Animal Farm

I recently read George Orwell's satire of the Communist Revolution and the Stalinist regime. I actually read it on my iPhone through a wonderful site called textonphone but it happened to skip over the copyright date. So as I read the book innocently with only some vague knowledge of when it was published (my theory was off by about 20 years) I continued to see the French Revolution played out before my eyes.
Granted, from the flag the animals made down to the massacres of those supporting the rebel Snowball it was obvious that it could just as easily be communism. It is quite startling to me to see the two revolutions so paralleled. The removal of their king (Mr. Jones) followed by his attempt to retake the throne (Louis XIV was of course held prisoner but his fellow monarchs did attempt to put him back on the throne) and the republic that was established. This of course was followed by the creation of a common enemy (traitors instead of the aristocracy) and a Reign of Terror ending in Napoleon the pig becoming like the real Napoleon. All of this was coordinated by a massive propaganda campaign to literally change history.
I'm not saying that Animal Farm is not about Stalin and the USSR, but intentionally or not Orwell pointed something out to me that I had never noticed. Of course depending on how much lenience you give and what broad strokes the artist uses, you can always interpret something out of it. For example, Plato's description of a dictator in The Republic sounds just like Hitler and maybe even Napoleon as well.
Basically, a tyrant comes to power because the people need a strong leader after something horrible has happened. Depression, terrorist attack, war, etc. The leader comes to power by the good graces of the people who are blind to how much power he wishes to take from them. He then has to constantly make war on other countries or even individual groups so that the people always have not only a common enemy but also a constant threat which leads to the need for a strong leader. Many might say that everything turns out alright in the end, because the dictator eventually is overthrown or dies but who would want to take the risk? I think people need to realize when tragedies happen that the government's ability to react should be just as limited as it always should be. To say that it will all turn out all right no matter how much liberty we give up is to forget that in the past millions die in the process.