Which writer served in Burma? George Orwell - biography, information, personal life

George Orwell, real name Eric Arthur Blair. Born June 25, 1903 - died January 21, 1950. British writer and publicist. He is best known as the author of the cult dystopian novel 1984 and the story Animal Farm. He introduced the term cold war into political language, which later became widely used.

Eric Arthur Blair was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari (India) in the family of an employee of the Opium Department of the British colonial administration of India. Studied at the school of St. Cyprian, received a personal scholarship in 1917 and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma, then lived for a long time in Great Britain and Europe, living at odd jobs, and then began writing fiction and journalism. He already arrived in Paris with the firm intention of becoming a writer; the Orwellian scholar V. Nedoshivin characterizes the way of life he knew there as “a rebellion akin to Tolstoy’s.” Since 1935 he published under the pseudonym "George Orwell".

Already at the age of 30, he would write in poetry: “I am a stranger at this time.”

He got married in 1936, and six months later he and his wife went to the Aragonese front of the Spanish Civil War.

During the Spanish Civil War, he fought on the side of the Republicans in the ranks of the POUM units. About these events, he wrote the documentary story “In Memory of Catalonia” (English: Homage to Catalonia; 1936) and the essay “Remembering the War in Spain” (1943, fully published in 1953).

While fighting in the ranks of the militia formed by the POUM party, he encountered manifestations of factional struggle among the left. He spent almost six months in the war until he was wounded in the throat by a fascist sniper in Huesca.

During the Second World War he hosted an anti-fascist program on the BBC.

According to Orwell’s peer, British political commentator, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman magazine Kingsley Martin, Orwell looked at the USSR with bitterness, through the eyes of a revolutionary disillusioned with the child of the revolution, and believed that it, the revolution, had been betrayed, and Orwell considered Stalin to be the main traitor, the embodiment of evil . At the same time, Orwell himself, in Martin’s eyes, was a fighter for truth, knocking down Soviet totems that other Western socialists worshiped.

British Conservative politician and Member of Parliament Christopher Hollis argues that what really infuriated Orwell was that as a result of the revolution that took place in Russia and the subsequent overthrow of the old ruling classes, accompanied by a bloody civil war and no less bloody terror, it was not the classless that came to power society, as the Bolsheviks promised, and a new ruling class, much more ruthless and unprincipled than the previous ones it replaced. Orwell called these survivors, who brazenly appropriated the fruits of the revolution and took the helm, adds American conservative journalist Gary Allen, “half-gramophones, half-gangsters.”

What also greatly surprised Orwell was the tendency towards the “strong hand”, towards despotism, which he observed among a significant part of British socialists, especially those who called themselves Marxists, who disagreed with Orwell even in the definition of what a “socialist” was. “And who doesn’t - Orwell, until the end of his days, was convinced that a socialist is someone who strives to overthrow tyranny, and not to establish it - this is what explains the similar epithets that Orwell called Soviet socialists, American literary critic, honorary professor Purdue University Richard Voorhees.

Voorhees calls similar despotic tendencies in the West the “Cult of Russia” and adds that the other part of the British socialists, who were not subject to this “cult,” also showed signs of attraction to tyranny, perhaps more benevolent, virtuous and good-natured, but still tyranny. Orwell, thus, always stood between two fires, both pro-Soviet and indifferent to the achievements of the Country of victorious socialism.

Orwell always angrily attacked those Western authors who in their works identified socialism with the Soviet Union, in particular J. Bernard Shaw. On the contrary, Orwell constantly argued that countries intending to build genuine socialism should first fear the Soviet Union, rather than try to follow its example, says Stephen Ingle, professor of political science at the University of Stirling. Orwell hated the Soviet Union with every fiber of his soul; he saw the root of evil in the system itself, where animals came to power, and therefore Orwell believed that the situation would not have changed even if he had not died suddenly, but remained at his post and was not expelled from the country. What even Orwell did not foresee in his wildest predictions was the German attack on the USSR and the subsequent alliance of Stalin and Churchill. “This vile murderer is now on our side, which means the purges and everything else are suddenly forgotten,” Orwell wrote in his war diary shortly after the German attack on the USSR. “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I would have the opportunity to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!” But I did!” he wrote another six months later.

