A new illustrated edition of Animal Farm with dozens of paintings by the Ukrainian painter Iwan Kulik, as well as a previously unpublished text in which the author clarifies and comments on the birth of his famous book. When George Orwell finished writing his Animal Farm in 1944, he could not have imagined that his allegorical fable about the Russian revolution and the Stalinist dictatorship would become a classic, or even compulsory school reading, after several decades, all the more so because the British publishers initially showed no interest in publishing the book, and even refused it - the author wrote his immortal work at a time when the Western powers were in a difficult struggle with the Nazis Germany cooperated with the Soviet Union and when there was a fear that the dystopian, all-too-true picture of the reality of Soviet society could anger Stalin. Orwell was convinced that the alliance would not last long, and he prophetically embodied his conviction in the final scene of Animal Farm (the prototype of which is the Tehran Conference), which not only symbolizes the definitive end of revolutionary idealism and the victory of cynical pragmatism, but also heralds the era of irreconcilable conflict that will soon be called the Cold War. If Animal Farm at the time of its publication caused embarrassment and even resistance among many commentators and critics, with the advent of the open Cold War, the situation reversed, and the causes of this reversal were also this time political in nature: the book was subsequently vociferously praised and widely published, as it proved to be an effective tool of anti-communist propaganda. The US government funded translations of the book into languages ​​(e.g. Greek, Vietnamese, Arabic, Farsi, Malay) spoken in countries it deemed "at risk" and subsequently supported their dissemination and distribution. Not long after the author's death, the American intelligence service CIA conceived the ingenious strategic idea of ​​popularizing Orwell's parody of Soviet Communism with a film, and bought the film rights from Orwell's wife by means of impersonated actors. The animated film Animal Farm from 1954, appropriately adapted from the book version, was fully directed by her... The author, who so brilliantly described the mechanisms of the totalitarian system, propaganda and demagoguery, could not have imagined that his work itself would become the subject of manipulation... Animal Farm was invoked by practically everyone – conservatives, liberals, both right-wing and left-wing, but also socialists, and it must be said that rightly so. After all, if the author wanted to "unmask the Soviet myth" in front of the public, especially the British, with his book, he did so in the interests of democratic socialism: "... And that is why I am convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth is absolutely essential for the revival of the socialist movement." We can ask ourselves what myth he would debunk today... The new edition is supplemented with dozens of paintings by the Ukrainian painter Iwan Kulik, whose work readers know from the illustrated edition of the novel The Master and the Market Girl, which was published in 2020. The book also includes a preface to the Ukrainian edition from 1947, Orwell's only published introduction to Animal Farm, and at the same time the author's only personal comment on the genesis of the book.