"What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side."

George Orwell responds to a critic

It is quite true that I have had great freedom to say what I wished, but I have only had it because I have not only ignored the pressures that are put on a writer by editors and publishers, but also public opinion outside the literary intelligentsia. Whenever I have had something that I especially wanted to say, I have always found that to say it at that moment was ‘undesirable’ and ‘inopportune’, and I have received the most solemn warnings against printing, sometimes from people whose opinion I respected. Mr Swingler seems to think that it is rather profitable to be known as a critic of the U.S.S.R.¹ It may become so in the future, but during the last ten years it has been extremely difficult even to get anything of anti-Russian tendency into print. My book Animal Farm, for instance, had to be peddled round from publisher to publisher over a period of a year or so, just as had happened earlier with my novel Burmese Days, which attacked another vested interest, British imperialism. Because I committed the crime known in France as lese-Staline I have been obliged at times to change my publisher, to stop writing for papers which represented part of my livelihood, to have my books boycotted in other papers, and to be pursued by insulting letters, articles similar to the one which Mr. Swingler has just written, and even threats of libel actions. It would be silly to complain of all this, since I have survived it, but I know that other thinner-skinned people often succumb to similar treatment, and that the average writer, especially the average young writer, is terrified of offending against the orthodoxy of the moment. For some years past, orthodoxy—or at least the dominant brand of it—has consisted in not criticising Stalin, and the resulting corruption has been such that the bulk of the English literary intelligentsia has looked on at torture, massacre and aggressing without expressing disapproval, and perhaps in the long run without feeling it. This may change, and in my opinion probably will change. In five years it may be as dangerous to praise Stalin as it was to attack him two years ago. But I should not regard this as an advance. Nothing is gained by teaching a parrot a new word. What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail form any side.

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First published in Polemic, 30 September 1946. All rights reserved—this extract remains under copyright in the United States and may not be distributed or reused in any way without permission from the Orwell Estate.

1. In his 1946 essay The Prevention of Literature, George Orwell warned of an emerging culture of self-censorship, particularly around criticism of the Soviet Union in left wing circles. The essay first appeared in the January 1946 issue of Polemic. Later that year, on 30 September, Polemic published an attempt at rebuttal by the Communist writer and poet Randall Swingler, in which Swingler accuses Orwell of writing with “a fog of vagueness and a hailstorm of private hates” and implies that he has invented the atmosphere described in the original essay, whether out of personal neurosis or private ambition (ironically, the exact motive Orwell is meant to be possessed by is never spelled out).

Swingler’s article was printed alongside Orwell’s extensive replies, set in small type in the margin around the text. The passage above comes from Orwell’s seventh response, which addresses Swingler’s remark:

“What in heaven is Orwell really worried about? He appears at the moment to be getting more space than any other journalist to report truthfully. Or are we to assume that he is being compelled to write lies by all the editors who offer him their columns? We are not, I’m sure.”

This exchange is reproduced in full in The Complete Works of George Orwell, Volume 18.