For Orwell, the story’s point of no return comes when the other animals allow the pigs to monopolise the milk and apples, an episode which represents the crushing of the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, the last stand of democratic socialism in Russia. “If people think I am defending the status quo,” he told Macdonald, “that is, I think, because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship or laissez-faire capitalism.” Animal Farm would not be half as sad without the knowledge that things could have been different.
