George Orwell wrote Animal Farm between 1943-1944 as an allegory for the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise to power in the Soviet Union. The story depicts a farm where animals overthrow their human farmer and establish an animal-run society with the ideals of equality and fairness. However, the pigs on the farm gradually start to take on human traits of greed and corruption until they become indistinguishable from the humans they overthrew. The character Napoleon represents Joseph Stalin and how he consolidated power and established a totalitarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union.