George Orwell short biography. Biography of George Orwell Memoirs and Documentaries

George Orwell- British writer and publicist. Known as the author of the cult dystopian novel “1984” and the story “Animal Farm”. Real name Eric Arthur Blair

Was born June 25, 1903 in India in the town of Mokhitari. His father was at that time working in India as a British employee in a department.

Studied at the school of St. Cyprian, received a personal scholarship in 1917 and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927, he served in the colonial police in Burma, then spent a long time in Great Britain and Europe, living at odd jobs, and then began writing fiction and journalism.

In 1935 he took on the pseudonym George Orwell. During the civil war, he moved to Spain and fought on the side of the militia. He later described these events in the story “In Honor of Catalonia” (1937).

He got married in 1936, and six months later he and his wife went to the Aragonese front of the Spanish Civil War

In 1945, his satirical story “Animal Farm” was published. It was dedicated to the rebirth of revolutionary views.

In addition, he wrote many essays and articles on the topic of social-critical development of society. During the Second World War, he worked as a commentator for the BBC and produced a wide range of political and cultural programs. In Britain he lived mainly on the island of Jura with his wife Ailey. The couple had an adopted child. When Orwell's wife died in 1945, he remarried Sonia Bronel, assistant editor of Horizon magazine. This marriage did not last long.

Eric Arthur Blair was born in the city of Motihari, India, whose territory at that time was a British colony. His father held one of the ordinary positions in the Opium Department of the colony administration, and his mother was the only daughter of a tea merchant from Burma. While still a child, Eric, along with his mother and older sister, went to England, where the boy received his education - first at Eastbourne Primary School, and then at the prestigious Eton College, where he studied on a special scholarship. After graduating from college in 1921, the young man devoted himself to serving in the Burma Police for five years (1922 - 1927), but dissatisfaction with imperial rule led to his resignation. This period in the life of Eric Blair, who very soon took the pseudonym George Orwell, is marked by one of his most famous novels, Days in Burma, which was published in 1936 under a pseudonym.

After Burma, young and free, he went to Europe, where he eked out a living from one odd job to another, and upon returning home he firmly decided to become a writer. During this time, Orwell wrote an equally impressive novel, Pounds of Dashing in Paris and London, which tells the story of his life in two of Europe's largest cities. This creation consisted of two parts, each of which described the brightest moments of his life in each of the capitals.

Beginning of a writing career

In 1936, Orwell, already a married man at that time, went with his wife to Spain, where the civil war was in full swing. After spending about a year in the combat zone, he returned to the UK involuntarily - a wound to the throat by a fascist sniper required treatment and further removal from hostilities. While in Spain, Orwell fought in the ranks of the militia formed by the anti-Stalinist communist party POUM, a Marxist organization that existed in Spain since the early 1930s. An entire book is dedicated to this period in the writer’s life - “In Honor of Catalonia” (1937), in which he talks in detail about his days at the front.

However, British publishers did not appreciate the book and subjected it to severe censorship - Orwell had to “cut out” any statements that spoke of terror and complete lawlessness that was happening in the republican country. The editor-in-chief was adamant - in the conditions of fascist aggression, it was under no circumstances possible to cast even the slightest shadow on socialism, and even more so on the abode of this phenomenon - the USSR. The book finally saw the world in 1938, but was received rather coldly - the number of copies sold during the year did not exceed 50 pieces. This war made Orwell an avid opponent of communism, deciding to join the ranks of the English socialists.

civil position

Orwell's writings from early 1936 onward, as he himself admitted in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), had anti-totalitarian overtones and extolled democratic socialism. In the eyes of the writer, the Soviet Union was one complete disappointment, and the revolution that took place in the Land of the Soviets, in his opinion, not only did not bring to power a classless society as previously promised by the Bolsheviks, but on the contrary - even more ruthless and unprincipled people were “at the helm” than before. Orwell, without hiding his hatred, spoke about the USSR, and considered Stalin to be the real embodiment of evil.

When news of Germany's attack on the USSR became known in 1941, Orwell could not have imagined that very soon Churchill and Stalin would become allies. At this time, the writer kept a war diary, the entries in which tell of his indignation, and then surprise himself: “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I would have the opportunity to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!”, Well, I did!” - he wrote after a while.

Orwell sincerely hoped that as a result of the war, socialists would come to power in Great Britain, and ideological socialists, and not formal ones, as often happened. However, this did not happen. The events unfolding in the writer’s homeland and in the world as a whole depressed Orwell, and the constant growth of the influence of the Soviet Union even drove him into a protracted depression. The writer was finally crippled by the death of his wife, who was his ideological inspirer and closest person. However, life went on and he had to put up with it.

The author's main works

George Orwell was one of the few authors of that time who not only did not sing odes to the Soviet Union, but also tried to describe in all colors the horror of the Soviet system. Orwell’s main “opponent” in this conventional competition of ideologies was Hewlett Johnson, who received the nickname “Red Abbot” in his native England - in every work he praised Stalin, expressing his admiration for the country that was subordinate to him in every possible way. Orwell still managed to win, albeit formally, in this unequal battle, but, unfortunately, posthumously.

The book Animal Farm, written by the writer between November 1943 and February 1944, was an obvious satire on the Soviet Union, which at that time was still an ally of Great Britain. No publishing house undertook to publish this work. Everything changed with the beginning of the Cold War - Orwell's satire was finally appreciated. The book, which most saw as a satire on the Soviet Union, was largely a satire on the West itself. Orwell did not have to see the huge success and millions of copies of sales of his book - the recognition was already posthumous.

The Cold War changed the lives of many, especially those who supported the policies and system of the Soviet Union - now they either completely disappeared from the radar or changed their position to the opposite. Orwell’s previously written but unpublished novel “1984” came in very handy, which was later called “the canonical anti-communist work”, “the Cold War manifesto” and many other epithets, which were undoubtedly recognition of Orwell’s writing talent.

