An ardent opponent of the Stalinist regime and communism, a defender of democratic socialism, who fought in the Second World War on the side of the USSR, this writer became one of the most controversial people of his time. Having staged a rebellion against the society he so strived for, he wrote about himself that he was a stranger in this world and time.
Eric Arthur Blair (pen name George Orwell) was born in the city of Motihari (Bihar, India) on June 25, 1903. Eric's father served as an official in the department that controlled the production and storage of opium. The biography is silent about the mother of the future writer. According to contemporaries, the boy grew up in an authoritarian family: as a child, he sympathized with a girl from a poor family, but the mother harshly suppressed their communication, and the son did not dare to contradict her.
At the age of eight he entered an English school for boys, where he studied until he was 13 years old. At the age of 14, Eric won a personal scholarship, thanks to which he entered a private British school for boys - Eton College. After graduating from school, Eric Arthur joined the Myanmar (formerly Burma) police. Disillusioned with the political system of modern society, Blair went to Europe, where he lived off low-skilled jobs. Later, the writer will reflect this stage of his life in his works.
Having discovered his literary talent, Blair moved to Paris and began writing books. There he published his first story, “Pounds of Dashing in Paris and London,” where he described his adventures while living in Europe. In Great Britain, the writer wandered, and in France he washed dishes in Parisian restaurants. The first version of the book was called “The Diary of a Dishwasher” and described the author’s life in France. However, the writer was refused by the publishing house, after which he added London adventures to the book and turned to another publishing house, where he again faced refusal.
Only on the third attempt did the publicist and publisher Victor Gollancz appreciate Blair's work and accept the manuscript for publication. In 1933, the story was published, becoming the first work of the then unknown George Orwell. To the author’s surprise, critics reacted favorably to his work, but readers were in no hurry to purchase the already limited edition of the book.
Orwell researcher V. Nedoshivin noted that Orwell, disappointed with the social system, staged a personal revolt following the example of. And in 1933, the writer himself said that he felt like a stranger in the modern world.
Returning to England from Spain after being wounded, Orwell joined the ranks of the Independent Labor Party, which supported the development of socialism. At the same time, sharp criticism of the Stalinist totalitarian regime appeared in the writer’s worldview. At the same time, George releases his second work, the novel Days in Burma.
This is the first time the work has been published in the United States. This book also reflects a certain period of the author’s life, specifically his service in the police department. The author continued this theme in the stories “Execution by Hanging” and “How I Shot an Elephant.”
Orwell described participation in hostilities in Spain in the ranks of the Marxist party in his little-known story “In Memory of Catalonia.” During World War II, the writer took the side of the USSR, despite the rejection of the regime of the Soviet leader. By the way, while criticizing the policies of the USSR in literary works and journalistic notes, Orwell himself never visited the Soviet Union in his entire life, and the British intelligence services even suspected him of political ties with the communists.
After the end of hostilities and the liberation of Europe from the Nazis, Orwell wrote the political satire Animal Farm. Researchers of George's work view the basis of the story in two ways. On the one hand, taking into account the author’s worldview, literary scholars argue that Animal Farm exposes the events of the 1917 Revolution in Russia and the events that followed it. The story vividly and allegorically describes how the ideology of the ruling elite changes during the revolution.
On the other hand, after the Soviet victory in World War II, Orwell's political views underwent a number of changes, and the story may reflect events in Great Britain. Despite the discrepancies among critics and researchers, the story was published in the Soviet Union only during perestroika.
The plot of “Animal Farm” was based on a situation that the writer once witnessed. In an English village, George saw a boy driving a horse with a rod. Then Orwell first had the idea that if animals had consciousness, they would have long ago gotten rid of the oppression of a much weaker person.
Five years later, George Orwell wrote a novel that brought him worldwide fame. This is a book written in a dystopian style. This genre came into fashion earlier, after the publication of the novel “Brave New World.” However, if Huxley runs far ahead, describing the events of the 26th century and focuses on the casteism of society and the cult of consumption, then Orwell dwells in more detail on the description of the totalitarian regime - a topic that interested the writer at the very beginning of his creative career.
A number of literary scholars and critics accuse Orwell of plagiarizing the ideas reflected in the Soviet writer's novel We, and George's essay does contain information about his intentions to write his own work based on Zamyatin's ideas. After Orwell's death, two films of the same name were made based on the novel.
