Animal Farm. A Fairy Story

Preface by Giancarlo Rossini

George Orwell (1903-1950) was a British writer, journalist and political activist, most famous today for Animal Farm and 1984, who joined the group of the great masterpieces of world literature.

Orwell was always very interested in politics and from a young age he developed a deep intellectual hatred of all types of totalitarianism, which he fought both on the front line and with his writings, both in non-fiction and fiction, during his short but intense existence. Political activism and writing were always closely intertwined in George Orwell Orwell's life: he first demonstrated this as a novelist when, in 1945, he published Animal Farm.

The animal farm tells in allegorical form, that of a farm where animals take power with a revolution, outlining a system in which some species are more equal, or more powerful than others, the birth of a dictatorial system inspired by that of the then Soviet Union, which in the years in which Orwell conceived this novel was structuring itself as a real totalitarian regime. In the leftist circles of Western Europe at that time there was not a little attention, and often even a certain admiration, for what was happening in Russia: with this novel Orwell intended to explicitly address his contemporaries, to open their eyes to the fact that, for when based on noble ideals, a dictatorship still remains a dictatorship.

Orwell, who had always declared himself a socialist, attracted a lot of hostility from British leftist circles when Animal Farm was first published. In 1945 Britain was still allied with Russia against Nazi Germany, and a similar book seemed to cast doubt on its patriotism. However, George Orwell was anything but unpatriotic, indeed: his was an intellectual struggle against all forms of totalitarianism.

Just in conjunction with the publication of Animal Farm, George Orwell released an essay entitled The Freedom of the Press which is placed in the preface to the novel. Unfortunately, Freedom of the Press was released to the public only many years after its author's death in 1972: its contents were too explicitly critical of the British media system. In this short essay, Orwell analyzes the mechanisms of censorship, but also of self-censorship, of any country considered free, such as Great Britain was in 1945. His current and prophetic gaze makes this essay still very interesting.

Preface by George Orwell

The Freedom of the Press

This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there would be great difficulty in getting it published (in spite of the present book shortage which ensures that anything describable as a book will sell), and in the event it was refused by four publishers.

Only one of these had any ideological motive. Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political colour. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:

I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think…I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time.

If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs∗. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence too many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

This kind of thing is not a good symptom. Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

Any fair-minded person with journalistic experience will admit that during this war official censorship has not been particularly irksome. We have not been subjected to the kind of totalitarian co-ordination that it might have been reasonable to expect. The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.

It is not quite clear whether this suggested modification is Mr…’s own idea, or originated with the Ministry of Information; but it seems to have the official ring about it.

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.

Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news, things which on their own merits would get the big headlines, being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that it wouldn’t do to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is not done to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was not done to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia.

Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance.

For though you are not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own. Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals. And throughout five years of war, during two or three of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets and articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. More, they have been published without exciting much disapproval. So long as the prestige of the USSR is not involved, the principle of free speech has been reasonably well upheld. There are other forbidden topics, and I shall mention some of them presently, but the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group.

The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astound-ing if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicised with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so. A particularly glaring case was that of Colonel Mihailovich, the Jugoslav Chetnik leader. The Russians, who had their own Jugoslav protegé in Marshal Tito, accused Mihailovich of collaborating with the Germans. This accusation was promptly taken up by the British press: Mihailovich’s supporters were given no chance of answering it, and facts contradicting it were simply kept out of print. In July of 1943 the Germans offered a reward of 100,000 gold crowns for the capture of Tito, and a similar reward for the capture of Mihailovich.

The British press splashed the reward for Tito, but only one paper mentioned (in small print) the reward for Mihailovich: and the charges of collaborating with the Germans continued. Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war. Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libelled in the English leftwing press, and any statement in their defence even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases. For example, shortly before his death Trotsky had written a biography of Stalin. One may assume that it was not an altogether unbiased book, but obviously it was saleable. An American publisher had arranged to issue it and the book was in print, I believe the review copies had been sent out, when the USSR entered the war. The book was immediately withdrawn.

Not a word about this has ever appeared in the British press, though clearly the existence of such a book, and its suppression, was a news item worth a few paragraphs.

It is important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the English literary