Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 bestselling book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, explores slavery in the Antebellum South, and it has been widely recognised as having had an important impact on changing attitudes towards African Americans and the institution of slavery in the USA. It also had worldwide importance; one million copies were sold in Britain in its first year of publication.
The book also resonated hugely in Russia. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Khízhina diádi Tóma in Russian, was published in at least sixty-seven different editions in Russia between 1857 and 1917. In the twentieth century, a further seventy editions were published in at least twenty-one different languages – showing the book’s longevity and continued importance in the USSR, as well as in the earlier Tsarist period. The book elicited responses both from elite members of Russian society, such as Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy as well as from quotidian sources; the book became a touchstone for ordinary readers in regards to the way they viewed their own Russian identity and national history.
The first responses of the book in Russia came from the literary elite before it had even been translated into Russia. Then, despite all efforts by the authorities, many members of Russia’s literate public of the 1850s came into contact with the book. It was, to begin with, read it as an allegorical attack on and description of Russia’s own serfdom-based society. In the same way as it had elicited responses in America, regarding the position of slavery within American society, similar questions were generated in Russia regarding serfdom. Uncle Tom’s Cabin encouraged members of the reading public to engage in a comparative reflection upon their own society and that of the distant United States through the institution of slavery.
Through this comparison, Uncle Tom’s Cabin even became a medium through which to question Russia’s development in comparison to the West. Slavophile’s such as Alexei Khomyakov strongly argued that comparisons between Russia
and the West, and in particular the USA, should not be made, arguing that the institution of serfdom was far different and unique to Russia. On the other hand, radical Westernisers such as Alexander Herzen insisted that the book was relevant to Russia and highlighted the need for change in Russia.
The popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin did decrease somewhat following the emancipation of the Russian serfs, but it did continue to maintain an important place in Russian culture, especially among ordinary readers. It also returned to popularity at later points in Russian history too. During the October Revolution it was held up as a critique of exploitation and during the Soviet period it was used to exemplify America’s inherent racist culture and social structure.