<story><title>The unpublished preface to Orwell’s Animal Farm</title><url>https://mindmatters.ai/2023/08/a-warning-from-the-unpublished-preface-to-orwells-animal-farm/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RajT88</author><text>This forward hints at a missing puzzle piece for me, regarding history.&lt;p&gt;Why did the English intellectuals want to avoid criticizing Stalin?  Was it because it would be by extension criticizing Communism which at the time was a popular idea among intellectuals?  Was this the progress being referred to?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kgeist</author><text>&amp;gt;Why did the English intellectuals want to avoid criticizing Stalin&lt;p&gt;The book was published in 1945, perhaps it was to do with the fact that USSR was an ally at the time?&lt;p&gt;UPD. From Wikipedia:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944, when the United Kingdom was in its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and the British intelligentsia held Stalin in high esteem, a phenomenon Orwell hated.</text></comment>
<story><title>The unpublished preface to Orwell’s Animal Farm</title><url>https://mindmatters.ai/2023/08/a-warning-from-the-unpublished-preface-to-orwells-animal-farm/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>RajT88</author><text>This forward hints at a missing puzzle piece for me, regarding history.&lt;p&gt;Why did the English intellectuals want to avoid criticizing Stalin?  Was it because it would be by extension criticizing Communism which at the time was a popular idea among intellectuals?  Was this the progress being referred to?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wrp</author><text>Admiration for the USSR among English intellectuals predates WW2. So the answer to your question is in the social milieu of the 1920s-30s. Someone else will have to try a detailed explanation.</text></comment>