As the literary columnist for the American weekly The New Yorker, Dwight MacDonald, noted, for his views on Soviet socialism, Orwell was until then mercilessly criticized by socialists of all stripes, and even by Western communists, they generally went off the chain, vilifying every article that came out from under him. Orwell’s pen, where the abbreviation “USSR” or the surname “Stalin” appeared at least once. Even the New Statesman, under the leadership of the aforementioned Kingsley Martin, was like that, refusing to publish Orwell’s reports on the unpleasant achievements of the communists during the Spanish Civil War, notes the British writer, ex-chairman of the Oxford Debating Club Brian Magee. And when in 1937 it came to publishing a book that in no way touched on the theme of Marxism - “The Road to Wigan Pier”, Gollancz, in order to justify the fact that the club took up publication at all, wrote a preface to the novel, which it would have been better not to have at all wrote.

In the dense ranks of Orwell's compatriots and enemies stood another British socialist, book publisher Victor Gollancz. The latter publicly criticized Orwell, especially in 1937 - the year of the Great Terror, among other things blaming Orwell for calling Soviet party functionaries half-mouthpieces, half-gangsters. Gollancz, with his comment, cast a shadow on the best of what Orwell gave the world, says University of Rochester lecturer Dr. Stephen Maloney. Gollancz was definitely in shock when he heard about the “semi-gangsters”, in the state of which he wrote his preface, sums up the literary columnist for the weekly TIME, Martha Duffy.

Edward Morley Thomas, a graduate of Moscow State University and editor of the British government Russian-language collection “England,” writes about Gollancz’s opportunism in this particular case. At the same time, which Thomas especially emphasizes, Gollancz deliberately does not call a spade a spade, namely, he does not say: Orwell wrote the truth or a lie. Instead, he speaks of a "strange rashness" committed by the writer. They say, “to avoid”, one cannot write such things about the Soviet Union.

In the 1930s in the West, awarding Soviet officials with such epithets was indeed counter-revolutionary, almost criminal, but alas, this was the thinking of the British intelligentsia of those years - “since Russia calls itself a socialist country, therefore it is a priori right” - something like this they thought,” British literary critic John Wayne writes specifically about this episode. The British Left Book Club, created by Gollancz, added fuel to the fire, which supported Orwell and even published some of his works, until, after returning from Spain, Orwell switched from British colonialism to Soviet communism. However, the club itself, contrary to the admonitions of its creator and ideological inspirer, split soon after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, partially turning into a literary residency of the Kremlin, operating in the British capital on a permanent basis.

Orwell expected that as a result of the war, socialists in his understanding of the word would come to power in Britain, but this did not happen, and the rapid growth of the power of the Soviet Union, coupled with the equally rapid deterioration of Orwell’s own health and the death of his wife, imposed unbearable pain on him for the future of the free world.

After Germany’s attack on the USSR, which Orwell himself did not expect, the balance of socialist sympathies for some time again shifted to Gollancz’s side, but the British socialist intelligentsia, for the most part, could not forgive such a step as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Collectivization, dispossession, show trials for enemies of the people, purges of party ranks also did their job - Western socialists gradually became disillusioned with the achievements of the Land of Soviets, - this is how Brian Magee complements MacDonald’s opinion. MacDonald's opinion is confirmed by a modern British historian, columnist for The Sunday Telegraph in London, Noel Malcolm, adding that Orwell's works could not be compared with the odes to the Soviet system sung by his contemporary, the Christian socialist, later the head of the British-Soviet Friendship Society, Hewlett Johnson, in England itself, known by the nickname “Red Abbot”. Both scientists also agree that Orwell ultimately emerged victorious from this ideological confrontation, but alas, posthumously.

