You could apply it as easily to the American Revolution or the French Revolution or the Iranian Revolution as to the Soviets.
Not really. In fact that’s why he had trouble getting it published, because it was very clearly about the Soviets specifically, and really doesn’t carry any sort of generalized message. And he was trying to publish this specifically anti-Soviet work during WW2 while the Soviets were saving the world from fascism.
The publisher wrote to Orwell, saying:[51]
If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators [Lenin and Stalin], that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships.
Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.
In fact that’s why he had trouble getting it published, because it was very clearly about the Soviets specifically, and really doesn’t carry any sort of generalized message.
I can't speak to why people who turned him down to publish rejected his copy, but there was no shortage of Churchill-friendly anti-com publishers in England in the 1940s. And as to it being "clearly about the Soviets", the main character was explicitly named "Napoleon". You don't get much more allegorical to the French Revolution than that. What's more, "Napoleon" had become a stand-in figure for virtually every demagogue of the late-19th and early-20th century. A latter-day Hitler, in his evocation. This wasn't particular to Orwell.
If you get a bit further in the wiki you reference, you'll even run into one such cartoonist - Sir David Alexander Cecil Low - who enjoyed significant prestige and held no qualms about trashing any of Europe's leading WW2 combatants. Orwell being a liberal snitch and Americans pivoting into a full Red Scare during the 50s helped establish the book as an anti-Communist polemic. But the major themes of the novel are hardly critical of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Nor are the events depicted somehow unique to the Russian Revolution. In fact, one might find special irony in the CIA attempting to distribute copies east of the Iron Curtain during the 1950s if one were to hold up the story relative to the rise of the modern American police and surveillance "Deep State".
Napoleon is very clearly Joseph Stalin, and only Joseph Stalin, literally everything that happens in the book is a 1:1 parallel (highly editorialized to be anti-whatever the Soviets did) to some event that took place in the Soviet Union specifically, so no, you can absolutely not “just as easily” read it as the French or American or any other revolution, it is only about the USSR. I think you really need to read it again if you actually believe what you’re saying.
IMO Orwell meant to criticize the USSR, but the result is allegorical/general enough that it stands as its own story, better in fact than it works a criticism of the USSR.
It's also not an anti-Marxist book, because it criticizes the betrayal of the revolution, not the revolution itself, which is a triumph over the exploiters. Gorbachyov/the Communist Party revisionists are the pigs who started to walk on two feet, not Stalin.
Napoleon is very clearly Joseph Stalin, and only Joseph Stalin, literally everything that happens in the book is a 1:1 parallel
That's definitely the Americanized spin on it, yes. The book is basically introduced as "Russian History 101", and you'll fail the class if you don't regurgitate this line just like all the other sheep in the classroom.
you can absolutely not “just as easily” read it as the French or American or any other revolution
Not when the curriculum is being written up by the CIA, no. But the comparison of the revolution to failures in France and Spain are easy enough to make. As someone who watched the Spanish Civil War rapidly deteriorate into factionalist conflicts between Stalinists and Trotskyists, only for the rebellion to be quashed by a fascist dictatorship, Orwell had a front line view of leftist infighting and betrayal to inform his worldview.
Of course, the American government wasn't in the business of stirring up antipathy towards Franco's Spain. So you'll never get a tight 1:1 reading in an effort to denounce fascism in Western Europe that's offered up by a Reagan-Era school teacher.
No, that’s not an Americanized spin, that’s just how the book is written. You’d be throwing your back out with all the reaching you’d have to do to relate the events in the book to other revolutions, because it was specifically written to be anti-Stalin. Who is Snowball if you’re talking about the American or French Revolutions? Who’s Frederick, what’s the windmill and the collapse of the windmill representative of?
Not really. In fact that’s why he had trouble getting it published, because it was very clearly about the Soviets specifically, and really doesn’t carry any sort of generalized message. And he was trying to publish this specifically anti-Soviet work during WW2 while the Soviets were saving the world from fascism.
I can't speak to why people who turned him down to publish rejected his copy, but there was no shortage of Churchill-friendly anti-com publishers in England in the 1940s. And as to it being "clearly about the Soviets", the main character was explicitly named "Napoleon". You don't get much more allegorical to the French Revolution than that. What's more, "Napoleon" had become a stand-in figure for virtually every demagogue of the late-19th and early-20th century. A latter-day Hitler, in his evocation. This wasn't particular to Orwell.
If you get a bit further in the wiki you reference, you'll even run into one such cartoonist - Sir David Alexander Cecil Low - who enjoyed significant prestige and held no qualms about trashing any of Europe's leading WW2 combatants. Orwell being a liberal snitch and Americans pivoting into a full Red Scare during the 50s helped establish the book as an anti-Communist polemic. But the major themes of the novel are hardly critical of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Nor are the events depicted somehow unique to the Russian Revolution. In fact, one might find special irony in the CIA attempting to distribute copies east of the Iron Curtain during the 1950s if one were to hold up the story relative to the rise of the modern American police and surveillance "Deep State".
Napoleon is very clearly Joseph Stalin, and only Joseph Stalin, literally everything that happens in the book is a 1:1 parallel (highly editorialized to be anti-whatever the Soviets did) to some event that took place in the Soviet Union specifically, so no, you can absolutely not “just as easily” read it as the French or American or any other revolution, it is only about the USSR. I think you really need to read it again if you actually believe what you’re saying.
IMO Orwell meant to criticize the USSR, but the result is allegorical/general enough that it stands as its own story, better in fact than it works a criticism of the USSR.
It's also not an anti-Marxist book, because it criticizes the betrayal of the revolution, not the revolution itself, which is a triumph over the exploiters. Gorbachyov/the Communist Party revisionists are the pigs who started to walk on two feet, not Stalin.
That's definitely the Americanized spin on it, yes. The book is basically introduced as "Russian History 101", and you'll fail the class if you don't regurgitate this line just like all the other sheep in the classroom.
Not when the curriculum is being written up by the CIA, no. But the comparison of the revolution to failures in France and Spain are easy enough to make. As someone who watched the Spanish Civil War rapidly deteriorate into factionalist conflicts between Stalinists and Trotskyists, only for the rebellion to be quashed by a fascist dictatorship, Orwell had a front line view of leftist infighting and betrayal to inform his worldview.
Of course, the American government wasn't in the business of stirring up antipathy towards Franco's Spain. So you'll never get a tight 1:1 reading in an effort to denounce fascism in Western Europe that's offered up by a Reagan-Era school teacher.
No, that’s not an Americanized spin, that’s just how the book is written. You’d be throwing your back out with all the reaching you’d have to do to relate the events in the book to other revolutions, because it was specifically written to be anti-Stalin. Who is Snowball if you’re talking about the American or French Revolutions? Who’s Frederick, what’s the windmill and the collapse of the windmill representative of?