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George Orwell’s “1984” has earned the distinction of being the most stolen book from the shelves of Russia's Chitai-Gorod bookstore chain in 2023. The dystopian classic, which was stolen from Chitai-Gorod stores 460 times, was also among the top 10 most-purchased books from the chain this year, the company said in a press release cited by the RBC news website. In “1984,” the totalitarian government uses surveillance, propaganda and paradoxical slogans like “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength” to maintain control over the population.
For those trapped behind the Iron Curtain, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four seemed more a documentary than a work of dystopian fiction. How did a man who had never traveled to communist Russia get so much so right?