The Hen Rebellion, Napoleon's Pile of Corpses, and Stalin's Great Purge

Not that Animal Farm is ever a particularly light tale, but the story takes a very dark turn about halfway through. First, the hens refuse to give their eggs up to the pigs, and Napoleon resolves to starve them until they change their minds. Several of the hens die, and the rest simply give up.

Soon after, Napoleon calls a general meeting, and the dogs drag out several pigs "squealing with pain and terror" (7.24). The pigs confess that they were working with Snowball and Mr. Frederick, and a moment later the dogs "tore their throats out" (7.25). After that, the same thing happens with the surviving hens from the rebellion, a goose, and several sheep. At the end, there is "a pile of corpses and Napoleon’s feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones" (7.26). Wasn’t this supposed to be a fairy tale?

Not exactly, as we’re learning. What we have here is a nightmarish allusion to the Great Purge, which took place between 1936 and 1938. Working to eliminate every last trace of the opposition, Stalin had executed or sent to Gulag labor camps many of those who could claim association with Leon Trotsky, as well as ex-kulaks, military leaders, and anyone that might possibly be labeled "anti-Soviet." The estimates of how many died in the purges ranges from about 500,000 up to 2 million.

What made Stalin’s purges particularly abominable was that he forced many to come forward and confess falsely to crimes that they never committed, often after severe psychological torment and outright torture. These became known as the "Moscow Show Trials."

What we see in Animal Farm is a very simple and direct illustration of how Stalin's purges worked. Squealer tells the other animals that Snowball, the scapegoat for everything, is not just working against them from outside the farm, but that he has been sneaking back inside: he’s trying to destroy them from within. Snowball here becomes the figure of general Stalinist paranoia, and what we get is an old-fashioned witch-hunt, plain and simple.

So, no, we are not getting a fairy tale. But it’s worth remembering that Karl Marx’s vision was of a utopia, of precisely the opposite of what Stalin had to offer. A Russian in the late 1930s might look back on what happened and think, like old Clover, "These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion" (7.30).