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I've never noticed this usage of the past tense in the appendix about Newspeak - you're right, it does. And it's also written in standard English, so interpreting it as written in a world after Oceania fell is viable.
And following this line of thought we could even interpret the main story as a narrative within another.
Another possibility is that the appendix is not written in-universe, and uses the past tense because it's how people expect storytelling to be written in English, with Orwell speaking directly to the reader instead of Winston Smith.
It's definitely not Winston, he died in the main story. I interpreted it as an unnamed historian writing about this years later. I don't think Orwell would self-insert and write from an in universe perspective.
In the second hypothesis it wouldn't be self-inserting; it's more like the author explaining something to the readers, outside the story.