Soviet citizens reading George Orwell’s 1984 were amazed that the British author never set foot in the USSR yet described the country so well. A timely book by Masha Karp, a former Russian Features editor for the BBC World Service, shines a light on an unexplored topic—George Orwell and Russia. Government oppression, official gaslighting and fabricating history did not die with Orwell’s model for 1984, the Soviet Union. Russian leader Vladimir Putin retooled these practices for the 21st century.
War and Peace
Vladimir Putin’s pining for the Soviet Union, falsifying history and distorting current events to wage a war against Ukraine show the continued relevance of Orwell’s works, according to Masha Karp.
“Putin’s Russia had been moving toward totalitarianism for years, but the invasion of Ukraine triggered the endgame, and within days the country displayed an even stronger resemblance to the absurd totalitarian monster described by Orwell,” writes Karp. “The word ‘war’ was instantly banned and ordered to be replaced, on pain of prosecution, by the phrase ‘a special military operation.’ Those who came out into the streets with placards bearing the Oceania slogans [from 1984] ‘War is Peace,’ ‘Freedom is Slavery,’ ‘Ignorance is Strength’ or their variations were detained and a man who handed out free copies of Orwell’s novel was charged with the administrative offense of ‘discrediting Russia’s armed forces.’”
Julia Davis, columnist for The Daily Beast and creator of the Russian Media Monitor, described a recent segment on Russian state television: “Even Orwell would be amazed if he could hear the head of RT Margarita Simonyan and her fellow propagandists claim that the West is forcing Russia to kill Ukrainians and they pity Ukrainians more than Ukrainians pity themselves.”
In 2022, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that 1984 was “the most popular fiction download,” according to the Russian online bookseller LitRes.
Orwell’s 1984 describes individuals obeying or modestly rebelling inside a totalitarian state that controls the news media, history books and all relevant levers in society. He based the falsification of history, including the government denying another country had been a wartime ally, on the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, which “paved the way for the joint invasion and occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that September.” (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.)
Putin made Russia’s victory in World War II—called the “Great Patriotic War”—central to his regime’s legitimacy. As such, he has continued the Soviet practice of denying the temporary Nazi-Soviet alliance and punishing historians who say otherwise.
Orwell’s Animal Farm, published in 1945, satirized the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution as pigs who exploit workers (the other animals), falsify the events of the revolution and arrange privileges for themselves.
Before publishing 1984 and Animal Farm, Orwell said he planned to describe “the huge system of organized lying . . . the sinister possibilities of the radio, State-controlled education and so forth” [for indoctrination] and the perils of a leader with undisputed authority.
Stalin and Orwell
After the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, Joseph Stalin eliminated his rivals in the 1920s and ruled the Soviet Union until he died in 1953. Compared to people in many other countries, Soviet citizens lived in a type of prison state, including being barred from leaving the country, and suffering from widespread shortages of food, clothing and other goods.
Stalin enacted economic policies that killed millions of Ukrainians from famine in the 1930s and kept Soviet citizens far poorer than their counterparts in Western nations. He imposed Soviet control over Eastern Europe, forcing residents of foreign countries also to live without liberty or economic prosperity. Stalin eliminated freedom of speech and executed or imprisoned millions of Soviet citizens during the Great Terror. He also left the Soviet Union largely unprepared for World War II, including by killing or arresting many experienced military leaders.
Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza believes that failing to open the archives and condemn the Soviet past after the USSR’s collapse gave Vladimir Putin the chance to return authoritarian rule to Russia. “We have no right to repeat this mistake when the window of opportunity opens again,” he wrote in the Washington Post. “All archives must be opened and published. All the crimes of both the Soviet and Putin regimes must receive a proper evaluation at the state level. All structures involved in these crimes—above all the FSB (security services)—must be liquidated, and the people who committed these crimes must be held accountable before the law.”
In 1984, the state forces Winston Smith to love Big Brother, Orwell’s fictional leader modeled on Joseph Stalin. “The final words of 1984 are so convincing—nothing less than love was demanded for Stalin!” writes Karp, “The main thrust of the novel—and this was fully understood by Soviet readers—lay in the idea of human fragility under the relentless pressure of the state, ‘a boot stamping on a human face—forever. And it was not just fragility under torture, although this was well known to millions who had been in Stalin’s prisons where ‘confessions’ were demanded, it was fragility under the systematic endeavor of the totalitarian state to control the mind and thus destroy the individual’s integrity and capacity to resist.”
Orwell believed it was impossible to produce literature under a totalitarian regime. Soviet writers, particularly during the Stalin era, often created “for the drawer.” Many works could not be published until years after their deaths. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many writers and journalists left Russia.
Were he still alive, Orwell would have noticed in August 2023 when an Orthodox priest blessed a new statue erected in Russia to honor Joseph Stalin, even though the Soviet leader destroyed churches and persecuted religious believers.
Among the details in George Orwell and Russia:
– The scene in 1984 where Winston Smith’s torturer forces him to admit 2 + 2 = 5 comes from an actual 1931 Soviet poster that reads, “2+2, plus workers’ enthusiasm = 5.”
– Although underground copies of 1984 and Animal Farm circulated in the Soviet Union, owning a copy could lead to five years in prison. “No wonder that on getting to the chapter where Winston Smith is reading the book, readers in the Soviet Union knew exactly how he felt,” writes Karp.
– Unlike 1984, which Soviet publications attacked, Soviet officials were scared to write anything about Animal Farm because it depicted Stalin as a pig.
– Soviet authorities ordered special translations of 1984 and Animal Farm, along with other works they banned for the populace, so they could read the works themselves.
Russia Meets Orwell’s Definition of Totalitarian
“The country is considered to be totalitarian when it is governed by a one-party dictatorship which does not permit legal opposition and crushes freedom of speech and the press,” according to Orwell. Karp writes that Putin achieved that control over time by commandeering the media, arresting or assassinating opponents and ensuring opposition candidates could not take power via free elections.
In 1946, George Orwell reviewed Soviet novelist Evgeny Zamyatin’s We. The book was written shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, and influenced Orwell’s work. Orwell quoted the utopia described in Zamyatin’s We: “The guiding principle of the State is that happiness and freedom are incompatible.”
When one removes the window dressing, that is the central message of all dictators: You can’t be happy or secure unless you give up your freedom and submit to being ruled with an iron fist poised above your head. Orwell’s message to Russians today is that freedom and happiness go together, and dictators will lie to promote tyranny over liberty.
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