When was 1984 published?

George Orwell's futuristic dystopian novel, 1984, was first published in 1949. It responds to what Orwell saw as the increasing threat of totalitarianism. Although one major target of Orwell's satiric vision was Stalinist Russia, it was far from the only totalitarian society to which Orwell was reacting.
As Orwell was writing the novel, the Allies had just defeated, after great sacrifice and struggle, the totalitarian Axis powers of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. Franco was in control of Spain. In 1949, Mao came to power in China. Thus the novel reacts to what Orwell saw as an increasing threat to the liberal democracies which had developed in the nineteenth centuries by the growth of fascism and totalitarianism.