The writer Graham Greene, despite the fact that he did not have the best relationship with Orwell himself, noted the difficulties that Orwell faced during the war and post-war years, when the USSR was still an ally of the West. Thus, an official of the British Ministry of Information, having briefly read Animal Farm, seriously asked Orwell: “Couldn’t you have made some other animal the main villain?” - implying the inappropriateness of criticism of the USSR, which then actually saved Britain from fascist occupation. And the first, lifetime edition of “1984” was no exception; it was published in a circulation of no more than a thousand copies, since none of the Western publishers dared to go openly against the announced course of friendship with the Soviet Union, akin to Orwell’s “Oceania was never at enmity with Eurasia, she has always been her ally.” Only after establishing the fact that the Cold War was already in full swing, after the death of Orwell, the printing of the novel began in millions of copies. He was extolled, the book itself was praised as a satire on the Soviet system, keeping silent about the fact that it was a satire on Western society to an even greater extent.

But then the time came when the Western allies again quarreled with their yesterday's brothers in arms, and everyone who called for friendship with the USSR either sharply subsided or began to call for enmity with the USSR, and those of the writing fraternity who were still in favor and zenith of glory, and on the wave of success they dared to continue to demonstrate their support for the Soviet Union, they also abruptly fell into disgrace and obscurity. This is where everyone remembered the novel “1984,” rightly notes literary critic and member of the British Royal Society of Literature Geoffrey Meyers.

To say that a book has become a bestseller is like throwing a mug of water into a waterfall. No, it began to be called nothing less than a “canonical anti-communist work,” as John Newsinger, a professor of history at Bath Spa University, called it; the book was dubbed a “righteous manifesto of the Cold War” by Fred Inglis, emeritus professor of cultural studies at the University of Sheffield, not to mention the fact that has been translated into more than sixty languages ​​of the world.

When 1984 arrived, the book was selling 50 thousand copies a day in the United States alone! Here we should go back a little and say that in the same States, every fifth resident of which now proudly claims to have read the novel “1984” at least once, from 1936 to 1946 not a single book by Orwell was published, although he appealed to more than twenty publishing houses - they all politely refused him, since criticism of the Soviet system was not encouraged at that time. And only Harcourt and Brace got down to business, but Orwell, who was living his last days, was no longer destined to see his works published in millions of copies.

In the story “Animal Farm” (1945), he showed the degeneration of revolutionary principles and programs: “Animal Farm” is a parable, an allegory for the revolution of 1917 and subsequent events in Russia.

The dystopian novel “1984” (1949) became an ideological continuation of “Animal Farm”, in which Orwell depicted a possible future world society as a totalitarian hierarchical system based on sophisticated physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear, hatred and denunciation. In this book, the famous expression “Big Brother is watching you” (or, in Viktor Golyshev’s translation, “Big Brother is watching you”) was first heard, and the now widely known terms “doublethink”, “thought crime”, “newspeak” were introduced. “truthfulness”, “speech cracker”.

He also wrote many essays and articles of a socio-critical and cultural nature.

In his homeland, it was published in 20 volumes (5 novels, a satirical fairy tale, a collection of poems and 4 volumes of criticism and journalism), translated into 60 languages.

Despite the fact that many see Orwell’s works as a satire on the totalitarian system, the authorities have long suspected the writer himself of having close ties with the communists. As a dossier on the writer declassified in 2007 showed, the British intelligence services from 1929 until almost until the writer’s death in 1950 conducted surveillance on him, and representatives of different intelligence services did not have the same opinion about the writer. For example, in one dossier note dated 20 January 1942, Scotland Yard agent Sgt Ewing describes Orwell as follows: “This man has advanced communist beliefs, and some of his Indian friends say they often saw him at communist meetings. He dresses bohemianly both at work and in his leisure time."

In 1949, Orwell prepared and submitted to the Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office a list of 38 Britons whom he considered “fellow travelers” of communism. In total, the notebook that Orwell kept for a number of years included 135 English-speaking cultural, political and scientific figures, including J. Steinbeck, J.B. Priestley, and others. This came to light in 1998, and Orwell's action sparked controversy.

