The banned dystopian novel that has become Russia’s bestseller | CPT PPP Coverage

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George Orwell’s novel 1984, about citizens living under an oppressive regime that was constantly at senseless war, has become the most-read book in Russia.

The classic fiction novel is the most popular download of 2022 on Russia’s online bookseller LitRest and the second most popular downloaded in any category, according to state news agency, Tass.

English author Eric Arthur Blair, who was better known by his pen name George Orwell, published the novel in 1949, shortly after the end of World War II and before the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union began.

The book was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988 but now remains available online.

The plot of the novel traces the journey of a man who remains under the surveillance of the ruling party known as “The Party” which is controlled by a mysterious man and totalitarian leader called “Big Brother”.

The author said he had used West’s erstwhile ally Josef Stalin’s dictatorship as a model for the cult of personality of Big Brother. His so-called thought police force cowed citizens to engage in “doublethink” in order to believe that “War is peace, freedom is slavery”.

The slogan of the party was “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”.

As Russian president Vladimir Putin launched the war in Ukraine in February this year, the government imposed new laws to ban journalists to describe what it called a “military operation” as a “war” or “invasion”. It also downplayed the protests even though several military personnel called out Mr Putin for the war.

Officials in Moscow continue to maintain that Kremlin bears no malice towards Ukraine, did not attack its neighbour, and is not occupying Ukrainian territories that it has seized and annexed.

In its attempt to crack down on people criticising war, the Russian government last week sentenced opposition politician Ilya Yashin to almost nine months in jail on charges of spreading “false information” about the army. It was after he discussed evidence uncovered by Western journalists of Russian atrocities in Bucha, near Kyiv.

Darya Tselovalnikova, a Russian translator of a brand new edition of “1984”, has drawn parallels to Orwell’s novel elsewhere.

“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,” he said in May.