Despite the crowing about Stalinism, 1984 was absolutely moreso based on the state of the UK at the time. Orwell wrote about how his letters were opened by UK intelligence before getting them, how he felt obligated to write propaganda for the BBC to support the war effort a direct analogue to Winston, democracy was at the time effectively suspended in the UK, and the ‘ministries’ mentioned are direct references to the UK ministries. So you were surely right.

Orwell was a colonial cop, then a BBC propagandist, and anticommunist snitch. He never visited the USSR. Writers are advised “write what you know” because they’ll end up doing so anyway, no matter how hard they try to do otherwise.