Adam Napravnik’s favorite book, “Animal Farm”, has special meaning for the freshman Mechanical Engineering major.

“It’s a satire of communism, and my country was communist for a really long time, and the book was really popular in my country,” said Napravnik, who grew up in the Czech Republic, a former satellite of the Soviet Union. 

Though he was born after the Czech Republic regained its democratic status in 1989, Napravnik said communism made life hard. 

 “There was a lot of censorship and you couldn’t travel,” he said. “The economy was not benefitting because everything was owned by the government. It was a pretty common negative thing.”

“Animal Farm” was George Orwell’s anti-utopian satire novel published in 1945.

It is a political fable based on the events of the Russian Revolution, a period of political and social change in Russia.

Orwell wrote Animal Farm toward the end of World War II, when the Soviet Union was being praised for its victories over Nazi Germany. He had a hard time finding a publisher prepared to offend Russian sensibilities. 

The novel is about a group of farm animals who revolt against and chase off their human masters. The animals then decide to set up a society of their own. Everything was going well for the animals until their intelligent and power-loving two leaders, the pigs, began to follow the same rules as their former human masters. 

They believed that all animals were created equal, but some animals were more equal than others. The pigs then formed a dictatorship that was even more oppressive and heartless than their former masters. 

When it finally was published, the book became a huge success and has long ranked among the best books of the 20th century. 

 “It was really popular in my country because it was mandatory to read in my high school, and it was a worldwide popular book,” said Napravnik. “It showed the negatives and struggles of communism that was happening in my country.”

Orwell wanted to highlight the destructive consequences of absolute power, propaganda, and suppression that were happening during his time. By using animals as characters, Orwell created a fable-like narrative that could be easily understood by a wide audience.

Napravnik was asked if the Czech Republic has improved ever since communism ended in his country and he stated, “Well it’s definitely improved. First thing they cancelled was the ten percent employment rate, and the free market supply and demand curve actually met. You could actually buy real shoes like Adidas instead of off-brand items. Nowadays we have free healthcare and don’t have to pay for school ever since communism ended.”