ORWELL AND THE REFUGEES

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AHE
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ORWELL AND THE REFUGEES

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After having spent years working on the manuscript, George Orwell struggled to find a publisher for Animal Farm. An anti-Soviet satire was not welcome at a time when the West needed Stalin to fight Hitler, and leading intellectuals still believed in the promise of the Russian Revolution. Orwell managed to publish his "fairy tale" in 1945 at a small press for £100. Soon after, a copy ended up in the hands of a Ihor Ševčenko, a Ukrainian refugee who recognized its profound meaning.

Ševčenko wrote to Orwell in London, and, working with him by letter, published Animal Farm in Ukrainian. In March 1947, Ševčenko printed around 5,000 copies to distribute among the Ukrainian refugees in the displaced persons camps of postwar Germany and Austria. But only around 2,000 copies were given out; U.S. soldiers confiscated the rest and handed them over to Soviet authorities to be destroyed as propaganda.

Though my mother and father were been born in Ukrainian displaced persons camps after their parents had escaped the Soviet Union through the hell of the Eastern Front, it had never occurred to me that out of the 2,000 copies that survived among the 200,000 or so Ukrainian refugees, that my family would have one. As I discovered while researching my family's history, my uncle had picked up a copy in the refugee camp when he was a boy, and brought Orwell's masterpiece with him when he immigrated to the United States. I decided to explore the history behind this family heirloom and share it as a reminder of the humanitarian importance of speaking truth to power.
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/135 ... e-refugees
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