolation.
Their lives may have been hard, and their hopes may never have been fulfilled. But they were clearly aware that they were different from the other animals. Even if they were hungry, it wasn’t because they were feeding the cruel humans. Even when they performed hard labor, at least that labor was for their own sake. None of them walked on two legs. No animal called another animal “master.” All animals were equal.
But now even that illusion has vanished. Even that deception has vanished. When deception vanishes, the truth should be revealed and a new life should begin; yet the animals remain merely helpless beings. To put it bluntly, they may have become creatures that hope the pigs will deceive them with new lies, that they will once again find solace in that deception. Or perhaps they were always such creatures to begin with. Perhaps humans are truly that foolish.
Perhaps I read the novel too pessimistically. But George Orwell, through Benjamin—the only intellectual in this work—does not hide such pessimism but reveals it openly. For some reason, I can’t help but wonder if Orwell identified with Benjamin. I can’t help but wonder if he subtly inserted himself into the novel in the form of such a pessimistic intellectual.
As far as the other animals knew, their lives had always been the same. For the most part, they were hungry, slept on straw, drank well water, and worked in the fields. In winter, they shivered from the cold; in summer, they were plagued by flies. A few of the older animals strained their faint memories, trying to determine whether life in the early days of the uprising—immediately after Jones’s expulsion—had been better or worse than it was now. But they could not remember. There was also no data whatsoever with which to compare their current lives. The only data available was the list of statistics provided by Squealer, and those statistics consistently presented evidence that everything was getting better and better. The animals realized they could not resolve this issue on their own. Moreover, they had almost no time to grapple with such questions. Only Benjamin declared that he remembered his long life in its entirety, and that conditions had never improved or worsened—nor could they ever. He said that hunger, hardship, and disappointment were the immutable laws of life.
It’s almost despairing. Yet here a curious paradox emerges. It is precisely this thorough pessimism that elevates this work from a mere novel critiquing reality to a classic. What does “thorough pessimism” mean? Paradoxically, it means not succumbing to facile optimism. It means not seeking—and not being able to find—easy alternatives in reality.
However, pessimism is not synonymous with despair. If pessimism meant despair, Orwell would not have written such a novel. His refusal to succumb to facile optimism stems not merely from the bleakness of reality, nor is it solely due to his skepticism about human nature. Above all, it is because the ideals he envisions are so lofty, and his hopes are so fervent. It is also because he keeps his eyes wide open with such intensity. It is an utterly exhausting endeavor.
Such a pessimist is unhappy. Even within the work, Benjamin is probably the most unhappy character. He knows everything. They say knowledge is power, but for him, knowledge is misery. The other animals, who know nothing, live their own lives on the farm in their own way. But he lives passively within a reality he must deny and criticize, yet cannot accept. He merely closes his eyes just enough and pretends not to see. A life in which he cannot escape, cannot criticize, and cannot accept—a life of mere endurance—that is Benjamin’s life, and it is the most miserable life of all.
In a sense, Benjamin is the author’s alter ego, but there is one key difference. Unlike Benjamin, the author takes action. That action does not merely mean participating in reality. Of course, Orwell did participate directly in reality, such as by fighting in the Spanish Civil War. But above all, he acts through his writing. And within that writing, he introduces the pessimistic character of Benjamin. So what is the role of this pessimistic character? Benjamin’s pessimism brings the questions the author poses through this novel into the present. It compels us to endlessly question that bleak situation and makes us realize that such misery could be right beside us at any moment. It also compels us to question the fundamental contradictions of human society.
As I read this novel, I ask myself and all of you: Do we have the courage not to yield to the threat of the nine dogs? Are we confident we won’t be deceived by false promises of future happiness or by Sculler’s deceptive propaganda? Are we confident we won’t be blinded and deafened by the chorus of the goats? Are we confident we won’t be fooled by fabricated evidence, manipulated information, and distorted statistics? Do we have the confidence not to sink into the swamp of oblivion? Do we have the confidence not to turn a blind eye to the injustice and corruption unfolding right before our eyes?
I also ask this: What if we were to find ourselves living in such a reality? What if we were born in such a place? What would we have done? Could we have prevented it? And there is another question: Will evil totalitarian attempts continue to block humanity’s path forward? How can we avoid going down that path?
Living in a world where countless lies obscure the truth and the chanting of a herd of sheep rings in my ears, I ask myself these questions. And I sense that the world of ‘Animal Farm’ is not one we view from afar, but one right beside us—that it could be us, and that it might represent the future of humanity.
The fact that George Orwell wrote ‘1984’ immediately after publishing ‘Animal Farm’ is, in my view, because his questioning had reached that point. Wasn’t his intention in ‘1984’ to further expand that question—to warn that the form of totalitarianism revealed in ‘Animal Farm’ is not confined to any single “ism,” such as communism or capitalism, but is a danger inherent in human desire that can emerge at any time? Let’s postpone the answer to that question until after we’ve read ‘1984’.
Now, I’d like to share a few anecdotes related to the publication of ‘Animal Farm’.
