During the Cold War, and with the emergence of different totalitarian regimes, George Orwell published one of his most representative works, a fable for children whose message was much deeper: it revealed the modus operandi of these regimes and provided an important political message for the era.

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"If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak"

1945. The biggest military conflict in the history of humanity seemed to be finally over. With the final surrender of Japan, World War II seemed to transform into just a brutal speck of history, starring the Allies (formed by France, Poland, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China and the United States), and the Axis Powers (composed by Germany, the Empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Italy), with never to be forgotten political figures that shaped the course of the war, such as Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, De Gaulle and Hitler. 

Later on, the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences would decide Germany's destiny, by dividing it into four zones occupied by the United Kingdom, France, The United States and the Soviet Union, through an Iron Curtain which led to the rise of tensions between the Western side with the Eastern side, tensions the deepened and cooled with the Berlin blockade and the construction of an airlift, which doomed the German population to a sudden segregation caused by the powers in conflict. Even though the World War II had come to an end, the Cold War would start as a four-decade conflict, where not even a single bullet was shot, but where the political and ideological battles between democracy or communism; capitalism and socialism; West and East, would shape the emerging bipolar order of the world, and the power configuration of the time would inevitably change the power dynamics of the international system up to this day.

In the same year, however, George Orwell would publish one of his most recognized and influential works up to this day; “Animal Farm” is one of the most politically relevant fables of world literature, which narrates the rebellion led by pigs, by the names of Napoleon and Snowball, which acquire authority over the rest of the farm animals, under the promise of a brighter future; the promise of equality, justice, and redemption. Nonetheless, the fable accurately presents the deterioration of that dream. As in any revolution, rules are set to change, drastically, on behalf (supposedly) of the “people”, or in this case, the animals. “All animals are equal” would be the greatest commandment, out of which the rest would come off.

But ironically, the rules began to be broken by its own setters; under particular conditions of poverty, slavery work, and lack of food and comfort, everything in the name of revolution, things star to progressively change in Animal Farm. It rather becomes the ultimate “societal” paradox (if a community of animals can be considered a society, even when fictional), when the new and fresh regime that was supposed to fix everything, and finally, build an equal and fair society, where no one is above anyone, and there isn't any bureaucracy or hierarchy instrumentalized by those in power, and ultimately disposes any political vice, would inevitably turn into what it swore to destroy. Not even an exact replica, rather, an improvement of the same old regime, which never came to fully recognize the rights and empty promises that one day had sworn to protect, only to end up in an even more brutal state of slavery, mistrust, and fear. 

To this point, Orwell seems to be more of a prophet than a regular novel author, particularly in the political context of the Cold War. “Animal Farm” is in fact a powerful allegory. Orwell used a barnyard society to satirize the encroaching dangers of Communist Russia, and the socialist system of the former Soviet Union. Even though the author died five years into the Cold War, in 1950, Orwell would somehow predict the menace of such a political and ideological system, not only as a warning against creeping totalitarianism in Russia, but for its export potential and replicability, which is exactly what it ended up happening in Latin America and the Caribbean. Even when the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had “successfully” established the communist system in its territories, starting from Russia, it also exported it to countries like China, Cuba and Venezuela; three regimes that have remained socialist up to the 21st century, even with the social and political consequences that it brings.

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“Animal Farm” as a propagandistic weapon

In the years to come, “Animal Farm” would not only position itself as a relevant political satire on Soviet Communism, but an essential ideological propaganda outlet for the United States and the United Kingdom during the Cold War. As a cartoon strip released in 1950, and later one, as an animated film, released in 1954, the United States and the Soviet Union ramped up a Cold War of words and weapons based on Orwell’s fable, leading to a robust anti-Communist propaganda devised by the CIA and the FBI. Alongside, the Information Research Department (IRD), a department of the Foreign Office set up to counter Soviet propaganda, thought the book was a powerful instrument during the Cold War, as it had been translated into many languages, and had proved to be not only a bestseller, but also a most effective propaganda weapon, because of its skillful combination of simplicity, subtlety and humor (Dunton, 2020).

For this reason, the cartoon strip was published in European newspapers and distributed in the West side of the Berlin Wall, to tell the story in approximately 78 cartoons, each cartoon containing three or four panels. Thus, if the feature were run by a daily paper, it would take about 13 weeks to tell the whole story.