Eric Arthur Blair was born in the city of Motihari, India, whose territory at that time was a British colony. His father held one of the ordinary positions in the Opium Department of the colony administration, and his mother was the only daughter of a tea merchant from Burma. While still a child, Eric, along with his mother and older sister, went to England, where the boy received his education - first at Eastbourne Primary School, and then at the prestigious Eton College, where he studied on a special scholarship. After graduating from college in 1921, the young man devoted himself to service in the Burma Police for five years (1922 - 1927), but dissatisfaction with imperial rule led to his resignation. This period in the life of Eric Blair, who very soon took the pseudonym George Orwell, is marked by one of his most famous novels, Days in Burma, which was published in 1936 under a pseudonym.

After Burma, young and free, he went to Europe, where he eked out a living from one odd job to another, and upon returning home he firmly decided to become a writer. During this time, Orwell wrote an equally impressive novel, Pounds of Dashing in Paris and London, which tells the story of his life in two of Europe's largest cities. This creation consisted of two parts, each of which described the brightest moments of his life in each of the capitals.

Beginning of a writing career

In 1936, Orwell, already a married man at that time, went with his wife to Spain, where the civil war was in full swing. After spending about a year in the combat zone, he returned to the UK involuntarily - a wound to the throat by a fascist sniper required treatment and further removal from hostilities. While in Spain, Orwell fought in the ranks of the militia formed by the anti-Stalinist communist party POUM, a Marxist organization that existed in Spain since the early 1930s. An entire book is dedicated to this period in the writer’s life - “In Honor of Catalonia” (1937), in which he talks in detail about his days at the front.

However, British publishers did not appreciate the book and subjected it to severe censorship - Orwell had to “cut out” any statements that spoke of terror and complete lawlessness that was happening in the republican country. The editor-in-chief was adamant - in the conditions of fascist aggression, it was under no circumstances possible to cast even the slightest shadow on socialism, and even more so on the abode of this phenomenon - the USSR. The book finally saw the world in 1938, but was received rather coldly - the number of copies sold during the year did not exceed 50 pieces. This war made Orwell an avid opponent of communism, deciding to join the ranks of the English socialists.

civil position

Orwell's writings from early 1936 onward, as he himself admitted in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), had anti-totalitarian overtones and extolled democratic socialism. In the eyes of the writer, the Soviet Union was one complete disappointment, and the revolution that took place in the Land of the Soviets, in his opinion, not only did not bring to power a classless society as previously promised by the Bolsheviks, but on the contrary - even more ruthless and unprincipled people were “at the helm” than before. Orwell, without hiding his hatred, spoke about the USSR, and considered Stalin to be the real embodiment of evil.

When news of Germany's attack on the USSR became known in 1941, Orwell could not have imagined that very soon Churchill and Stalin would become allies. At this time, the writer kept a war diary, the entries in which tell of his indignation, and then surprise himself: “I never thought that I would live to see the days when I would have the opportunity to say “Glory to Comrade Stalin!”, Well, I did!” - he wrote after a while.

Orwell sincerely hoped that as a result of the war, socialists would come to power in Great Britain, and ideological socialists, and not formal ones, as often happened. However, this did not happen. The events unfolding in the writer’s homeland and in the world as a whole depressed Orwell, and the constant growth of the influence of the Soviet Union even drove him into a protracted depression. The writer was finally crippled by the death of his wife, who was his ideological inspirer and closest person. However, life went on and he had to put up with it.

The author's main works

George Orwell was one of the few authors of that time who not only did not sing odes to the Soviet Union, but also tried to describe in all colors the horror of the Soviet system. Orwell’s main “opponent” in this conventional competition of ideologies was Hewlett Johnson, who received the nickname “Red Abbot” in his native England - in every work he praised Stalin, expressing his admiration for the country that was subordinate to him in every possible way. Orwell still managed to win, albeit formally, in this unequal battle, but, unfortunately, posthumously.