"Animal Farm" and "1984" are dystopian films written by one of the greatest publicists and writers in history. Telling mainly about the horrors and consequences of totalitarianism, they, fortunately, were not prophetic, but it is simply impossible to deny the fact that at the present time they are acquiring a completely new sound.

Personal life

In 1936, George Orwell married Elin O'Shaughnessy, with whom they went through many trials, including the Spanish War. Over the many years of marriage, the couple never had their own children, and only in 1944 did they adopt a one-month-old boy, who was named Richard. However, very soon the joy gave way to great grief - on March 29, 1945, during the operation, Elin passed away. Orwell suffered the loss of his wife painfully; for a certain time he even became a hermit, settling on an almost deserted island on the coast of Scotland. It was during this difficult time that the writer completed the novel “1984”.

A year before his death, in 1949, Orwell married a second time to a girl named Sonia Bronel, who was 15 years younger than him. Sonya at that time worked as an assistant editor at Horizon magazine. However, the marriage lasted only three months - on January 21, 1950, the writer died in the ward of a London hospital from tuberculosis. Shortly before this, his creation “1984” saw the world.

• Orwell is actually the originator of the term "Cold War", often used in the political sphere to this day.
• Despite the clearly expressed anti-totalitarian position expressed by the writer in every work, he was for some time suspected of having connections with the communists.
• The Soviet slogan, heard by Orwell at one time from the lips of the communists, “Give a five-year plan in four years!” was used in the novel "1984" in the form of the famous formula "twice two equals five." The phrase once again ridiculed the Soviet regime.
• In the post-war period, George Orwell hosted a program on the BBC, which touched on a wide variety of topics - from political to social.

George Orwell is the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, who was born in 1903 in the Indian village of Motihari on the border with Nepal. At that time, India was part of the British Empire, and the father of the future writer, Richard Blair, served in one of the departments of the Indian administration of Great Britain. The writer's mother was the daughter of a French merchant. Although Richard Blair faithfully served the British Crown until his retirement in 1912, the family did not make a fortune, and when Eric was eight years old, it was with some difficulty that he was sent to a private preparatory school in Sussex. A few years later, having demonstrated extraordinary academic abilities, the boy received a scholarship on a competitive basis for further studies at Eton, the most privileged private school in Great Britain, which opened the way to Oxford or Cambridge. Later, in the essay “Why I Write,” Orwell recalled that already at the age of five or six he knew for sure that he would be a writer, and at Eton the circle of his literary passions was determined - Swift, Stern, Jack London. It is possible that it was the spirit of adventure and adventurism in the works of these writers that influenced Eric Blair's decision to turn away from the beaten path of an Eton graduate and join the imperial police, first in India, then in Burma. In 1927, disillusioned with the ideals and the system he served, E. Blair resigns and settles on Portobello Road, in a quarter of the London poor, then leaves for Paris, the center of European bohemia. However, the future writer did not lead a bohemian lifestyle; he lived in a working-class neighborhood, earning money by washing dishes, absorbing experiences and impressions that the writer George Orwell would later melt into novels and numerous essays.

J. Orwell’s first book “Burmese Everyday Life” (on the site “Days in Burma” translated by V. Domiteyeva - Burmese Days) was published in 1934 and tells the story of years spent serving in the colonies of the British Empire. The first publication was followed by the novel “The Priest’s Daughter” ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) and a number of works on a wide variety of issues - politics, art, literature. J. Orwell was always a politically engaged writer, shared the romanticism of the “Red 30s”, was concerned about the inhuman working conditions of English miners, and emphasized class inequality in English society. At the same time, he treated the idea of ​​English socialism and “proletarian solidarity” with distrust and irony, since socialist views were more popular among intellectuals and those who belonged to the middle class, far from being the most disadvantaged. Orwell seriously doubted their sincerity and revolutionary nature.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the writer’s socialist sympathies brought him into the ranks of the Spanish Republicans when civil war broke out there. He goes to Spain at the end of 1936 as a correspondent for the BBC and the London Observer newspaper. Orwell was fascinated by the atmosphere of equality and militant brotherhood that he felt upon his arrival in Barcelona. Socialism seemed to be a reality, and, after undergoing basic military training, the writer went to the front, where he received a serious throat wound. Orwell described those days in the documentary book “In Honor of Catalonia” (on the website “In Memory of Catalonia” - Homage to Catalonia, 1938), where he sang of friends in arms, the spirit of brotherhood, where there was no “blind obedience”, where there was “almost complete equality of officers and soldiers.” While in hospital after being wounded, Orwell would write to a friend: “I witnessed amazing things and finally really believed in Socialism, which was not the case before.”

However, the writer also learned another lesson. There, in Catalonia, a newspaper La Batalla, the organ of the Spanish United Marxist Workers' Party, in whose ranks J. Oruedel fought, back in 1936, condemned the political trials in Moscow and the Stalinist massacre of many old Bolsheviks. However, even before leaving for Spain, Orwell was aware of the mass processes, which he called “political murders,” but, unlike most English leftists, he believed that what was happening in Russia was not the “offensive of capitalism,” but a “disgusting perversion of Socialism.” .

With the passion of a neophyte, Orwell defended the original “moral concepts of socialism” - “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice,” the process of deformation of which he captured in the satirical allegory “Animal Farm”. The actions of some Republicans in Spain and the brutal practices of Stalin's repressions shook his faith in the ideals of socialism. Orwell understood the utopian nature of building a classless society and the baseness of human nature, which is characterized by cruelty, conflict, and the desire to rule over one’s own kind. The writer’s anxieties and doubts were reflected in his most famous and frequently cited novels - “Animal Farm” and “”.

