George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair
(1903 Motihari, India - 1950 London)

In later times, if our new century wants to understand what happened in the recent past, a lot can be learnt and perceived from the works of George Orwell about the short but disastrous 20th century.  Besides, if the past period will not be called the age of technology but the century of totalitarian regimes, then, in addition to documents, Orwell´s work would significantly contribute to the analysis of the functioning of early totalitarian regimes. 

For decades in Hungary the novels of the British author were regarded as contraband.  Possession of them resulted in serious retribution in the entire Socialist block.  Perhaps, that is why Orwell is much less known here, in Hungary than he would deserve to be, even though we have been living in a free and independent country for thirteen years. 

We cannot talk about people with whom we are not sufficiently familiar. Yet if there is an almost mysteriously exciting writer in the 20th century with an important message about men threatened by the shadow of totalitarianism, then it is George Orwell.  His life and personality are packed with extremes and contradictions.  He was born into an impoverished Scottish gentry family, yet thanks to a scholarship he studied at the famous and elegant Eton College.  He joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma.  After being deeply moved by his experiences there, he returned to Europe, where he sought out, as an ˝expiation˝, the darkest destitution and poverty in the mining districts of Northern England. He was touched by the ideas of democratic socialism at an early age, and took up arms against Franco in Catalonia; still, he was the one who exposed the functioning of Communist propaganda and the lies of the Left. 

In world literature he is best-known for his two novels: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.  His oeuvre is indispensable for anyone dealing with the world literature of the 20th century.  In the Western World libraries could be filled with the secondary literature written about his works.  Few have presented the characteristics of the functioning of totalitarianisms as well as he has.  It was a matter of conscience for him to follow and evaluate the events of the world; he knew about the famine in the Ukraine, the trials in Moscow, and he didn´t hide his opinion about the Hitler-Stalin Pact.  He never evaded the task of reconsidering certain events or facts; he was ready to change his opinion.  He not only became familiar with, but also exposed the true nature of ˝partly realized totalitarianisms˝: Communism and Fascism.  He became the most relentless critic of the Bolshevik practice that strives for the destruction of the individual.  He turned against the British leftist intelligentsia, which mocked the Fatherland, and wrote ruthlessly accurate lines about the ignorant and irresponsible ˝fellow-travellers˝, who sympathized with the Soviet Union and blindly accepted its propaganda. 

Towards the end of his life he understood more and more what his Fatherland, England meant to him.  Although seriously ill, he reported for duty in defence of his country during the Second World War. It was a significant break-through in Hungary that in volume IX of the Encyclopaedia of World Literature published in 1984, there was already an entry on Orwell.  At the same time, however, the article informed readers that neither Animal Farm nor Nineteen Eighty-Nine were available in Hungarian.  None of Orwell´s works was published in Hungary between 1949 and 1983, neither in the ˝harder˝ nor in the ˝softer˝ period of the so-called existing Socialism. 

The reason for this could be that Orwell represented a tremendous threat to Existing Socialism simply by frequently comparing the ˝Russian Communists˝ to the ˝German Fascists˝.  During the dictatorship in Hungary it was strictly forbidden to speak openly about the functioning of totalitarian systems. 

Orwell was the conscience of his generation; what is more, he was the conscience of the 20th century. 

ZSK He was born in India, as the child of a British colonial civil servant family.  He studied in England, among others at Eton, as a royal scholarship holder.  For six years he was a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (1922-27).  He subsequently returned to England and worked as a writer.  Between 1928 and 1931 he earned his living by writing short articles and by other odd jobs, both in England and in France.  In 1933 Down and Out in London and Paris was published.  Besides writing, he also worked as a teacher.  Burmese Days was published in 1934, The Road to Wigan Pier in 1936, and in the same year he married Eileen O´Shaughnessy.  In 1937 he participated in the Spanish Civil War, first as a correspondent and then as a militiaman of the POUM (Catalan Trotskyite organization), where he was wounded. 

In his book, Homage to Catalonia, he elaborated on his experiences in Spain.  During the Second World War he worked as a correspondent for the BBC.  In 1945 he wrote Animal Farm.  After the war he reported from the occupied German territories.  His wife died in 1945.  In 1949 he remarried.  In 1948 he started to write his best-known novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949.  After a long illness he succumbed to tuberculosis in 1950.