The book Animal Farm, written by the writer between November 1943 and February 1944, was an obvious satire on the Soviet Union, which at that time was still an ally of Great Britain. No publishing house undertook to publish this work. Everything changed with the beginning of the Cold War - Orwell's satire was finally appreciated. The book, which most saw as a satire on the Soviet Union, was largely a satire on the West itself. Orwell did not have to see the huge success and millions of copies of sales of his book - the recognition was already posthumous.

The Cold War changed the lives of many, especially those who supported the policies and system of the Soviet Union - now they either completely disappeared from the radar or changed their position to the opposite. Orwell’s previously written but unpublished novel “1984” came in very handy, which was later called “the canonical anti-communist work”, “the Cold War manifesto” and many other epithets, which were undoubtedly recognition of Orwell’s writing talent.

"Animal Farm" and "1984" are dystopian films written by one of the greatest publicists and writers in history. Telling mainly about the horrors and consequences of totalitarianism, they, fortunately, were not prophetic, but it is simply impossible to deny the fact that at the present time they are acquiring a completely new sound.

Personal life

In 1936, George Orwell married Elin O'Shaughnessy, with whom they went through many trials, including the Spanish War. Over the many years of marriage, the couple never had their own children, and only in 1944 did they adopt a one-month-old boy, who was named Richard. However, very soon the joy gave way to great grief - on March 29, 1945, during the operation, Elin passed away. Orwell suffered the loss of his wife painfully; for a certain time he even became a hermit, settling on an almost deserted island on the coast of Scotland. It was during this difficult time that the writer completed the novel “1984”.

A year before his death, in 1949, Orwell married a second time to a girl named Sonia Bronel, who was 15 years younger than him. Sonya at that time worked as an assistant editor at Horizon magazine. However, the marriage lasted only three months - on January 21, 1950, the writer died in the ward of a London hospital from tuberculosis. Shortly before this, his creation “1984” saw the world.

• Orwell is actually the originator of the term "Cold War", often used in the political sphere to this day.
• Despite the clearly expressed anti-totalitarian position expressed by the writer in every work, he was for some time suspected of having connections with the communists.
• The Soviet slogan, heard by Orwell at one time from the lips of the communists, “Give a five-year plan in four years!” was used in the novel "1984" in the form of the famous formula "twice two equals five." The phrase once again ridiculed the Soviet regime.
• In the post-war period, George Orwell hosted a program on the BBC, which touched on a wide variety of topics - from political to social.

George Orwell- pseudonym of Erik Blair - born June 25, 1903, in Matihari (Bengal). His father, a British colonial official, held a minor post in the Indian Customs Department. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, received a personal scholarship in 1917 and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma. In 1927, returning home on vacation, he decided to resign and take up writing.

Orwell's early - and not only documentary - books are largely autobiographical. Having worked as a scullery in Paris and a hop picker in Kent, and wandering through English villages, Orwell received material for his first book, A Dog's Life in Paris and London ( Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933). "Days in Burma" ( Burmese Days, 1934) largely reflected the eastern period of his life. Like the author, the hero of the book “Let the Aspidistra Bloom” ( Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936) works as an assistant to a second-hand bookseller, and the heroine of the novel “The Priest’s Daughter” ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) teaches in run-down private schools. In 1936, the Left Book Club sent Orwell to the north of England to study the life of the unemployed in working-class neighborhoods. The immediate result of this trip was the angry non-fiction book The Road to Wigan Pier ( The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), where Orwell, to the displeasure of his employers, criticized English socialism. It was also on this trip that he acquired an enduring interest in works of popular culture, reflected in his now classic essays, "The Art of Donald McGill" ( The Art of Donald McGill) and Weeklies for Boys ( Boys' Weeklies).

