What is the historical significance of Animal Farm?

Aside from having literary significance as a great, canonical novel in the English language, Animal Farm is significant in that it reflects the unease and disillusionment many intellectuals on the left felt with events in the Soviet Union. Though the book was published after World War II, it was written as many, including democractic socialists like Orwell, were discovering the horrors of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. The animals' revolution, like that of the Bolsheviks, collapses into brutality and tyranny, betraying its founding ideals in a nightmare arguably worse than the society they overthrew. Animal Farm, along with the equally grim 1984, serves as a reminder that revolutions are doomed to fail if they do not respect the rights of individuals. Of course, it can be read as a simple barnyard fairy tale, but realizing the context in which it was written provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the work. Animal Farm is a far more powerful work if the reader realizes just what it is that Orwell is satirizing.