Quote Originally Posted by Fyraltari View Post
Probably not, Ingsoc is a stand in for every totalitarian ideology not just stalinism, and both much more extreme and much more self-aware than stalinism. Also I'm not aware of any Newspeak project in Soviet Russia. Plus I think that the fact that we have no source of information about the world of 1984 except Ingsoc to be part of the horror. Is there even really a war going on? Who knows?
Of course the horror of not knowing can be reversed around: the city they're in might be the last fascist one in existence desperately holding itself to continuing the charade no matter what and spreading lies about the rest of the world to make sure people don't escape. you don't know.