The greatest fear of George Orwell's as expressed fictionally in 1984, was the crushing of the individual psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and, if necessary, physically, by the totalitarian state.
Writing in 1948, and knowing of the horrors of the totalitarian regimes in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, Orwell wrote the book to focus on the techniques and the rationale totalitarian oppressors used to justify and carry out their programs of conformity and terror. Such regimes in Germany and Russia, and in the Oceania of 1984, used whatever means were necessary to break down the will, the spirit, the humanity of the individual, so that he thought, felt and behaved in accordance with the wishes of the regime.
Clearly, Orwell was justified in writing a book warning of the future of totalitarianism, for such totalitarianism existed at the time of his writing. The subtlety of much of the oppression of Oceania contrasted with the general brutality of Stalin's Russia, for Orwell wanted to show how totalitarianism in the future would likely refine its oppressive and dehumanizing techniques so that force was not as often necessary to control the masses.
The "Ministry of Love" in the novel's Oceania government is dedicated to torture. The "Ministry of Truth" is dedicated to lies and deception and propaganda. The "Ministry of Peace" is dedicated to war. Everything is altered, everything is turned inside-out, sometimes subtly and sometimes brutally, in order to strip away from the individual his or her sense of independence from the state. The individual through technology and psychological means is worn down until he or she accepts that there is no place to hide from the eyes of Big Brother. The totalitarianism of Stalin's Russia was brutal, but the dehumanization and soul-stealing processes of Oceania are so subtle that the individual forgets that he is indeed losing his very soul to the state.
...