The history of the publication of Animal Farm is complicated. (Animal Farm: A Fairy Story), this “fairy tale with political significance,” as the author himself defined the genre of the book. Having completed work on the manuscript in February 1944, Orwell, after the refusal of several publishing houses, was able to publish it only in 1945. Publishers were scared off by the openly anti-Stalinist (according to Orwell himself) nature of the book. But the war was going on, and in the face of the threat of fascist slavery, the Moscow political processes and the Soviet-German non-aggression pact were pushed to the periphery of public consciousness - the freedom of Europe was at stake. At that time and in those conditions, criticism of Stalinism was inevitably associated with an attack against the fighting Russia, despite the fact that Orwell defined his attitude towards fascism back in the 30s, having taken up arms to defend Republican Spain. During the Second World War, George Orwell works for the BBC, then as a newspaper literary editor, and at the end of the war as a reporter in Europe. After the end of the war, the writer settled on the coast in Scotland, where he completed the novel 1984, which was published in 1949. The writer died in January 1950.

In our country, the novel became known to a wide readership in 1988, when three satirical dystopias were published in different magazines: “We” by E. Zamyatin, “Brave New World” by O. Huxley and “Animal Farm” by J. Orwell. During this period, there is a revaluation of not only Soviet, but also Russian literature abroad and the work of foreign authors. The books of those Western writers who were excommunicated from the Soviet mass reader because they allowed themselves to make critical statements about us, those who were disgusted in our reality by what today we ourselves do not accept and reject, are being actively translated. This primarily applies to satirical writers, those who, due to the specific nature of their mocking and caustic muse, are the first to make a diagnosis, noticing signs of social ill health.

During the same period, a long-term taboo was lifted from another dystopia by George Orwell - “1984”, a novel that was either hushed up in our country or interpreted as anti-Soviet, reactionary. The position of critics who wrote about Orwell in the recent past can be explained to some extent. The whole truth about Stalinism was not yet available, that abyss of lawlessness and atrocities against classes and entire nations, the truth about the humiliation of the human spirit, mockery of free thought (about the atmosphere of suspicion, the practice of denunciations and much, much more that historians and publicists revealed to us , as told in the works of A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Grossman, A. Rybakov, M. Dudintsev, D. Granin, Yu. Dombrovsky, V. Shalamov and many others. At the same time, Stalin’s barracks socialism was perceived by many as an inevitability, a given, without alternatives: one born in captivity does not notice it.

Apparently, one can get the “sacred horror” of the Soviet critic, who already read in the second paragraph of “1984” about a poster where “a huge face, more than a meter wide, was depicted: the face of a man about forty-five years old, with a thick black mustache, rough, but attractive in a masculine way... On each landing the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you stood, your eyes would not let you go. "BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU"- read the inscription” [hereinafter quoted from: “1984”, New World: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 1989. Translation: V.P. Golyshev], a clear allusion to the “father of nations” could dull the sharpness of critical perception works.

But the paradox is that in the essay “Why I Write,” Orwell defines his task as a critique of socialism from the right, rather than an attack on the left. He admitted that every line he had written since 1936 "was directly or indirectly directed against totalitarianism in defense of Democratic Socialism, as I understand it." "Animal Farm" is not only an allegory of the Russian revolution, but also tells of the difficulties and problems that can be encountered in building any just society, no matter what the beautiful ideals of its leaders. Excessive ambitions, hypertrophied egoism and hypocrisy can lead to the perversion and betrayal of these ideals.

The characters in Animal Farm, rebelling against the tyranny of farm owner Jones, proclaim a society where “all animals are equal.” Their revolutionary slogans are reminiscent of the seven biblical commandments, which everyone must strictly follow. But the inhabitants of Animal Farm pass their first idealistic phase, the phase of egalitarianism, very quickly and come first to the usurpation of power by pigs, and then to the absolute dictatorship of one of them - a boar named Napoleon. As the pigs try to imitate the behavior of people, the content of the commandment slogans gradually changes. When the piglets occupy Jones's bedroom, thereby violating the commandment "No animal shall sleep on a bed," they amend it - "No animal shall sleep on a bed with sheets." Imperceptibly, not only a substitution of slogans and a shift in concepts is taking place, but also a restoration status quo ante, only in an even more absurd and perverted form, for the “enlightened” power of man. gives way to bestial tyranny, the victims of which are almost all the inhabitants of the farm, with the exception of the local elite - members of the pig committee (pig committee) and their faithful guard dogs, whose ferocious appearance resembled wolves.

Painfully recognizable events take place in the barnyard: Napoleon's rival in an incendiary political debate, Snowball, nicknamed Cicero, is expelled from the farm. He is deprived of the honors honestly won in the historical Battle of the Cowshed, won by free animals over their neighboring farmers. Moreover, Cicero is declared a spy of Jones - and fluff and feathers are already flying on the farm (literally), and even heads are being chopped off by stupid chickens and ducks for their “voluntary” confession of “criminal” connections with the “spy” Cicero. The final betrayal of "Animalism" - the teachings of the late theorist, the hog named Major - occurs with the replacement of the main slogan "All animals are equal" with the slogan "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." And then the anthem “Live cattle, livestock without rights” is prohibited and the democratic address “comrade” is abolished. In the last episode of this incredible story, the surviving inhabitants of the farm contemplate with horror and amazement through the window a pig's feast, where the farm's worst enemy, Mr. Pilkington, proposes a toast to the prosperity of the Animal Farm. The pigs stand on their hind legs (which is also prohibited by the commandment), and their snouts are no longer distinguishable among the drunken faces of people.

As befits a satirical allegory, each character is the bearer of one or another idea and embodies a certain social type. In addition to the cunning and insidious Napoleon, the system of characters in Animal Farm includes the political projector Cicero; a pig named Squealer, a demagogue and a sycophant; the young filly Molly, ready to sell her newfound freedom for a piece of sugar and bright ribbons, because even on the eve of the uprising she was occupied with the only question - “will there be sugar after the uprising?”; a flock of sheep, appropriately and inappropriately singing “Four legs are good, two legs are bad”; old donkey Benjamin, whose worldly experience tells him not to join any of the opposing parties.