The civil war that broke out in Spain caused a second crisis in Orwell's life. Always acting in accordance with his convictions, Orwell went to Spain as a journalist, but immediately upon arriving in Barcelona he joined the partisan detachment of the Marxist workers' party POUM, fought on the Aragonese and Teruel fronts, and was seriously wounded. In May 1937 he took part in the Battle of Barcelona on the side of the POUM and anarchists against the communists. Pursued by the communist government's secret police, Orwell fled Spain. In his account of the trenches of the civil war - “In Memory of Catalonia” ( Homage to Catalonia, 1939) - it reveals the intentions of the Stalinists to seize power in Spain. The Spanish impressions stayed with Orwell throughout his life. In the last pre-war novel, “For a Breath of Fresh Air” ( Coming Up for Air, 1940) he denounces the erosion of values ​​and norms in the modern world.

Orwell believed that real prose should be “transparent as glass,” and he himself wrote extremely clearly. Examples of what he considered the main virtues of prose can be seen in his essay "The Killing of an Elephant" ( Shooting an Elephant; rus. translation 1989) and especially in the essay “Politics and the English Language” ( Politics and the English Language), where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic sloppiness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his writing duty as defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945 he wrote Animal Farm, which made him famous ( Animal Farm) - a satire on the Russian revolution and the collapse of the hopes it generated, in the form of a parable telling how animals began to take charge of one farm. His last book was the novel "1984" ( Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949), a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger. Orwell died in London on January 21, 1950.

Biography

Often in the conversation of people associated with the political side of public life there are phrases such as “cold war” or “thought police”, “Big Brother”. Almost no one thinks about where they come from, moreover, about who first used them. The “father” of these neological expressions is George Orwell, a British writer and publicist, known for the novel “1984” and the story “Animal Farm.” Fans of his work believe that he was a very extraordinary person with his own views on all aspects of life.

Like other famous people, the writer has come a long way in his development not only as a person, but also as an author. In order to understand where he got the urge to write stories that captivated the whole world, it’s worth taking a short trip through his biography. In addition, few people know that Mr. Orwell's real name is Eric Arthur Blair.

Childhood

The future publicist was born in June 1903. His birth is dated the twenty-fifth. Despite the fact that in the future the boy would become a British writer, he spent his childhood in India, which at that time was a colony. His father was an employee of the Opium Department of the British colonial administration.

And although the boy’s parents were not rich people, he managed to get a place at St. Cyprian’s School, which is located in a place called Eastbourne. It was there that Eric Arthur Blair showed his extraordinary mind and abilities. His studies here lasted five years, after which the boy received a personal scholarship from Eton College.

Youth

Mr Orwell's teenage years began in 1917, when he first arrived to study at Eton. It is known that in college the young man was a student who received a royal scholarship. From there he could easily have entered any prestigious university in Britain, for example, Oxford or Cambridge, however, his creative path was somewhat different.

After studying at Eton until 1921, Mr Blair went to Burma to join the civil service. It took him about five years to realize that he didn’t like this kind of work. In 1927, he returned to Europe to change countless professions.

It is known that Eric Arthur worked as a teacher, cared for a boy unable to move independently, and as a salesman. At the same time, he managed to write short articles, essays for small newspapers and magazines with a literary orientation. Only after arriving in Paris did Mr. Black realize that it was important for him to give up everything except writing. Thus, in 1935, “George Orwell” was born.

Mature years

After starting his writing career, it cannot be said that the man forgot about his work as a publicist. In 1936, he had to become a participant in hostilities and go to the Aragonese front, formed during the Spanish Civil War. Six months after joining the ranks of the militia, the man was wounded and discharged.

But only in 1940 the publicist was declared completely unfit for military service. However, he was not going to give up. It was then that his publications began to appear in the Partisan Review magazine, where he spoke in detail about the combat strategies that worked, pointing out the advantages of fortifications and the weaknesses that arise during their construction.

From the very beginning of World War II, the writer broadcast on the BBC channel, which had an anti-fascist orientation. Orwell was a deeply humane person, and therefore the policies promoted by the Nazi leader offended his entire living being. This can also be seen in the stories and novels he wrote during the war period.

