Emmanuel Goldstein - Leon Trotsky As Potential Real-life Origin

Leon Trotsky As Potential Real-life Origin

Not long after the novel's appearance, a number of contemporary commentators noticed that the biography, appearance, writing style and political thought of Emmanuel Goldstein closely paralleled Leon Trotsky's. In 1954, Isaac Deutscher wrote that "The Book" in 1984 was intended as a "paraphrase" of Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. In 1956, Irving Howe described Goldstein's book as "clearly a replica" of Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed, writing that the parts that seemed to be imitating Trotsky were "among the best passages" of the novel. Critic Adrian Wanner, writing in a collection of essays edited by Harold Bloom, described Goldstein's book as a "parody" of The Revolution Betrayed, noting that Orwell was deeply ambivalent about Trotsky. Christopher Hitchens likewise wrote that the character is based on Trotsky.

Born Lev Bronshtein, Trotsky was a close associate of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and after Joseph Stalin came to power in the 1920s, Trotsky was branded a traitor and expelled from the Soviet Union. Denouncing Stalin from exile, Trotsky agreed to testify before the House Unamerican Activities Committee 1939, though he ultimately was refused entry to America and was murdered in Mexico in 1940 by Ramón Mercader.

Orwell wrote of Trotskyism that:

he fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i.e. of collaborating with the Fascists, is obviously false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference.