In his novel Animal Farm, Orwell satirises the way in which power corrupts and he uses events in Russian history after the 1917 Russian Revolution to demonstrate this.

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By writing an allegory of Russian history, Orwell makes clear the importance he places on history and how it is recorded. In his novel Animal Farm, Orwell satirises the way in which power corrupts and he uses events in Russian history after the 1917 Russian Revolution to demonstrate this. He shows how the pigs are corrupted by power in the same way that Stalin and the communist regime were. He structures his novel around events in history and uses characters, events and motifs to symbolise historical figures, incidents and symbols. In this way the attack on Animal Farm by Frederick symbolises the German attack on Russia after its anti-aggression pact; Squealer
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symbolises propaganda; and the green Animal Farm flag represents the Communist Red Banner. When Snowball is exiled from the farm in the same way that Trotsky was exiled from Russia, we see history starting to be rewritten on Animal Farm as he is branded a ‘traitor’. Later, when Napoleon adopts the windmill scheme, which had been branded ‘moonshine’ by Squealer and on which Napoleon had previously urinated, the animals are told by Squealer that Napoleon had ‘seemed to oppose the windmill, simply as a manoeuvre to get rid of Snowball’. Any further doubts are allayed when Squealer baffles the animals ...

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