Background notes
For
Animal Farm
Pre-Revolution
 Czar

Nicholas II
Tsar, Caesar, Kaiser
 Ruler
with absolute power
 Took throne at age 26

Alexander III died of kidney
disease at age 49
 Somewhat

inept as ruler
His father didn’t want to teach him statecraft
until Nicholas was 30, but Alexander III died
before then
Czar Nicholas with his wife,
Alexandra; his four daughters,
Maria, Olga, Tatiana and
Anastasia; and his son Alexei
 Nicholas
was
married, 4 daughters,
1 son

Alexei was sickly
(hemophilia)


Inherited
Rasputin

Mystic who exerted
enormous influence over
the family, especially
Alexandra, because he
seemed to help lessen
effects of the disease
 Widespread
drought
& famine
 Refusal to agree to
Constitutional
Monarchy
 Loss of war with
Japan

Defeat by a nonWestern power
brought down prestige
and authority of the
regime
 Anti-Semitic
pogroms
 Distrust of
Rasputin’s influence
 Bloody Sunday
 Bread Riots

Peasants went to
Winter palace to
petition for help



Were gunned down


Starving
Peaceful petition
92 dead, several
hundred wounded
Resulted in Revolt of
1905

Revolt eventually put
down, but power of
monarchy was lessened
 Russian


workers led by Trotsky
Tsar’s soldiers crushed the rebellion
Trotsky was sent to Siberia for his role
 1917:
WWI caused Tsar/Czar Nicholas II
to abdicate
 Causes:
German triumphs, millions killed in WWI
 Nationwide poverty, injustices by czars (Bloody
Sunday), bread riots, other signs of popular
hostility
 Spontaneous revolt by workers in Feb., 1917

 Provisional
Interim Govt. : Prince Lvov
 Riots:

Lenin’s speech: “The people need peace.
The people need bread. The people need
land. And they give you war, hunger, no
bread…we must fight for the social
revolution.”

After the riots, Lvov banned the Bolsheviks (who
quadrupled in size), sent Lenin into hiding, and
arrested Trotsky (who was now allied with Lenin)
 Troops
refuse to fight: Bolsheviks take over
government buildings and the Winter Palace
 Bolsheviks,
led by Lenin, overthrow the
provisional government
 Take over the Winter Palace as seat of new
government
 WW
I caused
massive deaths on
the front, and
widespread
starvation at home
 Revolution of 1917
forced Nicholas II
to abdicate the
throne
 Imprisoned by the
revolutionaries
 Later,
Nicholas &
family were
executed for
treason


Firing squad and
bayonets
Women survived
initial bullets


Diamonds and other
jewels sewn in dresses
protected them
Later shot in the head
and stabbed with
bayonets
Later, two bodies were missing from the
basement where the Romanovs were
killed.
Rumors spread that the princess
Anastasia had escaped.
DNA evidence proves that to be untrue –
two additional Romanov bodies were
found in the nearby woods.
 Philosopher,
Historian,
political theorist
 Socialism, not
capitalism or feudalism
 Wealth distributed
equally

Capitalism only rewards a
few

Lots of poor people
 “From
each
according to
ability, to each
according to need”
 Group
of Russians: Meeting in Minsk in
March 1898, declaring themselves as a
party

Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party:
Later became the Communist party




Consisted of nine delegates representing four labor
unions, a workers’ newspaper and the Jewish Social
Democratic Bund
platform: overthrow of the Romanov rulers
results of meeting: 8 of the delegates arrested upon
their return home
Followed doctrines/teachings of : Karl Marx –
prophesied the collapse of capitalism and its
empires
 Lenin’s

expelled from
school for staging a
protest,



roots:
while at home,
discovered the works
of Marx
eventually got a law
degree
Names: Vladimir
Ulyanov, also Meyer,
Richter, & Jordanov

Travels:
Switzerland to meet with
Marxist leaders
 Paris and Berlin to meet
with radicals
 arrested upon return home
and sent to Siberia until
1900 (there during meeting
in Minsk).


Occupation:
When he returned from
Siberia, he began a
newspaper organizing the
rebirth of the Social
Democrats beyond the
reach of the Czar’s police.
 Caused a second meeting
of the party in Brussels in
1903

Bolsheviks
 After “Bolshoi” – big




Mensheviks
 Means minority
Means majority
Leader: Lenin
Makeup: small, highly
disciplined, secretive, &
vanguard of working
class
Philosophy:
Government run by
small dictatorial group
of professional
revolutionaries that
would tell the
proletariat (workers)
what to do



Leader: Trotsky
Makeup: take any and
all supporters, find
partners, make
coalitions
Philosophy:
Democratically run
socialism
 After
the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin,
overthrow the provisional government



