I wrote one of my research papers on the 1954 animated version of Animal Farm and went briefly into the history of this CIA sponsored British film for my European cinema class. The movie is worth checking out after the book, and I think you'll enjoy how different this adaption is compared to the book and you can easily see that the film, like the book, became a vehicle for anti-communist propaganda following WW2.

First, Orwell published his novella just days after the end of World War 2, and initially, his political slant and anti-Stalinist views made it difficult for him to find a publisher. Remember that USSR had been a valuable ally for both the Americans and Brits, so it was unthinkable that such a scathing but disguised criticism of Stalin would be well-received by the public.

The book I referenced is Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm by Daniel Leab. In it, Leab talks about how Stalin was loved by the public, to the point of the average citizens at the time referring to him as "Uncle Joe." Despite this as you know, Animal Farm received favorable reviews and enormous commercial success in both the US and Britain and not because readers somehow missed its obvious references to the USSR.

Despite Orwell's focus on Stalin, it's likely that the book was intended to be an attack on totalitarianism as a whole. In his essay, "Why I Write", Orwell briefly mentions Animal Farm as "the first book in which I tried... to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole." Orwell's personal political leaning towards socialism and "his contempt for what he called 'the ordinary stupid capitalists'" (Leab) suggests his criticism intended to target the tendency for any utopian movement to extinguish any notion of individuality. Consequently, while the novel is undoubtedly anti-Stalinist, Orwell’s work is underlined by his socialist stance and does not condemn communism. When the novel finally attracted the CIA's attention, they omitted the inconvenient aspects of Orwell’s criticisms and rewrote numerous parts of the source material to create the script for the 1954 animated film version of Animal Farm.

I won't spoil it for you, but I do recommend that you check out the 1954 film after you read the book. The tone completely changes, and it makes for an interesting, if not enjoyable, watch.

While Animal Farm inescapably parodies the Soviet Union and Stalinism, it also encapsulates the social experience of revolution more generally. Orwell animal characters represent the working class, the bourgeoisie, the media and so on. Revolutionary history tends to have repetitive themes (right up to the Arab Spring) and Animal Farm is subversive to any government that portrays itself as 'revolutionary'.

Orwell was a rare individual in the 1930s and 40s, as a politically aware socialist who was staunchly anti-Soviet. His experiences in the Spanish Civil War reinforced this, as u/Marsebil-May points out, his socialist faction was turned on by the Soviet-backed Republican leadership. Orwell saw and noted the methods used, the changing of history, the way a 'new truth' would be parrotted by 'loyalists'. The lies told as various factions tried to claim the kudos for battlefield victory, and deny it to ideological enemies. Orwell was especially interested in cognitive dissonance: how people could know something to be true, but reject it to remain loyal to the leadership.

Socialism meant many things in the 1930s, and we must bear in mind that at this time, with the Depression, the rise of Fascism, and the glorification of Stalin's USSR it was common for many people to see democracy as a doomed, corrupt and weak system. For many, the choice was fascism, revolutionary communism, or a sort of 'Fabian' socialism were the revolution came by democratic, rather than revolutionary means. Many leading socialist intellectuals visited Russia and returned convinced of the justice and prosperity of Stalin's nation.

Based on his Spanish war experience and skepticism, Orwell was having none of this. He saw the rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky for what it was. Notably, in Animal Farm, he also presents the original, human owner of the farm as wicked and cruel: the idea of returning to a pre-revolutionary (capitalist) state is no answer.

Orwell kept a strong sense of loyalty to the working people, he never allowed himself to see them as inferior or 'dumb'. His belief in the dignity of ordinary people shines through his work.