An Allegory is defined as a story, a poem or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. Allegory and fairy tales are almost synonymous, only Allegory is more commonly targeted towards adults.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four to warn the post-WW2 population of the threat posed by Stalin’s Russia. The similarities between Orwell’s fictional INGSOC and Stalin’s Communist Party are too many to be coincidental.

Oceania is a hierarchy, with the unmonitored “blissfully ignorant Proles” on the very bottom of the class ladder, Outer Party members in the middle, and finally the Inner Party assigned to watch over members of the Outer Party.  Although Communism by its theoretical definition removes social stratification, Stalin’s Russia had a very similar hierarchy to Oceania. Non-party members would be of a lower-class inherently because of their lack of devotion to the Party. This kept the illusion of equality while allowing discrimination. “…true to the principles of doublethink, the Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors”

Since the Communist party itself was built on a false principle, It was important to keep tabs on Party members to avoid an uprising. Members of the Communist Party were subject to “Cleansing of the party ranks” where the purge commission (George Orwell’s “Inner Party”) would interrogate the Party members and decide whether the member was patriotic and law-abiding. If the Party member was deemed to be unfaithful to the party they would be killed or sent to a labour camp. Up until 1937, the Russian population as a whole was unaware of this cleansing process, people would just disappear without explanation, just like vaporization in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Stalin also had secret police assigned to find and often kill those who opposed the party, often with little to no pretext.  The repercussions for voicing anti-party thoughts were so great, it allowed for complete submission of the individual to the state.

The misery from starvation and overwork was channelled into Hate and redirected towards land-owning peasants (Kulaks) and the ever-distant European and American Capitalists (Which I believe are represented by Goldstein in the novel).

A lot of discussions have happened over the years whether Orwell was trying to warn us about Stalin’s Totalitarian Left, or Totalitarianism as a whole. I think this confusion is caused by the Horseshoe Effect…

… making it hard to discern the Far Right from the Far Left.  I believe George Orwell intended to warn the population of what would happen if a Totalitarian Left government, just like Stalin’s Russia, were to take control.