In satire, irony, grotesque and piercing lyricism rarely coexist, because satire, unlike lyricism, appeals to reason, not to feelings. Orwell manages to combine seemingly incompatible things. Pity and compassion are evoked by the narrow-minded, but endowed with enormous power, horse Boxer. He is not experienced in political intrigue, but honestly pulls his weight and is ready to work for the benefit of the farm even more, even harder, until powerful forces abandon him - and then he is taken to the knacker. In Orwell’s sympathy for the toiling Boxer, one cannot help but see his sincere sympathy for the peasantry, whose simple lifestyle and hard work the writer respected and appreciated, because they “mixed their sweat with the earth” and; therefore have a greater right to land than the gentry (lesser nobility) or the "upper middle class". Orwell believed that the true guardians of traditional values ​​and morality are ordinary people, and not intellectuals vying for power and prestigious positions. (However, the writer’s attitude towards the latter was not so clear.)

Orwell is an English writer to the core. His “Englishness” was manifested in everyday life, in his “amateurism” (Orwell did not receive a university education); dressing in an eccentric manner; in love for the land (my own goat was walking in my own garden); close to nature (he shared the ideas of simplification); in adherence to traditions. But at the same time, Orwell was never characterized by “island” thinking or intellectual snobbery. He was well acquainted with Russian and French literature, closely followed the political life of not only Europe, but also other continents, and always considered himself a “political writer.”

His political engagement manifested itself with particular force in the novel “1984,” a dystopian novel, a warning novel. There is an opinion that “1984” means the same thing for English literature of the 20th century as “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes, a masterpiece of English political philosophy, means for the 17th century. Hobbes, like Orwell, tried to solve a cardinal question for his time: who in a civilized society should have power, and what is the attitude of society towards the rights and responsibilities of the individual. But perhaps the most noticeable influence on Orwell was the work of the classic English satire Jonathan Swift. Without Swiftian Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, Animal Farm could hardly have appeared, continuing the tradition of dystopia and political satire. In the 20th century, a synthesis of these genres emerged - a satirical utopia, dating back to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We,” completed in 1920 and first published in the West in 1924. It was followed by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's 1984 (1949).

Isaac Deutscher in his book “Heretics and Renegades” claims that the author of “1984” borrowed all the main plots from E. Zamyatin. At the same time, there is an indication that by the time he became acquainted with the novel “We,” Orwell had already matured the concept of his own satirical utopia. American professor Gleb Struve, an expert on Russian literature, told Orwell about Zamyatin's novel, and then sent him a French translation of the book. In a letter to Struve dated February 17, 1944, Orwell writes: “I am very interested in literature of this kind, I am even taking notes myself for my own book, which I will write sooner or later.”

In the novel “We,” Zamyatin depicts a society that is a thousand years removed from the 20th century. The United State rules on Earth, having conquered the world as a result of the Two Hundred Years' War and fencing itself off from it with the Green Wall. The inhabitants of the United State - numbers (everything in the state is impersonal) - is ruled by the "skillful heavy hand of the Benefactor", and the "experienced eye of the Guardians" looks after them. Everything in the United State is rationalized, regulated, regulated. The goal of the State is “an absolutely precise solution to the problem of happiness.” True, according to the narrator (mathematician), number D-503, the United State has not yet been able to completely solve this problem, for there are “Personal Clocks established by the Tablet.” In addition, from time to time “traces of a hitherto elusive organization are discovered that sets itself the goal of liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State.”

The author of a satirical utopia, as a rule, is based on contemporary trends, then, using irony, hyperbole, grotesque - this “building material” of satire, projects them into the distant future. The logic of an intellectual, the keen eye of a writer, the intuition of an artist allowed E. I. Zamyatin to predict a lot: the dehumanization of man, his rejection of Nature, dangerous trends in science and machine production that turn a person into a “bolt”: if necessary, a “bent bolt” could always be “throw it away” without stopping the eternal, great progress of the entire “Machine”.

The time of action in O. Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” is the year 632 of the “era of stability.” The motto of the World State is “Commonality, Sameness, Stability.” This society seems to represent a new round in the development of Zamyatin’s United State. Expediency and its derivative, caste, reign here. Children are not born, they are hatched by the “Central London Hatchery and created in an educational center”, where, thanks to injections and a certain temperature and oxygen regime, alphas and betas, gammas, deltas and epsilons grow from the egg, each with its own programmed properties, designed to perform certain functions in society .

The hedonistic societies created by the imagination of Zamyatin and Huxley are mainly aimed at consumption: “every man, woman and child was obliged to consume so much annually for the prosperity of industry.” A whole army of hypnopedists are engaged in brainwashing in the “brave new world”, instilling in alphas, betas and everyone else, recipes for happiness, which, when repeated a hundred times three times a week for four years, become “truth”. Well, if minor upsets happen, there is always a daily dose of “soma” that allows you to detach yourself from them, or a “super-singing, synthetic-speech, color stereoscopic sensory film with synchronous olfactory accompaniment” that serves the same purpose.

The society of the future in the novels of E. Zamyatin and O. Huxley is based on the philosophy of hedonism; the authors of satirical dystopias admit the possibility of at least hypnopaedic and synthetic “happiness” for future generations. Orwell rejects the idea of ​​even illusory social welfare. Despite advances in science and technology, “the dream of a future society—incredibly rich, leisurely, orderly, efficient, a shining, antiseptic world of glass, steel, and snow-white concrete” could not be realized “partly because of the impoverishment caused by the long history of life.” a series of wars and revolutions, partly due to the fact that scientific and technological progress was based on empirical thinking, which could not survive in a strictly regulated society" [cited from: New World, No. 3, 1989, p. 174], the contours of which Orwell, who had a surprisingly keen political vision, already discerned on the European horizon. In a society of this type, a small clique rules, which, in essence, is a new ruling class. “Frenzied nationalism” and “deification of the leader”, “constant conflicts” are integral features of an authoritarian state. Only “democratic values, the guardians of which are the intelligentsia,” can resist them.

