Orwell projected what would then happen, the bloodshed and fear, the betrayals of lovers and friends and ideals, the substitution of lies for truth, the reordering of morality and manners, and the language in which to express these things. Those who polemicized directly against Communism made little or no impact. Czeslaw Milosz, the future Nobel Prize poet then still living in his native Poland, was the first to wonder how Orwell could have known so well what it was like to live under Communism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, others testified that Orwell's imagination and courage had inspired them too. One form or another of totalitarianism survives here or there in the world and probably always will, but art at this level is a lasting defense and saving grace.
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Go back to the text. From The New Criterion Vol.