George Orwell was inspired to write ‘Animal Farm’ by his experience fighting in the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, upon hearing news of the outbreak of the civil war, Orwell traveled to Spain with his wife, Eileen, and joined a volunteer unit affiliated with the Marxist United Workers’ Party (POUM). This was not because he particularly sympathized with the party’s political line, but because the cause of fighting against fascism was what mattered most. However, there was intense infighting among the Spanish left at the time, and the Communist Party—which was being manipulated from behind the scenes by the Soviet Union—continuously slandered and suppressed the POUM. Eventually, when arrests of POUM members began, Orwell and his wife narrowly escaped Spain. He published ‘Homage to Catalonia’, which detailed his experiences as a volunteer and raised concerns about the Spanish Communist Party; this experience heightened his awareness of the dangers of Stalinism and led to the writing of ‘Animal Farm’.
Orwell wrote ‘Animal Farm’ over the course of several months, from November 1943 to February 1944. At the time, Britain, along with the United States, was in a wartime alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and many European intellectuals, including those in Britain, held Stalin in high regard. Orwell found the intellectuals’ excessive adulation of Stalin particularly intolerable, which spurred him to accelerate the writing of the novel.
However, the path from completing the manuscript to publication was not easy. He was rejected by several publishers, who feared the book would negatively impact friendly relations with the Soviet Union. Even Golanz Publishers, which had previously published his novels, refused to publish it. He also sent the manuscript to Faber & Faber, run by T.S. Eliot, but it was rejected. Orwell had initially vented his frustrations in the manuscript’s preface about the British public’s self-censorship and the atmosphere that suppressed criticism of the Soviet Union, but he deleted that preface before publication. Ultimately, ‘Animal Farm’ was published in 1945 after many twists and turns.
Not only at the time of its first publication but also afterward, ‘Animal Farm’ was banned multiple times in various countries, and even in some U.S. states. In short, ‘Animal Farm’ has frequently become a subject of bans and controversy depending on international political currents. While this is rare for a novel written in the form of an allegory, it may be precisely because of that allegorical form that it was able to generate such political repercussions.
Incidentally, ‘Animal Farm’ recently sparked an interesting debate in China as well. In 2018, Chinese Communist Party authorities banned any mention of ‘Animal Farm’ in online posts. This measure was implemented even though the book was still on display in bookstores.
It seems they limited the ban to online mentions because banning sales in bookstores—when almost no one buys or reads the book anyway—might actually have sparked interest or given the impression that the authorities were being overly aggressive. In any case, it seems clear that China is particularly afraid of the word “totalitarianism.” The ban on online mentions may have been an attempt to conceal the fact that China is increasingly resembling “Animal Farm.”
It is worth noting that “Animal Farm” was widely recognized as an anti-communist novel immediately upon its publication, and the Republic of Korea, which established its government in 1948, became the first country in the world to translate “Animal Farm” with the support of the United States.
‘The Times’ named ‘Animal Farm’ one of the 100 greatest novels written in English; the work received the Retro Hugo Award in 1996 and was also included in the list of the 100 Greatest Books of the World.
George Orwell was born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, in northeastern India, to Richard Blair, a low-ranking official in the Opium Office, and his mother, Aida Blair; his birth name was Eric Arthur Blair. Less than a year after his birth, he moved to England.
In 1911, he enrolled at St. Cyprian’s Preparatory School in southern England, where he studied for five years. Although he felt deeply frustrated from an early age due to the school’s oppressive and discriminatory atmosphere, his academic performance was excellent, and he went on to attend Eton College. After graduating from Eton College in 1917, Eric enlisted in the Imperial Indian Police and left for Burma, his assigned posting, in 1922.
While serving as an imperial police officer in the colony, he became acutely aware of the contradictions and limitations of imperialism; after returning to Britain in 1927, he resigned from the police force in 1928. From that point on, he resolved to become a writer and spent some time experiencing life at the bottom of society, including living on the streets and working as a dishwasher.
In 1933, he published the autobiographical novel ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, based on his experiences at the bottom of society, under the pen name George Orwell. The pen name was a combination of the common male name “George” and the name of the River Orwell, which flowed near his parents’ home. He subsequently gained recognition in literary circles with ‘Burmese Days’ (1934), which depicted the cruelty of white colonial officials, and in 1936, he published ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, which portrayed the impoverished lives of workers in northern England.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in December of that same year, he volunteered to fight against fascism and joined the Marxist United Workers’ Party (POUM). On the Barcelona front, he was wounded by a gunshot to the neck, and shortly thereafter, the POUM came under persecution by the Spanish Communist Party. He fled Spain with his wife and crossed into France; drawing on this experience, he published ‘Homage to Catalonia’ in 1938, a work expressing his disillusionment with ideology.
Meanwhile, his health deteriorated due to tuberculosis, so he temporarily stopped writing and recuperated in Morocco; in 1940, he returned to England and served as a non-commissioned officer in the British Civil Defense Corps. In 1941, he joined the BBC and produced radio programs for two years; in 1943, he became editor-in-chief of ‘The Tribune’ and began writing ‘Animal Farm’. He wrote this work to counter the negative influence that the Soviet myth had exerted on Western socialism.
With the publication of ‘Animal Farm’, he instantly became a world-renowned author, and ‘1984’—which he began writing in 1946 and published in November 1949—further cemented his reputation.
However, his chronic tuberculosis worsened, and he passed away in a London hospital in January 1950 at the age of 47.
‘The Times’ ranked him as the second-greatest British writer of the pre- and post-war eras, and in a BBC poll, he was voted the third-greatest English-language writer of the past thousand years.
