George Orwell was one of the first authors who spoke openly against the threats of Stalinism, after he experienced the troubles with the Soviet secret police during the Spanish War, which made him write Animal Farm as an open criticism to the way Soviet Communism was developing under the leadership of Stalin back in 1945 when the book was first published.
This story of a group of animals on a farm, who rebel against their human masters, reflects in many ways the reality in Russia at the time before the World War II, associating not just the characters but also the plots with real events that have shaped the Soviet society under the dictatorship of Stalin. Orwell criticizes the corrupted leadership of the Russian revolution by identifying the main characters in his story with real people from the period of the Soviet Communism. The novel shows how ignorance, indifference, wickedness and greed can transform the communist society into a totalitarian or even tyrannical world of misery.
In a satirical way, Orwell, uses metaphors and personifies different kinds of animals to reflect real characters, exaggerating their weaknesses to the extent of disgust. Even at the very start, with the announcement that Old Major makes that he is going to die soon, inspiring the others to a revolution against the greedy humans, who put animals into such a misery, Orwell depicts Karl Marx and his vision of a communist society of equal comrades, while criticizing the ineffective capitalists of the Russian autocracy that preceded the Revolution, as incapable of taking care of their farm and animals, led by their greed and ignorance only.
"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for...