Orwell's irrepressible imagination was fed by themes and plots not only of Soviet reality. The writer also uses “pan-European subjects”: the pre-war economic crisis, total terror, the extermination of dissidents, the brown plague of fascism creeping across European countries. But, to our shame, “1984” predicted much of our modern Russian history. Some passages of the novel coincide almost word for word with examples of our best journalism, which spoke about spy mania, denunciations, and falsification of history. These coincidences are mainly factual: neither a deep historical understanding of this or that negative phenomenon, nor its angry statement can compete in the power of exposure and impact on the reader with effective satire, which includes mocking irony and caustic sarcasm, caustic mockery and striking invective. But for satire to take place and hit the target, it must be associated with humor, ridicule, through the general category of the comic, and thereby cause rejection and rejection of the negative phenomenon. Bertolt Brecht argued that laughter is “the first undue manifestation of a proper life.”

Perhaps the leading means of satirical interpretation in “1984” is the grotesque: everything in Ingsoc society is illogical and absurd. Science and technological progress serve only as instruments of control, management and suppression. Orwell's total satire strikes all the institutions of a totalitarian state: the ideology of the party slogans reads: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength); the economy (the people, except members of the Inner Party, are starving, coupons for tobacco and chocolate have been introduced); science (the history of society is endlessly rewritten and embellished, however, geography is no more fortunate - there is a continuous war for the redistribution of territories); justice (the inhabitants of Oceania are spied on by the “thought police”, and for a “thought crime” or “face crime” the convicted person can not only be crippled morally or physically, but even “pulverized”).

The telescreen continuously “spewed out fabulous statistics, processing the mass consciousness.” Half-starved people, dull from meager living, from fear of committing a “personal or mental crime,” were surprised to learn that “there was more food, more clothing, more houses, more pots, more fuel,” etc. Society, the telescreen broadcast, was “rapidly rising to new and new heights.” [quoted from: New World, No. 2, 1989, p. 155.] In the Ingsoc society, the party ideal depicted “something gigantic, menacing, sparkling: a world of steel and concrete, monstrous machines and terrible weapons, a country of warriors and fanatics who march in a single formation, think one thought, shout one slogan, three hundred million people work tirelessly, fight, triumph, punish—three hundred million people, and all look the same.”

And again Orwell’s satirical arrows reach their target - we recognize ourselves, yesterday, “forging labor victories”, “fought on the labor front”, entering into “battles for the harvest”, reporting on “new achievements”, marching in a single column “from victory to victory” ”, who recognized only “unanimity” and professed the principle of “all as one”. Orwell turned out to be surprisingly prescient, noticing a pattern between the standardization of thinking and the cliché of language. Orwell's “newspeak” was intended not only to provide symbolic means for the worldview and mental activity of “Ingsoc” adherents, but also to make any dissent impossible. It was assumed that when “Newspeak” was established forever, and “Oldspeak” was forgotten, unorthodox, that is, alien to “Ingsots,” thought, in so far as it is expressed in words, would become literally unthinkable.” In addition, the task of “newspeak” was to make speech, especially on ideological topics, independent of consciousness. The party member had to utter “correct” judgments automatically, “like a machine gun firing a burst.”

Fortunately, Orwell did not guess everything. But the author of the novel-warning should not have strived for this. He only brought the socio-political trends of his time to their logical (or absurd?) end. But even today Orwell is perhaps the most widely quoted foreign writer.

The world has changed for the better (Hmm... is that true? O. Doug (2001)), but the warnings and calls of George Orwell should not be ignored. History has a habit of repeating itself.

Cand. Philol. Sciences, Associate Professor
N. A. Zinkevich, 2001

____
N. A. Zinkevich: “George Orwell”, 2001
Published:
Animal Farm. Moscow. Publishing house "Citadel". 2001.

British writer and publicist

short biography

George Orwell(eng. George Orwell, real name Eric Arthur Blair, English Eric Arthur Blair; 25 June 1903, Motihari, British India - 21 January 1950, London) - British writer and publicist. He is best known as the author of the cult dystopian novel 1984 and the story Animal Farm. He introduced the term cold war into political language, which later became widely used.

Eric Arthur Blair was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari (India) in the family of an employee of the Opium Department of the British colonial administration of India - a British intelligence service that controlled the production and storage of opium before its export to China. His father's position - "assistant junior deputy commissioner of the opium department, fifth class officer" - was described by literary critic Terry Eagleton as "like being made for a Monty Python show."

He received his primary education at St. Cyprian (Eastbourne), where he studied from 8 to 13 years old. In 1917 he received a personal scholarship and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927, he served in the colonial police in Burma, then spent a long time in Great Britain and Europe, living at odd jobs, and then began writing fiction and journalism. Already in Paris, he arrived with the firm intention of becoming a writer; the Orwellian scholar V. Nedoshivin characterizes the way of life he knew there as “a rebellion akin to Tolstoy’s.” Starting with the story “Rashing Pounds in Paris and London” (1933), based on autobiographical material, he was published under a pseudonym "George Orwell."

Already at the age of 30, he would write in verse: “I am a stranger at this time.”.

He got married in 1936, and six months later he and his wife went to the Aragonese front of the Spanish Civil War. Fighting in the ranks of the militia formed by the anti-Stalinist communist party POUM, he encountered manifestations of factional struggle among the left. He spent almost six months in the war until he was wounded in the throat by a fascist sniper in Huesca. Having arrived from Spain to Great Britain as a leftist opponent of Stalinism, he joined the Independent Labor Party.

During the Second World War he hosted an anti-fascist program on the BBC.

Creation

Orwell's first major work (and the first work signed by this pseudonym) was the autobiographical story "Rough Pounds in Paris and London", published in 1933. This story, based on real events in the author's life, consists of two parts. The first part describes the life of a poor man in Paris, where he did odd jobs, mainly working as a dishwasher in restaurants. The second part describes homeless life in and around London.

The second work, the story “Days in Burma” (published in 1934), is also based on autobiographical material: from 1922 to 1927 Orwell served in the colonial police in Burma. The stories “How I Shot an Elephant” and “Execution by Hanging” were written on the same colonial material.

