Orwell was still something of a totalitarian to the day he died, but that is what made him great. He understood totalitarianism from the inside, and so condemned it in an accurate and insightful way that no outsider could condemn it.
In “Nineteen eighty four” Orwell whitewashes Trotsky’s disagreement with Stalin as merely a matter of technical details, represented by the windmill, but in actual fact, it was over terror, torture, and mass murder. Trotsky complained that Stalin was not tough enough on the peasants, and objected to torture and murder being slowed down and obstructed by bureaucracy and red tape. But we do not look to the book for an accurate history of Russia. We read the book to understand how totalitarians think.
No one who had not been well and truly totalitarian could have written such a book.
Orwell was still something of a totalitarian to the day he died, but that is what made him great. He understood totalitarianism from the inside, and so condemned it in an accurate and insightful way that no outsider could condemn it.
In “Nineteen eighty four” Orwell whitewashes Trotsky’s disagreement with Stalin as merely a matter of technical details, represented by the windmill, but in actual fact, it was over terror, torture, and mass murder. Trotsky complained that Stalin was not tough enough on the peasants, and objected to torture and murder being slowed down and obstructed by bureaucracy and red tape. But we do not look to the book for an accurate history of Russia. We read the book to understand how totalitarians think.
No one who had not been well and truly totalitarian could have written such a book.