Animal Farm and the Russian Revolution:

Some parallels

Karl Marx

•German Historian with revolutionary economic theories.

•Wrote The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

•Advocated revolution by workers to overthrow capitalist governments.

Communism

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, once hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. Marx

The rich and the poor, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, have always been at war.

•The bourgeoisie continually seeks to gain more riches by exploiting the labor of the proletariat.

•The rich control the resources and power: land, money, education, positions of authority and government, and access to knowledge and skills.

•Wealth is continually consolidated and transferred into the hands of fewer and fewer people while more and more people labor and grow hungry.

•Eventually a worker’s revolution is inevitable.

After the Revolution:

• Workers will be free • State or worker

ownership of industry will prevent exploitation

• “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Marx

Some Russian History

• For hundreds of years Russia was ruled by a Czar (or Tsar) who ruled with complete autonomy.

• Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the Czar and a handful of nobles.

Russian history:

• Over 80% of the population were serfs, poor peasants who were essentially slaves.

• Although technically “freed,” they did not have freedom of speech, religion, movement, etc.

Czar Nicholas II• Nicholas II ruled from

1894-1917• Maintained an autocratic

system that suppressed any opposition and persecuted religious minorities.

• Russification• Defeated in Russo-

Japanese war (1904-05).

Bloody Sunday: 1/22/05

"We are treated as slaves who must bear their fate and be silent. We ask but little: to reduce the working day to eight hours and to provide a minimum wage of one ruble a day.” Father Gapon

200,000 unarmed people gathered outside the Czar’s Winter Palace to appeal for better working conditions.

Bloody Sunday: 1/22/05

Though the Czar was not present, his troops fired on the unarmed crowd, killing 500 and wounding over 3,000.

Revolution!

• Although the Czar eased his policies slightly, food shortages, worker revolts, strikes, and heavy losses in World War One led to the 1917 revolution

• Nicholas insisted on leading troops

• Rasputin

After Nicholas II steps down, he and his family are killed

Three main leaders of the Revolution

• 1. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin• Organized and led the

Bolshevik party• Staged a coup and seized

power in October 1917• Considered a hero of the

revolution

When Lenin died, millions flocked to see his corpse.

Second Revolutionary leader: Trotsky

• Helped engineer the coup in the Winter Palace.

• Visionary thinker with an aptitude for ideas and books.

• Led the Red Army• Kicked out of the

Communist party in 1927, exiled in 1929, and assassinated in in Mexico in 1940.

#3, Joseph Stalin, “Man of Steel”

• Fought with Trotsky for control after Lenin’s death.

• Brutal leader that instituted drastically increased levels of oppression and fear.

• Built “Cult of Personality”• Used the NKVD (KGB) as

his personal secret police force.

Stalin•Referred to as the “Father of the Country," "the Great and Wise Teacher," "the Friend of Mankind,” “Shining Sun,” “Great Teacher and Friend,” “Hope of the future for the workers and peasants of the world.”

•Main goals were collectivization (the concentration of land and assets in the hands of the state) and rapid industrialization (five-year plans).

•Held a series of “Show Trials” in which Communist Party members confessed to false crimes and were executed.

Stalin’s cult of personality

• Demanded total devotion and dedication

• Created the image that he was infallible

• Songs and Poems celebrated Stalin

“Lets raise a generation unconditionally loyal to the cause of communism"

"Beloved Stalin—a fortune of the nation!"

The Show Trials"Dumfounded, the world watched three plays in a row, three wide-ranging and expensive dramatic productions in which the powerful leaders of the fearless Communist Party, who had turned the entire world upside down and terrified it, now marched forth like doleful, obedient goats and bleated out everything they had been ordered to, vomited all over themselves, cringingly abased themselves and their convictions, and confessed to crimes they could not in any wise have committed." So writes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, adding: "This was unprecedented in remembered history." (The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 1, p. 408.)

Stalin’s PurgesIn order to seize land and eliminate perceived enemies (those without complete and total dedication to Stalin), Stalin ordered mass killings.

"In Kiev jail they are reported at this time [1929-30] shooting 70-120 men a night," reports Robert Conquest

Total dead from purges (a conservative estimate):

In the original version of his book The Great Terror, Robert Conquest gave the following estimates of those arrested, executed, and incarcerated during the height of the Purge:

Arrests, 1937-1938 - about 7 millionExecuted - about 1 millionDied in camps - about 2 millionIn prison, late 1938 - about 1 millionIn camps, late 1938 - about 8 million

"not more than 10 percent of those then in camp survived.”

Total dead: roughly ten million.

Story from CNNPictorial essay: Death trenches bear witness to Stalin's purges July 17, 1997Web posted at: 4:07 p.m. EDT (2007 GMT)

SANDERMAKH, Russia (CNN) -- Amid the low hills and picturesque streams of Karelia, a republic in northwest Russia, excavators unearthed more than 9,000 bodies of political prisoners -- a horrific reminder of the nation's past.

The bodies were found earlier this month by members of a Russian historical society known as Memorial. The victims were the result of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's purges of the 1930s, carried out by the NKVD, later known as the KGB.

Continued The victims were shot between October and November of 1937. Graves at Sandermakh in the Karelian woods were discovered after Memorial members and local authorities found written execution orders in the secret police archives. Memorial members found 130 trenches -- each containing 50 to 60 skeletons. The victims were stripped to their underwear, bound hand and foot and lined up along the trench edges. Each was then shot in the back of the head.

Memorial believes that the Karelian discovery sheds new light on Stalin's purges when an estimated 14 million Soviets died. And as the closed chapters of Soviet history are revealed, historians believe, many more graves like these will be found.

Following a memorial service in Sandermakh, the graves here were closed. The Russian historical plans to build a monument to honor the victims, but for now only surveyors' stakes remain to mark the graves.

Other groups represented in Animal Farm:

•Proletariat: common workers.

•Bourgeoisie: middle-class that made money from the work of the laborers.

•Intelligentsia: intellectuals who form an artistic, social, or political elite.

•Pravda: Soviet newspaper

The Church

• “The great Socialist October Revolution which liberated our people from slavery and gave them freedom, has also freed the Church from the shackles which impeded its internal activity.”

– Speech of M. G. Karpov at Council of the Orthodox Church, 1945.