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George Orwell didn’t write Animal Farm for his health. He wrote it because he’d actually experienced the horrors of Communism firsthand, and he felt compelled to speak out against them. Animal Farm, of course, was the result.

Video Transcription:

To understand why George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, you could go do some research in a history book. Boring! Good thing I’ve got a 60-second download on the era—next.

The first time George Orwell saw Communism in action it was during his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. And if you remember anything about this war, remember one thing. The struggle in Spain mirrored the struggle that would happen on a larger scale just a few years later during World War II. It was Fascism (think: the Nazis) versus Communism (think: Stalin).

What Orwell saw during the Spanish Civil War is unimaginable. The conflict pitted neighbors against neighbors and many civilians were killed. But more than anything, the Communist purges during the war made Orwell alert to this: In his own words, “how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people.”

In other words, Orwell saw innocent citizens manipulated, and their lives destroyed, all at the hands of politicians. Specifically people like Josef Stalin.

It was these experiences with Communism that caused Orwell to view Stalin and his regime as dangerous and prompted him to write that slim but powerful allegory, Animal Farm.