The analogies between Animal Farm and history
Napoleon's removal of Snowball recalls Stalin's removal of Leon Trotsky from power and Trotsky was later killed.
The flag of Animal Farm consists of a green field with a hoof and a horn. According to the book, the green represents the fields of England, with the hoof and horn being an analog to the hammer and sickle.
When Napoleon steals Snowball’s idea for a windmill, the windmill can be considered a symbol of the Soviet Five-Year Plans, a concept developed by Trotsky and adopted by Stalin, who, after banning Trotsky from the Soviet Union, claimed them to be his idea. The failure of the windmill to generate the expected creature comforts and subsequent search for saboteurs is probably a reference to accusations and a show trial against British engineers who were working on electrification projects in the USSR.
Moses the raven leaving the farm for a while and then returning is similar to the Russian Orthodox Church going underground and then being brought back to give the workers (false) hope.
Boxer's motto, "Napoleon is always right" is synonymous with ĢIl Duce ha sempre ragioneģ ("Mussolini is always right"), a chant used to hail Benito Mussolini during his rule of Italy from 1922 to 1943.
During the rise of Napoleon, he ordered the collection of all the hens' eggs. In an act of defiance, the hens destroyed their eggs rather than give them to Napoleon. During Stalin's collectivization period in the early 1930s, many Ukrainian peasants burned their crops and farms rather than handing them over to the government.
Napoleon's mass executions, of which many were unfair for the alleged crimes, is similar to Stalin executing his political enemies for various crimes after they were tortured and forced to falsify confessions.
Napoleon replaces the farm anthem "Beasts of England" with an inane composition by the pig poet Minimus ("Animal Farm, Animal Farm / Never through me / Shall thou come to harm"). In 1943, Stalin replaced the old national anthem "the Internationale" with "the Hymn of the Soviet Union." The old Internationale glorified the revolution and "the people." The original version of the Hymn of the Soviet Union glorified Stalin so heavily that after his death in 1953, entire sections of the anthem had to be replaced or removed. Orwell could have also been referring to Napoleon Bonaparte's banning of the French national hymn, La Marseillaise in 1799.
Napoleon works with Mr. Frederick, who eventually betrays Animal Farm and destroys the windmill. Though Animal Farm repels the human attack, many animals are wounded and killed. This is similar to Stalin’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in 1939, which was later betrayed in 1941 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Though the Soviet Union won the war, it came at a tremendous price of roughly 8.5-15 million Soviet soldiers (unconfirmed) and many civilians, resulting in an incredible estimated 20 million dead, as well as the utter destruction of the Western Soviet Union and its prized collective farms that Stalin had created in the 1930s. The detonation of the windmill and the battle that ensued there could also be a reference to the Battle of Stalingrad. The selling of the farm's excess timber supply could represent the offering of raw materials to the United States in exchange for weapons of war under the Lend-Lease.
Napoleon changing Animal Farm back to Manor echoes the Red Army’s name change from the "Workers' and Peasants' Red Army" to the "Soviet Army" to appear as a more appealing and professional organization rather than an army of the common people.
Squealer may be an allegory of the Soviet Newspaper in which Stalin often wrote many of the articles anonymously to give the impression the country was far better off than it was.
The dogs may be an allegory to the NKVD (KGB), the elite police force who ruled by terror under Stalin's hand.
Boxer, in the allegory of the novel, directly relates to the working class who labored under strenuous and exceedingly difficult conditions throughout the Communist regime with the hope that their work would result in a more prosperous life. Boxer represents this clearly at points when he utters such quotes as "I will work harder" in response to any sort of difficulty. In the context of the story, this also allows Boxer to become a tool of propaganda to be used by Napoleon and his regime later on once Boxer has been murdered to pay for a crate of whiskey for the pigs.
When Napoleon and Snowball argue about how Animal Farm should be ruled, Napoleon favors acquiring weapons to defend the farm while Snowball favored getting other farms (countries) to rebel. This is similar to Stalin wanting "Socialism in one country" and Trotsky's theory of "Permanent Revolution."
The term "four legs good, two legs bad" could be symbolic for the simplification of the April Theses, for workers to understand it better.
Napoleon once creates and awards himself with the Order of the Green Banner, a reference to the Soviet Union's Order of the Red Banner.
The character of Boxer could be an allusion to the financial state of Russia at the time of publication
These are mostly from Wikipedia.org
