Animal Farm satire not at all gentle upon a particular State—Soviet Russia? It seems to me that a reviewer should have the courage to identify Napoleon with Stalin, and Snowball with Trotsky, and express an opinion favourable or unfavourable to the author, upon a political ground. In a hundred years time perhaps, "Animal Farm" may be simply a fairy story, today it is a political satire with a good deal of point." "Animal Farm" has been subject to much comment in the decades since these early remarks. The pigs Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer adapt Old Major's ideas into "a complete system of
Animal Farm outside gaze at the scene and look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, they can no longer distinguish between the two. George Orwell wrote the manuscript in 1943 and 1944 subsequent to his experiences during the Spanish Civil War, which he described in "Homage to Catalonia" (1938). In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of "Animal Farm", he explained how escaping the communist purges in Spain taught him "how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries". This motivated Orwell to expose and strongly condemn