How does the setting of a dystopian society act as a warning against the totalitarian governments orwell feared answer?

Answer 1

Orwell's novel was intended as a dark commentary on Stalin's Soviet Union, and was nearly not published as a result, in case it endangered diplomatic ties between the West and the USSR. But it was not aimed solely at Stalin, but at ALL forms of totalitarianism. It serves as a warning that the euphoria of revolutionary liberty against a government or regime that is unequal, unfair and even brutal towards it's citizens can, if left unchecked, lead on to a form of Government that is as bad as, or even worse than, the system it replaced. Orwell was a Socialist who believed in an egalitarian society, but his novel serves as a stark warning that change must be reasonable, moderate, humane and led by people who are truly dedicated to fairness and the wellbeing of all- NOT lead on to hysterical totalitarian tyranny that is fronted by sinister hypocrites who have their own agendas and wish to use the revolutionary process for their own ends. For example, tsarist Russia was a terrible place, an absolute monarchy where there was a huge gulf between the hugely wealthy minority and the desperately poor majority. Over 100 million people died in a famine there in the early 20th Century- the Tsar tolerated no dissent, and any organised opposition to his rule was met with brutal military suppression. There HAD to be a Socialist revolution- but when it came, although there was initially freedom and liberty from the Tsarist yolk, Lenin and Stalin had their own agendas for staying in power and themselves tolerated no dissent from their ideas (.e. Lenin's exile and ultimate assassination of Trotsky etc.) It culminated in the USSR becoming ruled by the insane and tyrannical Stalin, who was the model for 1984's 'Big Brother' and who ended up committing mass genocide, torture and surveillance. It's true that from the 1930s onwards, all Soviet citizens had their material needs catered for, but at the price of their liberty and human rights. After Stalin's death things got better in the USSR, but Communism was forever tainted by Stalinism in the eyes of the Western world. And the same thing has been repeated elsewhere- Hitler restored Germany as a major European power after it's humiliation following WW1 and created an excellent, technologically advanced society that improved the lives of German citizens, but at the price of a psychotic, genocidal regime which had expansionist intentions and ended up killing millions; Chairman Mao's Chinese Revolution freed the country from the horrible inequality of millennia of despotic Emperors, but then he became just as bad as they were; and so on. Even the Western world has suffered from the same thing throughout history- the English Civil War freed the nation from absolute monarchy but replaced it with a military government that tolerated no dissent; the French Revolution liberated France from the indifferent, cruel and callous rule of the French kings but went too far and resulted in The Terror and the rise of Napoleon; the USA gained freedom from British colonialism but then went on to be plunged into it's own Civil War, and in the 20th century a backlash against Communism that resulted in McCarthy, and also a lack of civil rights for black people that, from Victorian times onwards, Britain would never have dreamed of imposing. The British radical Left of the 1980s wanted to replace the inequality of wealth with an inequality of education, with an academic elite in charge of an uneducated underclass- the examples I could give are endless. It is true that usually, Socialist or egalitarian revolutions do as a rule improve the material welfare of the underclasses, but this CAN be at the cost of the loss of their liberty and freedom. There can be exceptions- Communist Cuba under Fidel, and now Raoul, Castro has committed terrible human rights abuses, torture and surveillance of innocent people, but even these are not as bad as the horrific excesses of the Batista regime that it replaced- Tito's Yugoslavia practiced a more liberal form of Communism that the neighbouring USSR and was generally an improvement on what went before it- but in general, Orwell's message was that change must be carefully managed, and achieved in such a way that does not result in the status quo being replaced with something that is just as bad if not worse than what went before it. The same message can be seen more plainly in his novel 'Animal Farm'.