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81  4 Uncle Tom, Cold War­ rior They were al­ ways abus­ ing each ­ other’s opin­ ions and prac­ tices, and yet never a whit the less ab­ sorbed in each ­ other’s so­ ci­ ety; in fact, the very contra­ riety ­ seemed to unite them, like the at­ trac­ tion­ between op­ po­ site poles of the mag­ net. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (on St. Clare and his ­ brother, Al­ fred) Kor­ nei Chu­ kov­ sky may not have even known about the edi­ tion of the 1941 trans­ la­ tion (to­ gether with his pref­ ace, much al­ tered) pub­ lished in Sverd­ lovsk in 1950. It is safe to say that he would not have been ­ pleased. The orig­ i­ nal pref­ ace con­ tained a good deal about ­ Stowe’s early life, but the later edi­ tion re­ moves vir­ tu­ ally all that ma­ te­ rial, ex­ cept the ref­ er­ ences to her pov­ erty, and all of ­ Chukovsky’s com­ par­ i­ sons of­ Stowe’s novel with Rus­ sian lit­ er­ a­ ture are cut. Added are five par­ a­ graphs of a more po­ lit­ i­ cal na­ ture, fo­ cused en­ tirely on the con­ tem­ po­ rary­ American sit­ u­ a­ tion. Chu­ kov­ sky had con­ cluded his orig­ i­ nal essay with en­ tirely ac­ cu­ rate re­ marks on the post­ eman­ ci­ pa­ tion dis­ crim­ i­ na­ tion­ against and ­ systemic ex­ ploi­ ta­ tion of ­ blacks in the ­ United ­ States. The newly aug­ mented pref­ ace adds men­ tion of lynch­ ing and the ac­ tiv­ i­ ties of the Klan and white su­ prem­ a­ cists—but then it goes con­ sid­ er­ ably fur­ ther: Es­ pe­ cially today, when the ­ United ­ States is at such high speed be­ com­ ing the na­ tion of fas­ cism, the life of “free” ­ blacks has be­ come heavy and tor­ ment­ ing, so that even the epoch of slav­ ery might seem hap­ pier to them. The kin­ dling of ra­ cial ha­ tred has ­ reached ­ unheard-of di­ men­ sions in ­ Truman’s im­ pe­ ri­ al­ ist Amer­ ica, di­ men­ sions that Stowe could not have fore­ seen. . . . Con­ tem­ po­ rary Amer­ ica, under the power of the smart 82 Uncle Tom, Cold Warrior op­ er­ a­ tors of Wall ­ Street, the Amer­ ica that has in­ sti­ gated a new war, has­ spawned a fas­ cis­ tic, bar­ baric re­ la­ tion­ ship to ­ blacks. The most night­ mar­ ish pages from the past, as de­ scribed by Stowe, pale in com­ par­ i­ son to the suf­ fer­ ings under­ gone right now by the ­ great-grandchildren of Uncle Tom.1 One need not, I think, be an apol­ o­ gist for the ­ American ra­ cial order to find these com­ ments a tad hyper­ bolic. With the onset of the Cold War in 1946 (after a brief pe­ riod of warm ­ Soviet-American re­ la­ tions dur­ ing the war), anti–­ United ­ States rhet­ o­ ric be­ came one of the ex­ pected fea­ tures of any pref­ ace to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, al­ though the lan­ guage be­ came pro­ gres­ sively less ­ shrill over time.2 A grim and re­ veal­ ing ex­ am­ ple of the uses made of Stowe under con­ di­ tions of ­ late-Stalinist hys­ teria ap­ peared in a 1949 ad­ ap­ ta­ tion of the book by V. S. ­ Val’dman.3 Al­ though more full than the 1920s edi­ tions, this ver­ sion marks some­ thing of a re­ turn to those more un­ in­ hib­ ited re­ work­ ings: in­ stead of the book end­ ing with ­ Shelby ex­ hort­ ing the for­ mer­ slaves to re­ mem­ ber their free­ dom and “hon­ est” Uncle Tom, read­ ers are ex­ horted to strug­ gle (in cap­ i­ tal let­ ters) “for free­ dom and equal­ ity through­ out the world.” Its after­ word was writ­ ten by Efim Grig­ o­ rie­ vich Et­ kind (1918–99), at that time a young pro­ fes­ sor in Le­ nin­ grad and later fa­ mous both as a ­ superb ­ scholar of ­ French lit­ er­ a­ ture and as a dis­ si­ dent who in 1974 had to leave the USSR per­ ma­ nently after being re­ moved from his teach­ ing post. What is sur­ pris...

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