Set up a dictatorship, with secret police
 Lenin is in charge
Revised economic policy – prosperity for some
peasants (sold crops & paid taxes)
Right-hand man: Leon Trotsky
 Military leader, led Stalin’s Red Army in many
uprisings & revolutionary battles, including
the defeat of the “White” army (the nobility)
in the Civil War
 Premier/Foreign
Minister: Lenin/Trotsky
 Cabinet: Lenin insisted on an all-Bolshevik
cabinet
 Constituent Assembly: Although Bolsheviks
won only 25% of the popular vote, and
moderate socialist groups won 62%, Lenin
disbanded the Assembly after one meeting and
banned all parties other than his own, which
he had renamed the Communist Party.
 Cheka: New police force, authorized to arrest
and shoot immediately all members of
counterrevolutionary organizations.
 Civil
war erupts
between

Reds


(Bolsheviks)
Whites

(anti-Bolsheviks)


primarily displaced
nobility and foreign
interests
War ends in 1918
 Military:


peace with Germany, but forced separation of
Poland, Balkans and Ukraine from Russia;
American, Japanese, British and French troops in
Russia, various anti-Bolshevik “white” armies
 Economy:





in shambles –
huge industrial production drops,
runaway inflation,
plummeting foreign trade,
peasant crops requisitioned for the cities,
widespread famine
 Death
of Lenin:
several strokes
from these
pressures
 Stalin

Better political
maneuvering
 Trotsky


Preferred by Lenin
Fought in Revolution
Stalin (meaning steel)
 political/military maneuvers:



armed robberies to replenish Bolshevik
treasury,
alliance with two of Lenin’s top advisors, then
betrayed them,
became basically the uncrowned Tsar of the
Russians (caused Trotsky to flee)
 Trotsky
was exiled
and later
assassinated in
Mexico by Stalin’s
agents

Fate of Trotsky:
befriended by a
Soviet agent, then
hacked to death
 Drew
up new constitution,
 Communist party the core of all
public and state organizations
 (only 10% of population in this elite
group).
 He held no party congresses and ran
things by himself
 Drive
to become
industrialized


economic policy:
forced
industrialization and
collective farming
causing millions of
deaths
Series of Five-Year
plans to increase
economic growth
 Forced
labor to cities
 Eliminated small farms to create large
“collectivized farms”



Produce went to feed those building factories
and to sell for the financing of those factories
Many farmers tried to revolt, severely punished –
killed or sent to Siberia
Farm production drops, massive famine in Soviet
Union


Decisions about farming made by bureaucrats
Farmers were paid miserably – little incentive to work
 Arrests
throughout
the party and the
country
Show trials to
eliminate any
opposition to Stalin
 Labor camps or
executions
 Forced confessions


forced people to
confess to forms of
treason, corruption
and sabotage, all of
whom were put to
death
 The
Cheka –
Stalin’s secret
police (KGB)

Coercion rather
than cooperation
 Propaganda
 Non-Aggression

Stalin allied himself with Hitler until Hitler
invaded Russia in 1941

the Russians suffer heavy losses beating back the
Germans (20 million dead)
 Join


Pact
the Allies
fights against the Germans/Japanese
at the end of the war, meets with Winston
Churchill & Franklin D. Roosevelt (Yalta
Conference) to forge a lasting peace treaty and
carve up Europe

Note: Makes it hard for Orwell to sell Animal Farm
February 4–11, 1945
 wartime meeting





United States –
President Franklin D.
Roosevelt
Great Britain – Prime
Minister Winston
Churchill
Soviet Union – General
Secretary Josef Stalin
Purpose -- discussing
Europe’s postwar
reorganization.

the re-establishment of
the nations of war-torn
Europe.
Russia
Josef Stalin
Spain
Francisco Franko
Italy
Benito Mussolini
Germany
Adolf Hitler
Totalitarianism: Government with strong central rule,
that controls individuals by coercion and repression
 Satire

A literary genre that uses irony, wit, and
sometimes sarcasm to ridicule people, ideas, or
practices in an effort to improve society
 Allegory

A story or tale that has two levels of meaning.
The first is a surface-level story, with a second,
and deeper level of meaning, which may be
moral, political, philosophical, or religious.

Characters often bear names that indicate the
qualities or ideas the author wishes to represent.
 Personification

Giving human characteristics to non-humans
 Utopia


An ideal place that does not exist in reality
Term comes from Greek words


Outopia = “no place”
Eutopia = “good place”
 Dystopia


The opposite of utopia
Horrific places, generally characterized by
oppressive societies

Often shown as starting out as attempts to achieve
utopia

Orwell replied that
though Animal Farm
was ‘primarily a
satire on the Russian
Revolution’ it was
intended to have a
wider application.
That kind of
revolution, which he
defined as ‘violent
conspiratorial
revolution, led by
unconsciously powerhungry people’, could
only lead to a change
of masters.