It was from Orwell’s pen that the popular expression “Big Brother is watching you” came out. In the novel “1984”, by “Big Brother” the author meant the leader of the totalitarian regime of the future. The plot of the dystopia is tied around the Ministry of Truth, which, with the help of two minutes of hatred, as well as the introduction of Newspeak, programs society. Against the backdrop of totalitarianism, a fragile love develops between the main character Winston and a young girl Julia, who, however, is not destined to defeat the regime.
Why the author named the novel “1984” is unknown. Some critics insist that the author believed that by 1984 society would have the form described in the novel if global changes in the social system did not occur. However, the generally accepted version is that the title of the novel reflects the year it was written - 1948, but with the last numbers mirrored.
Considering that the society described in the novel allegorically hinted at the USSR regime, the book was banned on the territory of the Soviet Union, and the writer himself was accused of ideological sabotage. And by 1984, when the USSR set a course for perestroika, Orwell’s work was revised and presented to readers as a struggle against the ideology of imperialism.
Despite the complete lack of stability in life, Orwell managed to find his happiness and arrange his personal life. In 1936, the writer married Eileen O'Shaughnessy. The couple did not have their own children, but they adopted a boy named Richard Horatio.
George Orwell and Eileen O'Shaughnessy with their son Richard Six months later, the newlyweds decided to take part in the armed conflict between the Second Spanish Republic and the opposition military-nationalist dictatorship, which was supported by the government of Fascist Italy. Six months later, the writer was seriously injured, as a result of which he was hospitalized. Orwell never returned to the front.
George's wife died suddenly in 1945. The loss of his only loved one broke the writer; in addition, he himself had health problems. As a result of the misfortunes that haunted him, George retired to a small island and concentrated on creating a novel, the idea of which he had been nurturing for many years.
Since the writer was burdened by loneliness, he proposed a “companion” marriage to four women. Only Sonya Brownell agreed. They got married in the fall of 1949, but lived together only for three months due to Orwell's imminent death.
When making changes to the dystopian novel 1984, George referred to a sharp deterioration in his health. In the summer of 1948, the writer went to a remote island in Scotland, where he planned to finish work on the work.
Every day it became more and more difficult for Orwell to work due to progressive tuberculosis. Returning to London, George Orwell died on January 21, 1950.
“All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others."
“Leaders who frighten their people with blood, toil, tears and sweat are more trusted than politicians who promise well-being and prosperity.”
“Each generation considers itself smarter than the previous one and wiser than the next one.”
“The truth is that for many people who call themselves socialists, revolution does not mean the movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms that “we”, the smart ones, are going to impose on “them”, the lower order beings.”
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."
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 with some difficulty that he was sent to a private preparatory school in 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”. The actions of some Republicans in Spain and the brutal practices of 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 that did not exist. 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 contemplate with horror and amazement through the window a pig's feast, where the farm's worst enemy, Mr. Pilkington, proposes 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 ordinary people, and not intellectuals vying 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 the political life of not only Europe, but also other continents, and 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 custodians 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.
George Orwell- pseudonym of Erik Blair - born June 25, 1903, in Matihari (Bengal). His father, a British colonial official, held a minor post in the Indian Customs Department. 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. In 1927, returning home on vacation, he decided to resign and take up writing.
Orwell's early - and not only documentary - books are largely autobiographical. Having worked as a scullery in Paris and a hop picker in Kent, and wandering through English villages, Orwell received material for his first book, A Dog's Life in Paris and London ( Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933). "Days in Burma" ( Burmese Days, 1934) largely reflected the eastern period of his life. Like the author, the hero of the book “Let the Aspidistra Bloom” ( Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936) works as an assistant to a second-hand bookseller, and the heroine of the novel “The Priest’s Daughter” ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) teaches in run-down private schools. In 1936, the Left Book Club sent Orwell to the north of England to study the life of the unemployed in working-class neighborhoods. The immediate result of this trip was the angry non-fiction book The Road to Wigan Pier ( The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), where Orwell, to the displeasure of his employers, criticized English socialism. It was also on this trip that he acquired an enduring interest in works of popular culture, reflected in his now classic essays, "The Art of Donald McGill" ( The Art of Donald McGill) and Weeklies for Boys ( Boys' Weeklies).
The civil war that broke out in Spain caused a second crisis in Orwell's life. Always acting in accordance with his convictions, Orwell went to Spain as a journalist, but immediately upon arriving in Barcelona he joined the partisan detachment of the Marxist workers' party POUM, fought on the Aragonese and Teruel fronts, and was seriously wounded. In May 1937 he took part in the Battle of Barcelona on the side of the POUM and anarchists against the communists. Pursued by the communist government's secret police, Orwell fled Spain. In his account of the trenches of the civil war - “In Memory of Catalonia” ( Homage to Catalonia, 1939) - it reveals the intentions of the Stalinists to seize power in Spain. The Spanish impressions stayed with Orwell throughout his life. In the last pre-war novel, “For a Breath of Fresh Air” ( Coming Up for Air, 1940) he denounces the erosion of values and norms in the modern world.
