The Battle of the Cowshed and the Russian Civil War

In Animal Farm, the animals have time to begin organizing a large harvest before Mr. Jones and some men return. The different animals begin to take on clearer roles, and we learn that Napoleon is a double for Stalin and Snowball (who could be seen as Lenin in the earliest chapters) will be a stand-in for Leon Trotsky. Boxer the horse comes to resemble the proletariat (working class) with his personal motto "I will work harder" (3.3). Committees are set up, and the pigs work to spread literacy throughout the populace. These are all allusions to the earliest Bolshevik efforts at organization after the October Revolution.

Yet in reality, the Bolsheviks hardly had time to get going before the country erupted into Civil War. There was resistance to Bolshevik rule from the start, but what sparked the resistance groups was that the Bolsheviks withdrew from World War I by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918). Trotsky (Snowball), who had emerged as the Russian military leader, had not wanted to end the Russian war effort. He and many others felt that without war, there could be no peace. But as Germans advanced into Russian territory, the Bolsheviks had no choice. The resistance, for their part, tried to seize on Trotsky’s withdrawal as a sign of weakness.

In Animal Farm, Mr. Jones slinks off to the local bar to complain of his misfortune. Yet he can’t get anyone to listen to him because the two neighboring farmers – Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Frederick – are on bad terms. Here, we get an early glimpse into the relations between the United States and the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia.

Mr. Frederick, as it will be increasingly clear, is a stand in for the Germans, and later for Hitler in particular. During the Bolshevik Revolution, the Germans were entangled in war with both the U.S. and the U.K., and after the Revolution, they essentially shouldered Russia out of the War. Mr. Pilkington represents the United States and the United Kingdom, who at this time were unnerved by Russia’s withdrawal from the war, feared a Russian alliance with Germany, and were worried about Bolshevik ideas spreading to the West. As Winston Churchill famously put it, communism ought to be "strangled in its cradle."

To put all of this simply, the Bolsheviks were able to fight their civil war because the rest of the world was still caught up in World War I (at least until 1919).

In Animal Farm, the Russian Civil War gets depicted as the Battle of Cowshed. It’s worth noting that the Bolsheviks weren’t actually fighting the Russian tsar (who was already dead), but a patchwork army composed, in part, of landowners, middle-class citizens, monarchists, and old army generals. What united these different groups was mainly the fact that they were all anti-Bolshevik, and they went under the loose name the White Army, contrasting themselves with the Trotsky-led Red Army.

There are a few things to notice about the Battle of Cowshed. First, Snowball (Trotsky) emerges as a military hero. Second, Mollie the horse, who represents the Russian bourgeoisie (upper-middle-class) runs off and plays little role in the battle. Third, Boxer, or the double for the proletariat (working class), reveals himself as a powerful military force. As the narrator tells us, "the most terrifying spectacle of all was Boxer, rearing up on his hind legs and striking out with his great iron-shod hoofs like a stallion" (4.8).

The actual Russian Civil War ended in 1922 with the defeat of the White Army and the founding of the Soviet state. Similarly, after the Battle of Cowshed, Animal Farm is firmly established on the English farm scene.