During the Spanish Civil War, Orwell fought on the Republican side in the ranks of the POUM, a party that was outlawed in June 1937 for “aiding the fascists.” About these events he wrote the documentary story “In Memory of Catalonia” (English: Homage to Catalonia; 1936) and the essay “Remembering the War in Spain” (1943, fully published in 1953).

In the story “Animal Farm” (1945), the writer showed the degeneration of revolutionary principles and programs. “Animal Farm” is a parable, an allegory of the 1917 revolution and subsequent events in Russia.

The dystopian novel “1984” (1949) became an ideological continuation of “Animal Farm”, in which Orwell depicted a possible future world society as a totalitarian hierarchical system based on sophisticated physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear, hatred and denunciation. In this book, the famous expression “Big Brother is watching you” (or, in Viktor Golyshev’s translation, “Big Brother is watching you”) was first heard, and the now widely known terms “doublethink”, “thought crime”, “newspeak” were introduced. “truthfulness”, “speech cracker”.

He also wrote many essays and articles of a socio-critical and cultural nature.

The complete 20-volume collected works of Orwell (English: The Complete Works of George Orwell) have been published in Great Britain. Orwell's works have been translated into 60 languages.

Orwell's attitude towards the USSR

In his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” Orwell stated: “Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been directed, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as I understand it.” According to Orwell’s peer, British political commentator, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman magazine Kingsley Martin, Orwell looked at the USSR with bitterness, through the eyes of a revolutionary disillusioned with the child of the revolution, and believed that it, the revolution, had been betrayed, and Orwell considered Stalin to be the main traitor, the embodiment of evil . At the same time, Orwell himself, in Martin’s eyes, was a fighter for truth, knocking down Soviet totems that other Western socialists worshiped.

British Conservative politician and Member of Parliament Christopher Hollis argues that what really infuriated Orwell was that as a result of the revolution that took place in Russia and the subsequent overthrow of the old ruling classes, accompanied by a bloody civil war and no less bloody terror, it was not the classless that came to power society, as the Bolsheviks promised, and a new ruling class, much more ruthless and unprincipled than the previous ones it replaced. Orwell called these survivors, who brazenly appropriated the fruits of the revolution and took the helm, adds American conservative journalist Gary Allen, “half-gramophones, half-gangsters.” What also greatly surprised Orwell was the tendency towards the “strong hand”, towards despotism, which he observed among a significant part of British socialists, especially those who called themselves Marxists, who disagreed with Orwell even in the definition of what a “socialist” was. “And who doesn’t - Orwell, until the end of his days, was convinced that a socialist is someone who strives to overthrow tyranny, and not to establish it - this is what explains the similar epithets that Orwell called Soviet socialists, American literary critic, honorary professor Purdue University Richard Voorhees. Voorhees calls similar despotic tendencies in the West the “Cult of Russia” and adds that the other part of the British socialists, who were not subject to this “cult,” also showed signs of attraction to tyranny, perhaps more benevolent, virtuous and good-natured, but still tyranny. Orwell, thus, always stood between two fires, both pro-Soviet and indifferent to the achievements of the Country of victorious socialism.

Orwell always attacked those Western authors who identified socialism with the Soviet Union, in particular J. Bernard Shaw. On the contrary, Orwell constantly argued that countries intending to build genuine socialism should first fear the Soviet Union, rather than try to follow its example, says Stephen Ingle, professor of political science at the University of Stirling. Orwell hated the Soviet Union with every fiber of his soul; he saw the root of evil in the system itself, where “animals” came to power. Therefore, Orwell believed that the situation would not have changed even if Lenin had not died suddenly, and Trotsky had not been expelled from the country and remained in his post. What even Orwell did not foresee in his wildest predictions was the German attack on the USSR and the subsequent alliance between Stalin and Churchill. “This vile murderer is now on our side, which means that the purges and everything else are suddenly forgotten,” Orwell wrote in his war diary shortly after the German attack on the USSR. “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I would have the opportunity to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!” But I did!” he wrote another six months later.

As the literary columnist for the American weekly The New Yorker, Dwight MacDonald, noted, for his views on Soviet socialism, Orwell was for the time being mercilessly criticized by socialists of all stripes, and Western communists generally went wild, denouncing every article that came from Orwell’s pen. , where the abbreviation “USSR” or the surname “Stalin” appeared at least once. Even the New Statesman, under the leadership of the aforementioned Kingsley Martin, was like that, refusing to publish Orwell’s reports on the activities of communists during the Spanish Civil War, notes the British writer, ex-chairman of the Oxford Debating Club Brian Magee. In the dense ranks of Orwell's compatriots and enemies stood another British socialist, book publisher Victor Gollancz. The latter publicly criticized Orwell, especially in 1937 - the year of the Great Terror, among other things blaming Orwell for calling Soviet party functionaries half-mouthpieces, half-gangsters. Gollancz, with his comment, cast a shadow on the best of what Orwell gave the world, says University of Rochester lecturer Dr. Stephen Maloney. Gollancz was definitely in shock when he heard about the “semi-gangsters”, in the state of which he wrote his preface, sums up the literary columnist for the weekly TIME, Martha Duffy. Edward Morley Thomas, a graduate of Moscow State University and editor of the British government Russian-language collection “England,” writes about Gollancz’s opportunism in this particular case. At the same time, which Thomas especially emphasizes, Gollancz deliberately does not call a spade a spade, namely, he does not say whether Orwell wrote the truth or not. Instead, he speaks of a "strange rashness" committed by the writer. They say, “to avoid”, one cannot write such things about the Soviet Union. In the 1930s in the West, awarding Soviet officials with such epithets was indeed counter-revolutionary, almost criminal, but alas, this was the thinking of the British intelligentsia of those years - “since Russia calls itself a socialist country, therefore it is a priori right” - something like this they thought,” British literary critic John Wayne writes specifically about this episode. The British Left Book Club, created by Gollancz, added fuel to the fire, which supported Orwell and even published some of his works, until, after returning from Spain, Orwell switched from British colonialism to Soviet communism. And when in 1937 it came to publishing a book that in no way touched on the theme of Marxism - “The Road to Wigan Pier”, Gollancz, to justify the fact that the club took up publication at all, wrote a preface to the novel, which it would have been better not to have at all wrote. However, the club itself, contrary to the admonitions of its creator and ideological inspirer, split soon after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, partially turning into a literary residency of the Kremlin, operating in the British capital on a permanent basis.

