Did George Orwell BorrowAnimal FarmFrom a 19th Century Russian Author?

George Orwell had a have intercourse penchant for borrowing from other authors — his dystopian novel 1984 owe a clear debt to a number of full treatment , including We by Yevgeny Zamyatin , for deterrent example . But did his other famous work , Animal Farm , also owe a immense debt to a Russian author ?

That ’s the claim in a new Harper ’s Magazine article by John Reed , an author who antecedently fire some arguing with his wildcat sequel to Animal Farm back in 2001 . Reed , whose Animal Farm sequel / pastiche was aimed at bear witness how Animal Farm was “ outmoded ” as a weapon system in Cold War 2.0 — the war against terrorism .

In the grade of that disputation , Reed stumbled on the claim that Orwell had borrowed large voice of Animal Farm from a history called “ Animal Riot ” by Nikolai Kostomarov , a nineteenth century author and friend of Tolstoy . The plots of the works are middling similar , though there ’s no evidence that Orwell screw of “ Animal Riot . ” But Reed is able-bodied to show , paragraph by paragraph , how the opening section of both works follow a like format and structure . Does n’t prove anything — but it ’s sort of fascinating to recollect that the forerunner to Animal Farm was an allegory that , for a while at least , was held up as an of import story in Russia instantly after the 1917 gyration .

Starship Test 9