The bestselling book in Putin’s ‘dystopian’ Russia? Why, George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, of course!
- George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has topped Russian online bestseller list
- Novel was based on Stalin’s Russia and comparisons are being drawn with Putin
- Dystopian classic was most popular fiction book of 2022 on Russian site LitRes
George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has topped online bookshop bestseller lists in Russia this year after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine drew comparisons.
The 1949 novel is set in a future where totalitarian government and relentless propaganda ensure support for unending wars.
Orwell’s classic is the most popular fiction download of 2022 on the platform of the Russian online bookseller LitRes, and the second most popular download in any category, the state news agency Tass reported on Tuesday.
Stalin’s Russia was used by Orwell as a model for the personality cult of the all-seeing Big Brother, whose ‘thought police’ force forced citizens to engage in ‘doublethink’ in order to believe that ‘war is peace, freedom is slavery’.
A man reads a Russian translation of George Orwell’s novel 1984 in Moscow
George Orwell broadcasting over the BBC
‘The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,’ the book famously said. Nineteen Eighty-Four was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February, new Russian laws controlling political opposition in Russia have been criticised as Orwellian.
Putin has eradicated political opposition and critical media from the public sphere in his two decades in power, as well as rehabilitating the memory of Stalin.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin made it illegal to publish ‘fake news’ about the war.
But in reality they banned information about the war which contradicted official statements. The Kremlin does not even use the word ‘war’ instead referring instead to the invasion of Ukraine as a ‘special military operation’.
Officials in Moscow continue to assert that Russia bears no malice towards Ukraine, did not attack its neighbour, and is not occupying Ukrainian territories that it has seized and annexed.
Last week, Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison on charges of spreading ‘false information’ about the army.
She discussed evidence uncovered by Western journalists of Russian atrocities in Bucha, near Kyiv, which Russia said had been fabricated.
George Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty-Four is the most popular fiction download of 2022 on the platform of the Russian online bookseller LitRes
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured) ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February, new Russian laws controlling political opposition in Russia have been criticised as Orwellian
And last month the Kremlin’s spokesman said there had been no attacks on civilian targets, despite waves of bombardment of Ukrainian power facilities that have left millions without heat or light in the depths of winter.
The Russian translator of a brand new edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four does not see parallels with Russia, but instead compares the model to ‘liberal totalitarianism’ in the West.
Darya Tselovalnikova said: ‘Orwell could not have dreamt in his worst nightmares that the era of “liberal totalitarianism” or “totalitarian liberalism” would come in the West, and that people – separate, rather isolated individuals – would behave like a raging herd.’
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