Review of "Orwell and the Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm," by Andrea Chalupa

Review of

Orwell and the Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm, by Andrea Chalupa 

Five out of five stars

 Immediately after the end of the Second World War in Europe and before the start of the Cold War between the Soviet block and the Allies, there was a period of cooperation.  The allied forces led by the Americans were willing to do what Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wanted, that included the transfer of people originally from the Soviet Union that ended up in other European nations.

 A large block of Ukrainians were in Allied held territory and Stalin wanted them back. Due to the deliberate famine in Ukraine in the 1930’s many of them were strongly anti-Soviet and some had even fought on the side of the Germans. Eager to please Stalin, the Allied forces agreed to send many of them back. Yet, some managed through many means to remain in western Europe and they developed a vibrant culture based on their Ukrainian heritage.

 While many western intellectuals believed in the Soviet propaganda that everything was great in the Soviet Union, George Orwell was one that knew better. Orwell had traveled to Spain to fight fascism and joined the POUM faction. After being wounded, he witnessed the labeling of the POUM as a Trotskyist group and he barely escaped. His experiences in Spain had a lot to do with his writing of his classic political satire, “Animal Farm,” a thinly disguised criticism of the Soviet regime.

 When the book was published shortly after the end of the Second World War in Europe, it was not well received and the Allied forces suppressed it as anti-Soviet. However, it was a big hit among the Ukrainian expatriate people.

 In this book, a great deal of this background material regarding Orwell, his development of “Animal Farm” and the development of the Ukrainian culture outside of the borders of what became the Ukrainian SSR is explained. It is an amazing and extremely informative book, describing a set of events that are a dark stain on the actions of the Allies in their cooperation with Stalin. I strongly recommend it as reading in history courses that delve deeply into the immediate aftermath of the Second World War in Europe and how Stalin played the Allies for his own purposes.