Animal Farm is the world's most famous (modern) animal fable and, together with the same author's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), one of the world's best known political allegories. Orwell developed his analysis of Stalinist communism during the Spanish Civil War after his experience in Barcelona, in 1937, of the violent suppression by Communist forces of POUM, the anarchist militia of which he was a member. In his account of events in Spain, Homage to Catalonia (1939), he further developed his conviction that Soviet communism had lost its original impulses for freedom and justice. Animal Farm, which Orwell worked on during the War, is the brilliant realisation of his understanding of the Russian Revolution

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Published 20 September 2002

Citation: Hopkins, Chris. "Animal Farm". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 September 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6595, accessed 9 February 2010.]