Orwell believed that real prose should be “transparent as glass,” and he himself wrote extremely clearly. Examples of what he considered the main virtues of prose can be seen in his essay "The Killing of an Elephant" ( Shooting an Elephant; rus. translation 1989) and especially in the essay “Politics and the English Language” ( Politics and the English Language), where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic sloppiness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his writing duty as defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945 he wrote Animal Farm, which made him famous ( Animal Farm) - a satire on the Russian revolution and the collapse of the hopes it generated, in the form of a parable telling how animals began to take charge of one farm. His last book was the novel "1984" ( Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949), a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger. Orwell died in London on January 21, 1950.
George Orwell, real name Eric Arthur Blair. Born June 25, 1903 - died January 21, 1950. British writer and publicist. He is best known as the author of the cult dystopian novel 1984 and the story Animal Farm. He introduced the term cold war into political language, which later became widely used.
Eric Arthur Blair was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari (India) in the family of an employee of the Opium Department of the British colonial administration of India. Studied at the school of 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, living at odd jobs, and then began writing fiction and journalism. He already arrived in Paris with the firm intention of becoming a writer; the Orwellian scholar V. Nedoshivin characterizes the way of life he knew there as “a rebellion akin to Tolstoy’s.” Since 1935 he published under the pseudonym "George Orwell".
Already at the age of 30, he would write in verse: “I am a stranger at this time.”
He got married in 1936, and six months later he and his wife went to the Aragonese front of the Spanish Civil War.
During the Spanish Civil War, he fought on the side of the Republicans in the ranks of the POUM units. About these events he wrote the documentary story “In Memory of Catalonia” (English: Homage to Catalonia; 1936) and the essay “Remembering the War in Spain” (1943, fully published in 1953).
While fighting in the ranks of the militia formed by the POUM party, he encountered manifestations of factional struggle among the left. He spent almost six months in the war until he was wounded in the throat by a fascist sniper in Huesca.
During the Second World War he hosted an anti-fascist program on the BBC.
According to Orwell’s peer, British political commentator, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman magazine Kingsley Martin, Orwell looked at the USSR with bitterness, through the eyes of a revolutionary disillusioned with the child of the revolution, and believed that it, the revolution, had been betrayed, and Orwell considered Stalin to be the main traitor, the embodiment of evil . At the same time, Orwell himself, in Martin’s eyes, was a fighter for truth, knocking down Soviet totems that other Western socialists worshiped.
British Conservative politician and Member of Parliament Christopher Hollis argues that what really infuriated Orwell was that as a result of the revolution that took place in Russia and the subsequent overthrow of the old ruling classes, accompanied by a bloody civil war and no less bloody terror, it was not the classless that came to power society, as the Bolsheviks promised, and a new ruling class, much more ruthless and unprincipled than the previous ones it replaced. Orwell called these survivors, who brazenly appropriated the fruits of the revolution and took the helm, adds American conservative journalist Gary Allen, “half-gramophones, half-gangsters.”
What also greatly surprised Orwell was the tendency towards the “strong hand”, towards despotism, which he observed among a significant part of British socialists, especially those who called themselves Marxists, who disagreed with Orwell even in the definition of what a “socialist” was. “And who doesn’t - Orwell, until the end of his days, was convinced that a socialist is someone who strives to overthrow tyranny, and not to establish it - this is what explains the similar epithets that Orwell called Soviet socialists, American literary critic, honorary professor Purdue University Richard Voorhees.
Voorhees calls similar despotic tendencies in the West the “Cult of Russia” and adds that the other part of the British socialists, who were not subject to this “cult,” also showed signs of attraction to tyranny, perhaps more benevolent, virtuous and good-natured, but still tyranny. Orwell, thus, always stood between two fires, both pro-Soviet and indifferent to the achievements of the Country of victorious socialism.
