Deliberately Misreading Orwell, in Russia and America

Last month, it emerged that high schools in Siberia were teaching students an unexpected text as part of “anti-terrorism awareness” lessons—1984 by George Orwell. Most Western readers automatically assume the novel’s main protagonist, Winston Smith, is something of a hero for doing his best to resist the totalitarian regime depicted within the book’s pages. In Putin’s Russia, though, Smith is now presented to children as a dangerous radical, not to be emulated.