Russian Revolution Animal Farm

The similarity between Animal Farm and the Russian Revolution is extremely blatant to anyone that is somewhat familiar to Russian history. The book tells how an entire farm of animals can talk and think like human beings, and then tells how they become the equivalent of the Russian government by trying to take over the farm in a Communistic fashion. The similarity between the book and the Russian Revolution can be shown in three major points: the symbolism behind the characters, the correspondence of events, and the usage of information censorship.

To begin with, the symbols the characters represent are either prominent groups or people that were part of the Russian Revolution. To begin with Old Major, the old wise boar that lives on the farm, symbolizes Karl Marx. In the book Old Major describes a perfect animal society and predicts a revolution to create it, but dies before the revolution begins. As shown in the Timeline of Select Events Karl Marx created, “…a revolutionary new idea: the political and social system called communism.” Also, Karl Marx dies before the revolution takes place. Another symbol is the character Napoleon. This pig wa

Joseph Stalin. Retreived: 9/28/03. URL:

The second similarity between the book and the Russian Revolution is correspondence of events. Many of the actions taken in Animal Farm are very much like the actions during the revolution. The animals all revolt and strike out at farmer for not feeding them and making them work hard hours and earn their freedom. They create a set of laws by which they would govern themselves. This is similar to physical revolution in Russia when workers rebel against tsar and eventually remove him from power. Then they change the laws, one of which abolishes the death penalty (Russian Revolution in Dates). Napoleon then removes Snowball from power, like Stalin did to Trotsky (Joseph Stalin). Then there is the beginning of work on the windmill on animal farm. One can compare this to the development of a five-year plan by Stalin to industrialize Russia. The later mass executions of people against the plan could be represented in execution of animals that reacted against Napoleon’s various campaigns (Stalin, Joseph (1879-1953), Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of Periodicals). Stalin continues his reign over Russian as Napoleon does in the end of the book.

Last, we have one of Stalin’s and Napoleon's most usefull tools, censorship of data. Continualy throughout the book Napoleon uses his

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