Lenin:Goldstein... Stalin:Big Brother?

[Shady1503]

Ive only just finished the book (personally really obsessed by it at the moment :D) but have heard that Orwell used Big Brother as a representation of Stalin. And Goldstein was meant to be Lenin. Im not really sure how these two things work out. How are they like these two?

I've read in some previous posts that people dont believe that Goldstein really exists and that he was just another way which Big Brother could gain control over the masses, as he did with Winston. Lenin was obviously real and although he was forced out of Russia by Stalin was he actually displayed as somebody to be hated?

Obviously Lenin's Russia wasnt as brutal as Stalins but both were still Communist. Did Winston actually know what Goldstein wanted? Or did he just want to get out of the rule of Big Brother?

I can see how Big Brother was based on Stalin but I just can't grasp the relationship between Goldstein and Lenin!

[ennison]

You're confusing Lenin with Trotsky - him wot got the point of the ice axe!!
Lenin's Russia wasn't as brutal because he wasn't so long in power and needed to pause to consolidate which he did with the NEP. But Lenin made the state that Stalin inherited and Stalin claimed always that he was Lenin's heir.
I'm quite sure Orwell had the Soviet system in mind when he portrayed the state controlled through Big Brother. But he had moved beyond a single image of totalitarianism by then and undoubtedly also had the fascist corporate state in his mind as he wrote the novel

[murdo]

I'm sorry to say your rather confused. You need to brush up on your Russian History. Lenin was never forced out of the USSR by Stalin. Who you are thinking of is Trotsky, who was meant to succeed Lenin. Stalin however cleverly won the leadership race after Lenin's death.