It is Time That We Pay Tribute to the Absolutely Unique Insights of Christopher Hitchens, Is It Not?
'The most blatant of these [alterations of the historical record in
Orwell's Animal Farm] concerns the character of Napoleon. It is clear
that Napoleon represents Stalin, just as Old Major is Marx and Snowball
is Trotsky. Who then represents Lenin? Since Orwell depicts the
Rebellion as led by two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, one is forced to
the conclusion that Napoleon also represents Lenin. Thus in Animal Farm
the figures of Lenin and Stalin are merged into one character. This is
of enormous ideological significance. The dominant orthodoxies both
West and East have always insisted, each for its own reasons, on the
continuity of Leninism and Stalinism: the former to discredit Marxism
and the revolution itself as the inevitable prelude to tyranny, the
latter to claim for themselves the heritage of the great
revolutionary....If Animal Farm had contained a separate Lenin figure,
this would not in itself have resolved the matter (any more than it
does in real life), but it would at least have permitted the continuity
to have been questioned within the terms of the text. As it is the
merger of Lenin and Stalin in Napoleon forecloses on this possibility,
and greatly strengthens the impression of a smooth and inevitable
degeneration into dictatorship'.
John Molyneux, 'Animal Farm Revisited', International Socialism journal 44, (Autumn 1989).
'For a Marxist, Orwell's depiction of the rise and fall of the Russian Revolution in 'Animal Farm' is rather problematic due, in part, to his apparent conflation of Lenin and Stalin into one character - Napoleon - or rather the absence of a 'Lenin' character altogether. This implies Leninism led to Stalinism in a crude and ahistorical manner.'
'Snowball', 'A quick question about George Orwell', Histomat blog, 22 August 2005.
'There is, however, one very salient omission. There is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig...Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time (and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face).'
Christopher Hitchens, 'Where is the Lenin pig in Animal Farm?', The Guardian, 17 April 2010.
(via Histomat)
John Molyneux, 'Animal Farm Revisited', International Socialism journal 44, (Autumn 1989).
'For a Marxist, Orwell's depiction of the rise and fall of the Russian Revolution in 'Animal Farm' is rather problematic due, in part, to his apparent conflation of Lenin and Stalin into one character - Napoleon - or rather the absence of a 'Lenin' character altogether. This implies Leninism led to Stalinism in a crude and ahistorical manner.'
'Snowball', 'A quick question about George Orwell', Histomat blog, 22 August 2005.
'There is, however, one very salient omission. There is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig...Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time (and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face).'
Christopher Hitchens, 'Where is the Lenin pig in Animal Farm?', The Guardian, 17 April 2010.
(via Histomat)
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