Orwell while working for the BBC (1941)

Orwell expected that as a result of the war, socialists in his understanding of the word would come to power in Britain, but this did not happen, and the rapid growth of the power of the Soviet Union, coupled with the equally rapid deterioration of Orwell’s own health and the death of his wife, imposed unbearable pain on him for the future of the free world.

After Germany’s attack on the USSR, which Orwell himself did not expect, the balance of socialist sympathies for some time again shifted to Gollancz’s side, but the British socialist intelligentsia, for the most part, could not forgive such a step as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Collectivization, dispossession, show trials for enemies of the people, and purges of party ranks also did their job - Western socialists gradually became disillusioned with the achievements of the Land of Soviets, - this is how Brian Magee complements MacDonald’s opinion. MacDonald's opinion is confirmed by a modern British historian, columnist for The Sunday Telegraph of London Noel Malcolm, adding that Orwell's works could not be compared with the odes to the Soviet system sung by his contemporary, the Christian socialist, later the head of the British-Soviet Friendship Society, Hewlett Johnson, in the very England known by the nickname "Red Abbot". Both scientists also agree that Orwell ultimately emerged victorious from this ideological confrontation, but, alas, posthumously.

The writer Graham Greene, despite the fact that he did not have the best relationship with Orwell himself, noted the difficulties that Orwell faced during the war and post-war years, when the USSR was still an ally of the West. Thus, an official of the British Ministry of Information, having briefly read Animal Farm, seriously asked Orwell: “Couldn’t you have made some other animal the main villain?” - implying the inappropriateness of criticism of the USSR, which then actually saved Britain from fascist occupation. And the first, lifetime edition of “1984” was no exception; it was published in a circulation of no more than a thousand copies, since none of the Western publishers dared to go openly against the announced course of friendship with the Soviet Union, akin to Orwell’s “Oceania was never at enmity with Eurasia, she has always been her ally.” Only after establishing the fact that the Cold War was already in full swing, after the death of Orwell, the printing of the novel began in millions of copies. He was extolled, the book itself was praised as a satire on the Soviet system, keeping silent about the fact that it was a satire on Western society to an even greater extent.

But then the time came when the Western allies again quarreled with their yesterday's brothers in arms, and everyone who called for friendship with the USSR either sharply subsided or began to call for enmity with the USSR, and those of the writing fraternity who were still in favor and zenith of glory and on the wave of success they dared to continue to demonstrate their support for the Soviet Union, but also abruptly fell into disgrace and obscurity. This is where everyone remembered the novel “1984,” rightly notes literary critic and member of the British Royal Society of Literature Geoffrey Meyers. To say that a book has become a bestseller is like throwing a mug of water into a waterfall. No, it began to be called nothing less than a “canonical anti-communist work,” as John Newsinger, a professor of history at Bath Spa University, called it; the “righteous manifesto of the Cold War” was dubbed the book by Fred Inglis, emeritus professor of cultural studies at the University of Sheffield, not to mention the fact that it has been translated into more than sixty languages ​​of the world. When 1984 arrived, the book was selling 50 thousand copies a day in the United States alone! Here we should go back a little and say that in the same States, every fifth resident of which now proudly claims to have read the novel “1984” at least once, from 1936 to 1946 not a single book by Orwell was published, although he appealed to more than twenty publishing houses - all of them politely refused him, since criticism of the Soviet system Then was not encouraged. And only Harcourt and Brace got down to business, but Orwell, who was living his last days, was no longer destined to see his works published in millions of copies.

Attitude towards Orwell in the USSR

The official attitude towards Orwell in the Soviet Union can be expressed in the words of the chairman of the foreign commission of the Union of Soviet Writers, Mikhail Yakovlevich Apletin, who signed the following biographical certificate attached to the file on Orwell, stored in the “Materials on Great Britain” of the Union of Writers of the USSR:

George Orwell - English writer, Trotskyist. In 1936 he was in Spain in the ranks of the POUM militia<…>Orwell has a close connection with the American Trotskyist magazine Partisan Review. George Orwell is the author of the most vile book about the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1944 - Animal Farm.

Biographical certificate dated May 26, 1947, signed by Mich. Apletina

However, as literary critic Arlen Viktorovich Blum notes, despite Sovlit’s official position, there was an unofficial position, and the nomenklatura edition of the novel “1984,” intended for official use, in the best Orwellian traditions, was replicated as a carbon copy, most likely without any changes , and began to circulate from hand to hand since the late 1960s. J. Orwell's friend and colleague at the Tribune, Tosko Fievel, recalls a conversation with his Russian acquaintance, with whom he discussed who the main warning of the novel was addressed to. So, an acquaintance convinced Fievel, and he was inclined to agree with her, that Orwell wrote for the Russians, and not a single Western person would comprehend the essence of “1984” as deeply as a person from the Union. Very precisely, according to A. V. Blum, Sergei Kuznetsov remarked on this matter: “There is something deeply symptomatic that an entire generation of Russian readers received “1984” “for one night.” At this time of day, Orwell’s novel replaced sleep and at times became indistinguishable from him." Naturally, this could not help but attract the attention of state security agencies and censorship.

