London - A 79-page FBI dossier released on George Orwell reveals that the British author of Animal Farm and 1984 was used by both the Americans and the Russians as a key figure in the battle for ideas during two decades after his death in 1950.
Even before 1984 was published in 1949 American publishers sought to exploit the novel as an attack on Soviet totalitarianism by seeking the endorsement of Edgar Hoover, the FBI chief, who ironically later became known as America's " Big Brother. "
A decade later the USSR used Orwell as part of a smear campaign to tell the Russian people that his satire was based on real life in the US where everybody was under surveillance. But in the 1960s and 1970s the American security services monitored George Orwell societies and film clubs on US campuses.