Chapter 36 Ukrainian edition preface

[In March 1947, Orwell wrote a special preface to the Ukrainian edition, which was published by the Ukrainian Diaspora Organization in Munich in November of the same year.The original Orwell manuscript is no longer available, and what is published here is a retranslation back into English from the Ukrainian translation. 〕 I was entrusted with writing a preface to the Ukrainian translation.I know very well that I am writing this preface for an audience I do not know at all, and I know that they probably never had the slightest chance of knowing me either. In this preface, they probably want me to talk about how I started, but first I want to talk about myself and the experience that formed my political attitude today.

I was born in India in 1903.My father was an officer in the British Executive there.My family is an ordinary middle-class family of soldiers, priests, government officials, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and so on.I was educated at Eton, the most expensive and snobby of the British public schools.But I only got in on a scholarship; otherwise, my father couldn't afford to send me to a school of this type. Shortly after leaving school (I was not yet 20 years old), I went to Burma to join the Indian Imperial Police Force.It was an armed police force, a sort of gendarmerie-like force, much like Spain's Internal Guard or France's Rangers.I served there for 5 years.It didn't suit my personality, and made me hate imperialism, although at that time Burmese nationalist sentiments were not very pronounced, and relations between the British and the Burmese were not particularly bad. In 1927 I resigned from my job on a sabbatical back in England and decided to become a writer.It wasn't particularly successful at first.Between 1928 and 1929 I lived in Paris and wrote short stories and novels that no one would publish (I later destroyed them all).In the next few years, my life was basically subsistence, day by day, and I went hungry several times.It was only from 1934 onwards that I was able to live off my income from writing.At the same time, I sometimes lived for months at a time among the poor and semi-criminals who lived in the worst parts of the poor neighbourhoods, or wandered the streets begging and stealing.At that time I joined them because I had no money, but later, their way of life itself aroused my great interest.I have spent many months, this time quite systematically, studying the condition of the miners in the north of England.Up to 1930, on the whole, I didn't think I was a socialist.In fact, I had no clear political views at the time.I became a socialist more out of a distaste for the oppression and neglect of a poorer section of the industrial worker than out of any theoretical aspirations for a planned society.

I got married in 1936.Almost that same week, civil war broke out in Spain.My wife and I both wanted to go to Spain and fight for the Spanish government.We were ready within six months as soon as the book I was working on was finished.In Spain I spent almost 6 months on the front line in Aragon until I was shot through the throat by a Fascist sniper in Huesca. In the early days of the war, foreigners were generally ignorant of the internal struggle between the various parties that supported the government.By a series of accidental events, instead of joining the international brigade, as most foreigners do, I joined the militia.

So in mid-1937, after the communists had gained control (or partial control) of the Spanish government and started persecuting the Trotskyists, my wife and I found ourselves among the persecuted.We were lucky to get out of Spain alive without being arrested even once.Many of our friends were shot, others spent long periods of time in prison, or simply disappeared. These raids in Spain took place at the same time as the great purges in the Soviet Union, and can be said to be a supplement to the great purges.It is the same in Spain as in the Soviet Union, the crime of attack (i.e. complicity with the fascists) is the same, but as far as Spain is concerned, I have every reason to believe that these attacks were unwarranted.All this experience was a valuable objective lesson: it taught me how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the public opinion of enlightened people in democracies.

My wife and I have seen innocent people thrown into prison simply because they were suspected of being unorthodox.But, on our return to England, we found that many enlightened and well-informed observers actually believed the grotesque reports of conspiracy, treason and sabotage which the press reported from the Moscow trial scene. Therefore, I also understand more clearly than before the negative influence of Soviet mythology on Western socialist movements. Here I must pause to say something about my attitude towards Soviet power. I have never been to Russia, I only know about it from books and newspapers.Even if I had the power, I would not want to interfere in the internal affairs of the USSR: I would not condemn Stalin and his colleagues simply because of their barbaric and undemocratic methods.It is quite possible that, even with the best intentions, this is the only way they could have acted in the circumstances of the time and place.

But on the other hand, it is extremely important to me that people in Western Europe see the real face of the Soviet regime.I have seen little evidence since 1930 that the USSR was moving in what we could really call socialism.Instead, I was taken aback by the obvious signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society.In such a society the rulers are as reluctant to relinquish power as any other ruling class.Moreover, neither the working class nor intellectuals in a country like Britain can understand that the Soviet Union today is nothing like it was in 1917.This is partly because they do not want to understand (that is, they want to believe that there is indeed a real socialist state somewhere), and partly because they are used to the relatively free and restrained environment of public life, totalitarianism is completely their own. Can't understand.

But you have to remember that the UK is not fully democratic.It is also a capitalist country with great class privileges and (even now, after a war that would make everyone equal) great disparity between rich and poor.But despite this, it is a country whose people have lived for hundreds of years without civil war, where the laws are relatively impartial, where official news and statistics can be trusted almost universally, and last, but not least, to hold and publish Minority opinion is not life-threatening.In such an atmosphere, things like concentration camps, mass forced removals, arrests without trial, censorship, etc., were not really understood by ordinary people.Everything he read about countries like the Soviet Union was automatically reduced to British concepts, and he accepted the lies of totalitarian propaganda naively.Up to 1939, and even since, most Britons were unable to appreciate the true nature of the Nazi regime in Germany, and now they remain largely under the same illusion about the Soviet regime.

This did great harm to the British socialist movement and had serious consequences for British foreign policy.Indeed, nothing seems to me to have done so much to the original idea of ​​socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist state and that every action of its rulers must be justified, if not imitated. Bigger corrosion. So for the past 10 years I have been convinced that it is necessary to dismantle the Soviet myth if we are to revive the socialist movement. When I returned from Spain, I wanted to expose Soviet mythology with a story that was accessible to almost everyone and could be easily translated into other languages.But the actual details of the story did not form in my mind for quite some time, and then finally one day (I was living in a small village in the country) I saw a little boy, about 10 years old, driving a horse The big horse of the cart was walking on a narrow path, and the boy whipped the horse whenever it tried to turn, it reminded me that if these animals knew their own strength, we couldn't control them, humans exploit animals Just like the rich exploit the proletariat.

So I set out to analyze it from the animal's point of view.It is clear to them that the notion of a class struggle among humans is pure illusion, because as soon as it becomes necessary to exploit cattle, all men unite against them: the real struggle is between cattle and men.Starting from this point, it is not difficult to conceive a story.But I didn't do it until 1943, because I had been doing other work and had no time.Finally, I included some big events like the Tehran Conference, which was taking place while I was writing.In this way, the main outline of the story existed in my head for 6 years before I actually started writing it.

I do not wish to comment on this work.If it doesn't speak for itself, it's a failure.But I want to emphasize two points: First, although some episodes are taken from the real history of the Russian Revolution, they are reduced and their chronological order is reversed, which is necessary for the completeness of the story.The second is what most critics ignore, probably because I haven't emphasized it enough.After reading this book, many readers may have the impression that it ends with a complete reconciliation between pigs and humans.This was not my intention; on the contrary, I intended to end on a rather dissonant high note, since I am writing this right after the Tehran Conference, which was then believed to have established possible limits for the Soviet Union and the West. best relationship.I personally don't think this good relationship will last long, and it turns out that I was not wrong...