A surprising possible consequence of *Uncle Tom's Cabin*

"So this is the little lady who started the Great October Socialist Revolution?" http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/reform/jb_reform_beecher_3.html

I've always been doubtful that Uncle Tom's Cabin played as big a role as is sometimes thought in bringing about the ACW. After all, in 1852, after the book was published, Pierce swept the North as well as the South. It really did seem that the majority of Northerners were willing to acquiesce in the Compromise of 1850--including even its most odious provision, the Fugitive Slave Act--until the Kansas-Nebraska bill re-ignited the sectional conflict.

However, the book may have had an unexpected influence elsewhere:

"His [Vladimir Ulyanov]'s favourite book, before he moved on to the Russian literary classics, was none other than Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. This tale of a Negro slave's attempt to flee the cruelties of a cotton plantation in the South was given pride of place in his room...it is striking that Vladimir's most cherished book described not Russia but the USA. This was in keeping with the desire of his parents to keep themselves and their children away from dangerous discussions of Russian public life. If so, they were a little naive. Uncle Tom's Cabin contained ideas of universal significance; its sentimental style communicated universal ideals of human dignity. When we try to trace the origins of Vladimir's political outlook, we often look to what he read in his late adolescence and early manhood. We focus on Chernyshevski, Marx, Plekhanov and Kautsky. But we need to remember that, before these Russian and German male authors imprinted themselves upon his consciousness, an American woman--Harriet Beecher Stowe--had already influenced his young mind." Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (Harvard UP 2000), p. 43. https://books.google.com/books?id=frDGHIxc4EUC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43
 
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