Apart from the above reference for official use and publication in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, which was followed by a departmental scandal and proceedings in the literary department, the first critical mention of J. Orwell as a writer in Soviet journalism came out in the second half of 1948 - when he was already finishing his work over “1984”, and it belongs to a researcher at the Institute of Russian Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences G. M. Lukanov and a graduate student of the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee A. P. Belik, where Orwell is called a “British gangster” who is “so cynical” that he dares talk about freedom of creativity and the duty of a writer! The concept of “freedom of creativity” acquired a clearly negative meaning from Lukanov and especially from Belik, since the latter’s favorite expression was Lenin’s “Down with non-party writers” (in the sense of those who are not members of the CPSU(b)). Further, two Soviet critics compared Orwell with Koestler, coming to the conclusion that they agree on everything, but Orwell surpasses Koestler in biography - solid police experience is a rarity, “even on that black market of culture where the Orwells and Koestlers work.” An interesting point, quite worthy of display in the context of the narrative about the novel “1984”, is that the authors of the first Soviet review of J. Orwell very soon, namely by the beginning of the 1950s, fell into disgrace, and Belik was criticized by the entire Soviet writing community and Stalin personally, in connection with which he no longer had to respond to criticism from writers, but to very specific political charges (he was classified as a “Novorappovite”, which in essence was almost a sentence). But, fortunately for both of them, Stalin died suddenly, and both critics continued their professional careers and even achieved some success under Khrushchev, especially Belik, who became a professor and joined the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Little had changed by the early 1960s. Thus, the Soviet publicist, in the recent past, Chairman of the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, Yuri Zhukov wrote in 1963 about the depiction of the Soviet people in the novel “1984”: “Drawing our society in the form of a kind of barracks, and our people in the form unreasoning robots, Orwell and others contrasted them with the imaginary delights of the “free Western world,” where supposedly all opportunities were provided for the creative flourishing of human individuality...”

Polish defector, later world-famous writer and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Miłosz claimed that senior apparatchiks of the Polish United Workers' Party could easily obtain Polish-language copies of "1984" and, according to him, they were simply delighted with how deeply and accurately Orwell described the morals prevailing in both parties - both external and internal. “Can you imagine how if the Soviet Politburo read “1984”, drawing inspiration from it for new achievements in the field of strengthening total control,” Richard Allen Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago, sneers about this.

Exploring voluminous archives of documents previously intended for official use by Soviet censors and state security officials, A. V. Blum discovered many papers, including from criminal cases against dissidents, where, among other things, J. Orwell and the novel “1984” are mentioned. In the archives of Lenoblgorlit he found, in particular, a request from the KGB for the Leningrad Region to the head of Lenoblgorlit B.A. Markov with a list of books, among which was “1984,” found during a search of some unnamed dissidents. It was already 1978, and then, unlike previous years, state security sent confiscated books for literary examination. The Leningrad censorship sent the following response to the State Security Committee a week later:

George Orwell's 1984 is a science fiction novel with a political theme. The future of the world is depicted in gloomy tones, its division into three great superpowers, one of which “Eurasia” represents Europe absorbed by Russia. A picture is painted of the brutal and merciless destruction of women and children during wars. The book was not published in the USSR and cannot be distributed.

This response from the Soviet literary censorship at the end contained the conclusion: “All of these books were published abroad, are designed to undermine and weaken the established order in our country, and their distribution in the Soviet Union should be regarded as ideological sabotage,” a conclusion that, as rightly noted A.V. Blum did not give up any hopes.

Several decades passed, and 1984 arrived. Since 1984, the Soviet Union itself has taken a course towards revising the biased, unambiguous attitude towards Orwell and the novel “1984” in order to “whitewash” Orwell in the eyes of Soviet readers, making him almost an ally in the fight against imperialism. And although the fact that Orwell’s Eurasia meant the Soviet Union was never questioned, it was ordered from above to consider Orwell’s work not as clearly as before and even try to put it in the service of current Soviet politics and ideology. Through the efforts of the best Soviet literary minds, work was carried out to level out the layer of devastating reviews about Orwell by their predecessor colleagues, often much less professional. As a result, significant progress was achieved in this field, but soon things took an even more unexpected turn - the Soviet Union collapsed, censorship disappeared as a phenomenon, and the work done, for the most part, turned out to be unnecessary - the novel reached a wide readership, bypassing what -either authorities or intermediaries, as an afterword to the recently departed and a preface to the coming order.

Bibliography

V. Nedoshivin recalled that the famous Russian Orwellian V. A. Chalikova, six months before her death, told him a “strange thing”: “Honestly, I wouldn’t want us to comprehend Orwell to the bottom. This can only happen when society is convinced: the alternative that the ideological vanguard of this society offers today, the alternative to totalitarianism, is also not humanistic, will not give the common man what he wants...”

Memoirs and documentaries

• Pounds dashing in Paris and London (1933)
• Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
• In memory of Catalonia (1938)

Poems

• Awake! Young Men of England (1914)
• Ballade (1929)
• A Dressed Man and a Naked Man (1933)
• A Happy Vicar I Might Have Been (1935)
• Ironic Poem About Prostitution(written before 1936)
• Kitchener (1916)
• The Lesser Evil (1924)
• A Little Poem (1935)
• On a Ruined Farm Near the His Master's Voice Gramophone Factory (1934)
• Our Minds Are Married, but We Are Too Young (1918)
• The Pagan (1918)
• Poem from Burma (1922-1927)
• Romance (1925)
• Sometimes in the Middle Autumn Days (1933)
• Suggested by a Toothpaste (1918-1919)
• Summer-like for an Instant (1933)

Journalism, stories, articles

• How I shot an elephant
• Execution by hanging
• Memoirs of a Bookseller
• Tolstoy and Shakespeare
• Literature and totalitarianism
• Remembering the war in Spain
• Suppression of literature
• Reviewer Confessions
• Notes on Nationalism
• Why am I writing
• The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
• English
• Politics and English
• Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
• About the joy of childhood...
• Not counting blacks
• Marrakesh
• My country, right or left
• Thoughts on the way
• The Boundaries of Art and Propaganda
• Why socialists don't believe in happiness
• Sour revenge
• In defense of English cuisine
• A cup of excellent tea
• How the poor die
• Writers and Leviathan
• In defense of P. G. Wodehouse