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Especially since, with his history in the party and his Jewish name, he's clearly supposed to be a reference to Trotsky. Orwell fought in a Trotskyist militia i
by azernik 5y ago
Especially since, with his history in the party and his Jewish name, he's clearly supposed to be a reference to Trotsky. Orwell fought in a Trotskyist militia in Spain and hence is likely to use a Trotsky stand-in to express his own views.
- watwut 5y agoI don't find that clear reference at all.
- azernik 5y agoFor a mid-20th-century audience with a passing familiarity with contemporary communist politics, it would have been much clearer than to an arbitrary person today. Contemporary reviewers were very convinced, and also thought that the written passages from Goldstein's in-universe book were call-outs and/or parodies of specific passages in Trotsky's "The Revolution Betrayed", I don't know enough about that book to comment on parallels, but Orwell's contemporaries did not consider the Goldstein/Trotsky reference especially subtle.
- watwut 5y agoI have that passing familiarity and lived in soviet union and read a lot memoirs of dissidents. If did not appeared straightforward similarity.