Orwell always angrily attacked those Western authors who in their works identified socialism with the Soviet Union, in particular J. Bernard Shaw. On the contrary, Orwell constantly argued that countries intending to build genuine socialism should first fear the Soviet Union, rather than try to follow its example, says Stephen Ingle, professor of political science at the University of Stirling. Orwell hated the Soviet Union with every fiber of his soul; he saw the root of evil in the system itself, where animals came to power, and therefore Orwell believed that the situation would not have changed even if he had not died suddenly, but remained at his post and was not expelled from the country. What even Orwell did not foresee in his wildest predictions was the German attack on the USSR and the subsequent alliance of Stalin and Churchill. “This vile murderer is now on our side, which means the purges and everything else are suddenly forgotten,” Orwell wrote in his war diary shortly after the German attack on the USSR. “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I would have the opportunity to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!” But I did!” he wrote another six months later.
As the literary columnist for the American weekly The New Yorker, Dwight MacDonald, noted, for his views on Soviet socialism, Orwell was until then mercilessly criticized by socialists of all stripes, and even by Western communists, they generally went off the chain, vilifying every article that came out from under him. Orwell’s pen, where the abbreviation “USSR” or the surname “Stalin” appeared at least once. Even the New Statesman, under the leadership of the aforementioned Kingsley Martin, was like that, refusing to publish Orwell’s reports on the unpleasant achievements of the communists during the Spanish Civil War, notes the British writer, ex-chairman of the Oxford Debating Club Brian Magee. And when in 1937 it came to publishing a book that in no way touched on the theme of Marxism - “The Road to Wigan Pier”, Gollancz, in order to justify the fact that the club took up publication at all, wrote a preface to the novel, which it would have been better not to have at all wrote.
In the dense ranks of Orwell's compatriots and enemies stood another British socialist, book publisher Victor Gollancz. The latter publicly criticized Orwell, especially in 1937 - the year of the Great Terror, among other things blaming Orwell for calling Soviet party functionaries half-mouthpieces, half-gangsters. Gollancz, with his comment, cast a shadow on the best of what Orwell gave the world, says University of Rochester lecturer Dr. Stephen Maloney. Gollancz was definitely in shock when he heard about the “semi-gangsters”, in the state of which he wrote his preface, sums up the literary columnist for the weekly TIME, Martha Duffy.
Edward Morley Thomas, a graduate of Moscow State University and editor of the British government Russian-language collection “England,” writes about Gollancz’s opportunism in this particular case. At the same time, which Thomas especially emphasizes, Gollancz deliberately does not call a spade a spade, namely, he does not say: Orwell wrote the truth or a lie. Instead, he speaks of a "strange rashness" committed by the writer. They say, “to avoid”, one cannot write such things about the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s in the West, awarding Soviet officials with such epithets was indeed counter-revolutionary, almost criminal, but alas, this was the thinking of the British intelligentsia of those years - “since Russia calls itself a socialist country, therefore it is a priori right” - something like this they thought,” British literary critic John Wayne writes specifically about this episode. The British Left Book Club, created by Gollancz, added fuel to the fire, which supported Orwell and even published some of his works, until, after returning from Spain, Orwell switched from British colonialism to Soviet communism. However, the club itself, contrary to the admonitions of its creator and ideological inspirer, split soon after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, partially turning into a literary residency of the Kremlin, operating in the British capital on a permanent basis.
Orwell expected that as a result of the war, socialists in his understanding of the word would come to power in Britain, but this did not happen, and the rapid growth of the power of the Soviet Union, coupled with the equally rapid deterioration of Orwell’s own health and the death of his wife, imposed unbearable pain on him for the future of the free world.
After Germany’s attack on the USSR, which Orwell himself did not expect, the balance of socialist sympathies for some time again shifted to Gollancz’s side, but the British socialist intelligentsia, for the most part, could not forgive such a step as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Collectivization, dispossession, show trials for enemies of the people, purges of party ranks also did their job - Western socialists gradually became disillusioned with the achievements of the Land of Soviets, - this is how Brian Magee complements MacDonald’s opinion. MacDonald's opinion is confirmed by a modern British historian, columnist for The Sunday Telegraph in London, Noel Malcolm, adding that Orwell's works could not be compared with the odes to the Soviet system sung by his contemporary, the Christian socialist, later the head of the British-Soviet Friendship Society, Hewlett Johnson, in England itself, known by the nickname “Red Abbot”. Both scientists also agree that Orwell ultimately emerged victorious from this ideological confrontation, but alas, posthumously.
