History
Soviet Regime Erased Nobel Family History Inspiring Orwell's 1984
Danger Close
The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel
What was said
"What Stalin did to the Russian Nobel side of the family was the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. There's a line that I quote in the book where Orwell talks about how they changed the street names and they rewrote the history and tore down the statues. And that's exactly what happened. So the Nobel Brothers Petroleum Company that was in present-day Azerbaijan was renamed the Soviet Petroleum Company and its machine factory and munitions factory up by Saint Petersburg was renamed Russky Diesel, and they completely changed the history."
Author Douglas Brunt claims Stalin's erasure of the Nobel family from Russian history directly inspired George Orwell's concept of rewriting the past in 1984. The Nobels controlled more oil than Standard Oil and pioneered Russia's oil industry, but after the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin nationalized their companies, renamed them, and rewrote history to portray the Nobels as capitalist exploiters rather than enlightened employers.
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- Programme
- Danger Close
- Episode
- The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel
- Clip time
- 12:57
- Original source
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