Nineteen Eighty Four

Title: Nineteen Eighty Four (1984)
Genre: Dystopic Science Fiction
Audience: British / English readers initially; in time, a wider audience.
World events: 
  • World War I: the rise of Communism; dissolution of many monarchies (Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German)
  • Orwell's personal context: his time in Burma;
  • The Rise of Fascism, Nationalism and Totalitarianism in Europe: the repression of rights, liberties and freedoms of individuals; the use of propaganda in these countries to control the masses; the use of secret police to control and limit dissent and opposition to those in power, like the Italian OVRA (1927), Nazi Gestapo (1933) and the Soviet NKVD (1934) - the latter of whom carried out a number of extrajudicial executions; Hitler's Four Year Plan (to prepare for war) and Stalinist Five Year Plans (for economic targets and projections); Great Purges in Russia, especially from 1936-1938 called Yezhovshchina; cynicism towards the Russian Politburo
  • The Great Depression and Wall Street Crash:  Adverse economic conditions lead people to seek easy solutions, hence the ascedency of the Nazi's in Germany
  • The Spanish Civil War 1936 - 1939; served with POUM (The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (Spanish: Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista,POUM; Catalan: Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista) Orwell served with this Militia and saw firsthand the Stalinist repression of the group and their use of propaganda (the Communists accused POUM of assisting and being pro-Fascist), which would shape his anti-Totalitarian leanings.
  • World War II: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 1939; his wife, Eileen working at the Ministry of Food; he was producing cultural broadcasts to India to counter Nazi anti-Imperial propaganda; 
Purpose: A deeply satirical novel, criticising the rise and rule of totalitarian Communist (Stalinist Russia) and Fascist Governments (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Falangist Spain) which were prevalent during Orwell's time.  It was a also a deep criticism of any overly controlling governments, who sought to gain and maintain power at the expense of liberty, freedom and privacy, often using and manipulating information through the use of propaganda and control.
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Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it. - Orwell
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The Senate House, University of London. In WW2, it was the home of the Ministry of Information