Governmental Hegemony of Stalin’s Totalitarian Regime in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

ABSTRACT

Nineteen Eighty-four was created and published just after the World War II ended. The world was under the insecurity of Europe’s imperialism, communist’s grasp, and World War II. In other side, Orwell who lived under the World War’s brutality became the victim of unfair capitalist and cruel communism. The development of English literature in the beginning of twentieth century is approximately in line with this road of history. Then because literature is a human expression and as a human the author is certainly unable to escape from the neighborhood where he lives. Nineteen eighty-four as a work cannot be separated from the condition of the world in the beginning of Twentieth century.

This research is supposed to produce a descriptive knowledge and deep understanding toward the novel. The purpose of this research is to describe how the governmental hegemonies are depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four and simultaneously to find out whether Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four criticizes the hegemony of Stalin’s totalitarian regimes.

Gramscian hegemony theory is used as the major apparatus in conducting
this research. Hegemony theory underlines literature as a social power rather than merely a passive representation of real society. This is also regarded as sociology of literature study that is a multidisciplinary study based on the orientation between the work and universe. While this is a multidisciplinary study, some views are fused into a unity by way of determining a fixed pattern of correlations including the history and the life.

Hegemony is a dialectic relationship on a power based on consensus (egemonia) and forcefulness (dominio). From the data we knew the hegemony consists in Nineteen Eighty-Four are including persuasive and forceful hegemony. Hegemony in the form of consensus (persuasive) is frequently broadened from a very implicit movement, propaganda, and any tools to develop a coerce influence of ideology according to the authority (Big Brother regime in the novel). In this case, the propaganda could be variously expanded by the instrument of languages (newspeak), songs, processions, banners, pamphlets, the yelling of slogans or adoration, literature and mass media. Some direct controls are categorized as persuasive are the telescreen, hidden mike and thought police. While forceful hegemony is hegemony by applying a strict physical punishment such as, confining, imprisoning, kidnapping, forced labor, torture and killing without a trial. The purpose of forceful hegemony is not the punishment itself but to make somebody recant, confess, regret and finally replacing those entire heretics thought with a new “deceived consciousness” of the Party’s ideology. Both persuasive and forceful hegemony are in the aim of eternalizing the party’s authority and ideology. From the analysis, the researcher concludes that Orwell is actually not writing Nineteen Eighty-Four in order to grab the literary hegemony officially produced by Stalin’s authority since Orwell is not directly head on with the regime and there is no direct contact between Orwell’s literary work and Stalin’s literary works. But the more important, Orwell attempts to build perception and construction to the reader through out the world by means of the ideas of hegemony found in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell carried out a criticism using the novel as an imaginary work toward the Stalin’s regime as a social reality.

From this research, the researcher hopes there will be other researchers who concern to this topic and explore the social and cultural power of literary work in more details. Of course, this topic is still needed extra attention towards by using varied theories in study of sociology of literature.