George Orwell published 1984 in 1949, the same year that the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. The arms race that followed the Soviets' development of nuclear weaponry quickly escalated into the Cold War, which raged for the next four decades as the enormous ideological gulf separating capitalism and democracy from totalitarianism and Communism led to mutual hatred between the United States and the Soviet Union, the world's most powerful nations. During the long decades of …showed first 75 words of 418 total…

…showed last 75 words of 418 total…strikingly in the film Wag the Dog. Also in the novel, historical records are rewritten to match the political ideology of the Party--a technique that the Soviet Union used as recently as a decade ago, and one still common in some parts of the world. Though 1984 has passed, the warning of Orwell's novel remains important: the Cold War may be over, but the world has never completely escaped from the dystopian dangers that Orwell describes.