The 1945 allegorical novella by George Orwell banned in the Soviet Union is Animal Farm.
Animal Farm is a satirical beast fable about farm animals who overthrow their human owner and attempt to build an equal society. The pigs gradually seize control, rewrite the farm’s principles, and become indistinguishable from the humans they replaced. The novella’s best-known warning is captured in the altered commandment: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944, during Britain’s wartime alliance with the Soviet Union. Its allegory reflects the Russian Revolution, the rise of Joseph Stalin, and the corruption of revolutionary ideals. Because it directly criticized Stalinism and the Soviet regime, it faced political resistance and was not published in Britain until 1945.
Animal Farm is sometimes paired with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but the books use different forms. Animal Farm is a short political fable centered on collective revolution and propaganda; Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel about surveillance, language, and totalitarian control. The subtitle of the original edition was A Fairy Story.