[Music] there's some important context to know before getting into 1984 1994 was published in 1949 not long after Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s Stalin was the leader of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and under Stalin's communism the state seized all private property to become communal but this didn't give the working class more power Stalin became a dictator his totalitarian government eliminated all opposition to his rule secret police watched the citizens and used torture tactics to get false confessions from his enemies the great purge made millions of people disappear since the prison camps are executed their public records were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War stalin funded the socialist republican government in its battle against the fascist nationalists stalin accused many of his allies on the Republican side of treason and the resulting in fighting on the Republican side created even more bloodshed World War two was another example of the destructive power of the kind of totalitarianism 1984 represents Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party put people in concentration camps that have them killed the expansionist Axis powers fought against the Allies although the Allies ultimately won history has forgotten many of the names of the victims of the Holocaust they became and were actually called non-persons their histories erased the late 1940s and 1950s saw attention paid to uncovering facts the Nazis tried to hide an Orwell story is a cautionary reminder to readers of the danger of a regime that refuses to take responsibility for its actions Orwell was a supporter of socialism and was determined to create better living conditions for the working poor hora was fervently anti totalitarian and staid an anti Stalinist right up to and during the writing of 1984 he continued to believe that a form of socialism called ethical socialism offered a fairer society the political system novel 1984 is called in sauk short for English socialism but or will name the political system that because he saw England as just as vulnerable to totalitarianism as any other country 1984 is an anti totalitarian novel not an anti socialist month now 1984 made an immediate impression on its early readers and was considered a novel of political prophecy its rise of technology and an increasingly divided and partisan media is still relevant in the 21st century as it was when it was first published several words from 1984 have entered the english-speaking lexicon Big Brother news speak thought police and doublethink among them the adjective Orwellian has come to characterise a dystopian totalitarian future [Music]