[показать]After a three-month break, I am finally back to my reading. And I must mention that it does feel great to read something other than my history textbook. I've chosen "Animal Farm" by George Orwell to be the next book from my reading list solely because it was the shortest one. I've included it in this list, however, because I really enjoyed reading Orwell's "1984." Unfortunately, even though "Animal Farm" was a breeze to read due to its simple language and fable-like content, I have found it to be a waste of time. Its bashing of communist regime is irrelevant in our days, while its plot is not interesting enough to compensate for that.

Like "1984," this book deals with the topic of totalitarianism that is looked at trough an example of communist Russia. Orwell uses a farm that has been taken over by animals as an allegory of Russian revolution of 1917. In doing so, he builds hard to miss parallels between historical figures and events, such as Stalin, Trotsky, Karl Marx, Lenin, the Great Purge of 1930s the Great Patriotic War, etc., and pretty much gives a summary of the history of 20th century Russia in the process: Disgruntled by their abject position, the animals on the farm, inspired by a speech of an old, wise pig, aka Marx/Lenin, decide to get rid of humans, aka aristocracy, only to find themselves exploited by pigs, aka Bolsheviks, headed by a dictator-pig Napoleon, aka Stalin. It is not hard to guess that the author's main objective is to critique communist regime and its leaders.

I understand why when the book was published in 1945 and many years after that, it was a great hit. Obviously, having much hated Bolsheviks and Stalin compared to pigs as well as reducing the whole regime to a farm allegory caused a furore at first and continued to give pleasure to Western audiences after that. Today, however, when times of the USSR are long gone, I'd much rather spend my time on an academic source that has something interesting to tell about the subject than on discovering allegories and trying to relate them to the history. Unlike "1987" that even though also no longer very relevant offers the reader a fascinating story , "Animal Farm" has not much to offer. Its purpose, if any, is to serve as an introductory source for familiarizing kindergartners with much troubled history of the USSR.

Осталось прочитать 24 книги списка на 2010 год