Personal life

Mr. Orwell gained a reputation as a ladies' man and womanizer. However, this did not stop him from being an exemplary husband and father. In 1936, the man got married for the first time. His chosen one was Eileen O'Shaughnessy. The man often admitted that he had several mistresses, however, his wife always remained faithful to him.

Four years after their marriage, the couple decided to adopt a child. For some reason, unconfirmed by a medical examination, Eric Arthur believed that he could not become the father of his own baby. The little boy he and Eileen adopted was named after the writer's favorite uncle - Richard.

They said about Orwell that he was a wonderful father, however, the family idyll in his life was present for a short time. In 1946, the writer’s beloved wife died of a heart attack during an operation to remove an oncological lesion on her female genital organs. At the time of his death and funeral, the man was away, and therefore only upon arrival he managed to plant a rose bush on his wife’s grave as an eternal reminder of their relationship.

After Eileen's death, a woman named Susan helped raise Richard. All of them lived together for some time on the island of Jura, where in 1948 the writer learned about his terrible illness - tuberculosis. It was then that the family moved to the capital of Great Britain, where he again met his second wife, Sonia Brownell. The girl worked with a friend of the writer and expressed a desire to meet him.

The young people got married in the hospital room where Orwell lay in 1949. It seemed that happy events in her personal life would extend her life as a writer, however, this was not enough. A couple of months after the wedding, namely on January 21, 1950, the man died in a hospital bed at the age of forty-six.

The writer's political views

All the writer's political ideas and views were reflected in his books. So, “Animal Farm” is just an allegorical depiction of the events that took place on the territory of the USSR in 1917. It is known that Mr. Orwell openly spoke about his disappointment in Stalin, as the main revolutionary at that time.

He was sure that the revolution did not achieve the absence of classes, but brought to power the one that was stronger. Tyranny, despotic attitude, ruthlessness, unprincipledness - these were the characteristics the publicist gave in his statements to people who survived the revolutionary actions. He did not consider the new political system in the USSR to be socialist, and therefore was openly indignant when it was called such.

Despite the fact that the USSR helped Britain recover from the defeat inflicted by fascist troops, Orwell was never able to come to terms with the political system that had been established there. He dreamed that his beloved homeland would accept socialism as he and his followers saw it, however, this did not happen. Some publicists I knew said that this state of affairs accelerated his death, since Orwell could not survive the doom of the future.

USSR's response to Orwell

Until 1984, the story “Animal Farm” was not published or distributed among residents of the Soviet Union. However, it was believed that secret service agents did receive copies of the work in order to familiarize themselves with it. Subsequently, the authorities did a huge amount of work to “whiten” the name of George Orwell. To some extent, the people who came out to fight imperialism at that moment identified themselves with the writer. And at the moment when the “whitening” process was practically completed, the Soviet Union collapses, censorship is removed and the publicist’s book reaches the general readership. It’s difficult to say that it was popular at that moment, however, some of the residents of the post-Soviet space found it very interesting.

The man who became a famous publicist and writer had different hobbies. He not only followed political events in the world and took part in military operations, but also studied different languages, for example. So, in addition to English, the writer spoke Hindi, Latin, Greek, Burmese, French, Catalan, and Spanish. Other interesting facts about the personality of Eric Arthur Blair include:

• love of tea drinking - every day the writer drank tea at the same time, arranging a whole ceremony out of it, even if he was alone with himself;
• a love of collecting beautiful things - it is known that the man had a collection of mugs that were dedicated to the holiday in honor of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, as well as a large number of postcards and newspaper clippings. In addition, he had a handmade Burmese sword hanging on his bedroom wall;
• love of handicraft - the man often made furniture according to his own sketches. And although it turned out awkward, he found true pleasure in the process of creating it.

In addition, it is known that the writer was one of the superstitious atheists; he learned many literary techniques from Mikhail Zamyatin, and until a certain point he was a fan of H.G. Wells. George Orwell was not just an extraordinary personality, a passionate and interesting person. He could be called a lazy perfectionist, someone who combines the incompatible. That is why his articles and works are widely known throughout the world and have a sufficient number of fans.

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