<Tr> <Th> OCLC </Th> <Td> 53163540 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Dewey Decimal </Th> <Td> 823 /. 912 20 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> LC Class </Th> <Td> PR6029. R8 A63 2003b </Td> </Tr> <P> Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945 . According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union . Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow - directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War . The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror . In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"), and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole". </P>

Who did the animals in animal farm represent