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Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. This links to Animal Farm because it is associated with socialism and revolution. He published a book called The Communist Manifesto. Animal farm is also centred around communism. He argued that class antagonisms under capitalism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat would eventuate in the working class' conquest of political power and eventually establish a classless society, communism, a society governed by a free association of producers.
Joseph Stalin was the leader of the soviet union. Central to his program was the collectivization of agriculture, in which the government would redistribute the land by taking over the estates of the "kulaks", the wealthiest peasants. But the kulaks were essentially a figment of Marxist propaganda, which links to Animal Farm because the pigs use propaganda to brainwash the animals into following their point of view (which is also metaphorical for political views). Leon Trotsky was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army. His titles link in with Animal Farm because it is all associated with politics, the Government, revolution, and hierarchy (relating to leaders.) Trotsky was a key figure in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, second only to Vladimir Lenin in the early stages of Soviet communist rule. But he lost out to Joseph Stalin in the power struggle that followed Lenin's death, and was assassinated while in exile. Communism links.
Vladimir Lenin was one of the leading political figures and revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century, who masterminded the Bolshevik take-over of power in Russia in 1917, and was the architect and first head of the USSR. In 1917, exhausted by World War One, Russia was ripe for change.

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