Hillegas, Mark R. (1967). The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-0676-3 Emmanuel Goldstein– ostensibly a former leading figure in the Party who became the counter-revolutionary leader of the Brotherhood, and author of the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Goldstein is the symbolic enemy of the state—the national nemesis who ideologically unites the people of Oceania with the Party, especially during the Two Minutes Hate and other forms of fearmongering.

a b Stalin, Joseph (1944). On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. Moscow: Foreign Languages Press. Charrington– an undercover officer of the Thought Police masquerading as a kind and sympathetic antiques dealer amongst the proles. However, books set in the future are rarely simply about the future. They are not mere speculation, but are grounded in the circumstances in which they were written. Orwell, George (1977). 1984. Erich Fromm (foreword) (reissueed.). Signet Classics. ISBN 978-0-451-52493-5.Orwell learned much about the workings of Stalinism from reading Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed (1937), written by one of the leading figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917 who saw Stalinist Russia as the antithesis of what Trotsky, Lenin, and those early revolutionaries had been striving to achieve. (This would also be important for Orwell’s Animal Farm, of course.) Blum Arlen Viktorovich. "Orwell's Travels to the country of bolsheviks". Orwell.ru. Archived from the original on 29 June 2023 . Retrieved 29 June 2023. Plank, Robert, George Orwell's Guide Through Hell: A Psychological Study of 1984 (1994), Borgo Pres. ISBN 978-0-89370-413-1 Lynskey, Dorian. "George Orwell's 1984: Why it still matters". BBC News. Archived from the original on 12 October 2023 . Retrieved 7 October 2023– via YouTube. We, Orwell Review". www.orwelltoday.com. Archived from the original on 23 March 2023 . Retrieved 29 December 2022.

During World War II, Orwell believed that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war. The question being "Would it end via Fascist coup d'état from above or via Socialist revolution from below?" [87] Later, he admitted that events proved him wrong: "What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that 'the war and the revolution are inseparable'." [88] King, David (1997). The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia. Metropolitan / Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-5294-7. Alex Hern (26 January 2017). "Forget Nineteen Eighty-Four. These five dystopias better reflect Trump's US". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 1 July 2017 . Retrieved 17 June 2017. By 1989, Nineteen Eighty-Four had been translated into 65 languages, more than any other novel in English at that time. [114] Cultural impact [ edit ] "Happy 1984" (in Spanish or Portuguese) stencil graffito, denoting mind control via a PlayStation controller, on a standing piece of the Berlin Wall, 2005 Howe, Irving (1982). Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0-15-565811-0 pp.290–293.Soviet Encyclopedia Omits Beria's Name". The Times-News. 2 December 1953. p.8. Archived from the original on 24 August 2022 . Retrieved 23 April 2017– via Google News Archive. Whether or not the Newspeak appendix implies a hopeful end to Nineteen Eighty-Four remains a critical debate. Many claim that it does, citing the fact that it is in standard English and is written in the past tense: "Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised" (p.422). Some critics ( Atwood, [46] Benstead, [47] Milner, [48] Pynchon [49]) claim that for Orwell, Newspeak and the totalitarian governments are all in the past. The story takes place in an imagined future in an unspecified year believed to be 1984, when much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party's Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking. [5] The "Hates" (Two Minutes Hate and Hate Week) were inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by party organs throughout the Stalinist period. These were often short pep-talks given to workers before their shifts began (Two Minutes Hate), [75] but could also last for days, as in the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the October Revolution (Hate Week). George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903 in Motihari in Bengal, India and later studied at Eton College for four years. He was an assistant superintendent with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He left that position after five years and moved to Paris, where he wrote his first two books: Burmese Days and Down and Out in Paris and London. He then moved to Spain to write but decided to join the United Workers Marxist Party Militia. After being decidedly opposed to communism, he served in the British Home Guard and with the Indian Service of the BBC during World War II. After the war, he wrote for the Observer and was literary editor for the Tribune. His best known works are Animal Farm and 1984. His other works include A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, and Coming Up for Air. He died on January 21, 1950 at the age of 46.