How the CIA Used ‘Animal Farm’ As Cold War Propaganda

One of the most celebrated books of the 20th century, George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a biting critique of totalitarianism.

Published shortly after the end of World War II, the novella tells the story of farm animals who revolt against their human owner—only to see their rebellion corrupted from within. Beneath its barnyard setting, the fable is a pointed allegory for how the promise of the 1917 Russian Revolution descended into the tyrannical reign of Joseph Stalin. In his essay, Why I Write, Orwell admitted, “Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.”

Upon its release on August 17, 1945, in England, the satirical novel quickly sold out its initial print run of 4,500 copies. When it hit American shelves in August 1946, it sold over half a million editions in its first year alone, according to Mark Satta, associate professor of philosophy and law at Wayne State University. Though reception to the story's satire was mixed, the book got the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

As Cold War tensions gripped the United States, the American government was searching for anti-Soviet propaganda to spread across the world. Animal Farm’s effective plot and messaging made it the perfect material to aid their battle against Stalin and his regime. The CIA wanted to bring Animal Farm to a much wider audience, reported The New York Times, by covertly backing a movie adaptation that downplayed the source material’s attacks on capitalism and amplified its opposition to communism.

“It was perceived as having a simple story that would be accessible to families, children and people of all educational levels,” says Tony Shaw, the author of Hollywood's Cold War. “They wanted to make it clear to ordinary people that communism is a danger to you.”

The CIA likely began to think about adapting Animal Farm shortly following Orwell’s death on January 21, 1950. After undercover agents bought the film rights from his widow Sonia Orwell, Louis de Rochemont—the filmmaker behind the monthly theatrical newsreels The March Of Time—was hired as an intermediary between the production and intelligence agency. 

Rather than using an American animation company, the CIA hired Halas and Batchelor, run by a U.K.-based husband-and-wife team. “They didn’t use Hollywood because they wanted some distance. Using a British company made it look less like American propaganda,” explains Shaw.

During this era of Joseph McCarthy's infamous communist accusations in Hollywood, the CIA also harbored suspicion towards American film companies. There was a belief that some individuals in Hollywood could not be trusted to keep the CIA's involvement a secret, says Shaw. Meanwhile, Halas and Batchelor had produced around 70 war information and propaganda films for the UK’s Ministry of Information and War Office during World War II. 

Under orders from the CIA, de Rochemont told screenwriters Philip Stapp and Lothar Wolff to change various elements of Orwell’s plot to make its anti-Communist message clear. “They simplified the book and got rid of characters and elements that were very critical of capitalism,” says Shaw. This included making the character of Snowball the pig, who represented Leon Trotsky, much less sympathetic and more fanatical. 

The biggest alteration was the conclusion. While the book ends in a pessimistic fashion, the movie finishes with the animals rallying together and triumphantly storming the farm against their new oppressors—the pigs who became indistinguishable from the humans they replaced. “They revolt and smash it down,” says Shaw. “This, to my reading, is a clear case of the CIA telling the people living under communism to revolt.”

Despite its government-backing, when the movie finally hit cinemas in the US and UK in January of 1955, it underperformed. Unlike Orwell’s book, which was snuck behind the Iron Curtain, the film wasn’t distributed or spread around the Soviet Union.

However, the adaptation did eventually find an audience in South America, where over the next few decades the U.S. government would aid coups in Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador to prevent the rise of communism. “Its other target would have been these developing countries, where power was up for grabs by the mid-'50s into the 1960s. That’s where the Cold War could have been won or lost," says Shaw. 

The movie was also used as an educational tool in both Great Britain and the United States. Until the conclusion of the Cold War in 1991, it was regularly shown in schools to teenagers as a cautionary tale about the dangers of communism. 

Animal Farm wasn’t the only piece of culture the CIA used in its covert fight against the Soviet Union. After learning that Stalin highlighted how racially divided the United States was to undermine its image of freedom, the CIA encouraged film studios to “insert a number of Black characters into films,” says Shaw. From the 1970s onwards, the CIA also helped to promote rock music in the Soviet Union and East Germany, all with the intention of destabilizing the Eastern bloc.

While it’s impossible to quantify the impact culture had on the ultimate downfall of the Soviet Union, historians over the last two decades have analyzed what people bought, listened to and watched in the lead-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.  “I don't think it's any doubt that American propaganda played a critical role in helping the West win the Cold War,” says Shaw. “The amount of effort the American government put into film and culture tells us that they thought they were getting some reward and that it worked.”