The writer Graham Greene, despite the fact that he did not have the best relationship with Orwell himself, noted the difficulties that Orwell faced during the war and post-war years, when the USSR was still an ally of the West. Thus, an official of the British Ministry of Information, having briefly read Animal Farm, seriously asked Orwell: “Couldn’t you have made some other animal the main villain?” - implying the inappropriateness of criticism of the USSR, which then actually saved Britain from fascist occupation. And the first, lifetime edition of “1984” was no exception; it was published in a circulation of no more than a thousand copies, since none of the Western publishers dared to go openly against the announced course of friendship with the Soviet Union, akin to Orwell’s “Oceania was never at enmity with Eurasia, she has always been her ally.” Only after establishing the fact that the Cold War was already in full swing, after the death of Orwell, the printing of the novel began in millions of copies. He was extolled, the book itself was praised as a satire on the Soviet system, keeping silent about the fact that it was a satire on Western society to an even greater extent.
But then the time came when the Western allies again quarreled with their yesterday's brothers in arms, and everyone who called for friendship with the USSR either sharply subsided or began to call for enmity with the USSR, and those of the writing fraternity who were still in favor and zenith of glory, and on the wave of success they dared to continue to demonstrate their support for the Soviet Union, they also abruptly fell into disgrace and obscurity. This is where everyone remembered the novel “1984,” rightly notes literary critic and member of the British Royal Society of Literature Geoffrey Meyers.
To say that a book has become a bestseller is like throwing a mug of water into a waterfall. No, it began to be called nothing less than a “canonical anti-communist work,” as John Newsinger, a professor of history at Bath Spa University, called it; the book was dubbed a “righteous manifesto of the Cold War” by Fred Inglis, emeritus professor of cultural studies at the University of Sheffield, not to mention the fact that has been translated into more than sixty languages of the world.
When 1984 arrived, the book was selling 50 thousand copies a day in the United States alone! Here we should go back a little and say that in the same States, every fifth resident of which now proudly claims to have read the novel “1984” at least once, from 1936 to 1946 not a single book by Orwell was published, although he appealed to more than twenty publishing houses - they all politely refused him, since criticism of the Soviet system was not encouraged at that time. And only Harcourt and Brace got down to business, but Orwell, who was living his last days, was no longer destined to see his works published in millions of copies.
In the story “Animal Farm” (1945), he showed the degeneration of revolutionary principles and programs: “Animal Farm” is a parable, an allegory for the revolution of 1917 and subsequent events in Russia.
The dystopian novel “1984” (1949) became an ideological continuation of “Animal Farm”, in which Orwell depicted a possible future world society as a totalitarian hierarchical system based on sophisticated physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear, hatred and denunciation. In this book, the famous expression “Big Brother is watching you” (or, in Viktor Golyshev’s translation, “Big Brother is watching you”) was first heard, and the now widely known terms “doublethink”, “thought crime”, “newspeak” were introduced. “truthfulness”, “speech cracker”.
He also wrote many essays and articles of a socio-critical and cultural nature.
In his homeland, it was published in 20 volumes (5 novels, a satirical fairy tale, a collection of poems and 4 volumes of criticism and journalism), translated into 60 languages.
Despite the fact that many see Orwell’s works as a satire on the totalitarian system, the authorities have long suspected the writer himself of having close ties with the communists. As a dossier on the writer declassified in 2007 showed, the British intelligence services from 1929 until almost until the writer’s death in 1950 conducted surveillance on him, and representatives of different intelligence services did not have the same opinion about the writer. For example, in one dossier note dated 20 January 1942, Scotland Yard agent Sgt Ewing describes Orwell as follows: “This man has advanced communist beliefs, and some of his Indian friends say they often saw him at communist meetings. He dresses bohemianly both at work and in his leisure time."
In 1949, Orwell prepared and submitted to the Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office a list of 38 Britons whom he considered “fellow travelers” of communism. In total, the notebook that Orwell kept for a number of years included 135 English-speaking cultural, political and scientific figures, including J. Steinbeck, J.B. Priestley, and others. This came to light in 1998, and Orwell's action caused controversy.
Orwell's most famous works are the story Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel 1984 (1949). In the story, the writer showed the degeneration of revolutionary principles. This is an allegory of the 1917 revolution and subsequent events in Russia. The novel "1984" became a continuation of "Animal Farm". Orwell depicted a possible future society as a totalitarian hierarchical system. Such a society is based on physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear, hatred, and denunciation. In this book, the infamous “Big Brother is Watching You” was first heard, and the terms “doublethink”, “thought crime”, “newspeak”, “orthodoxy” were introduced.
Orwell wrote many stories, essays, articles, memoirs, and poems of a socially critical and cultural nature. The complete 20-volume collected works have been published in Great Britain. The writer's works have been translated into 60 languages. Orwell was awarded the Prometheus Prize, which is awarded for exploring the possibilities of the future of humanity. Orwell introduced the term “Cold War” into political language.
