"Raising Proper Citizens: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Sentimental Education of Bulgarian Children During the Soviet Era," excerpt (2018)

Over the next three decades, Filipov's interpretation of Stowe's novel was faithfully echoed in prefaces, afterwards, literary criticism, and instruction manuals for teachers. This renders his afterward truly programmatic. Three major interpretive strategies stand out there. First, Stowe is singled out as a voice of "the people's masses" (i.e., the workers and the peasants) against slavery. Next, the opponents of slavery in the United States are divided into progressives, who truly aspire to racial equality, and a bourgeoisie, who seeks to re-enslave black Americans as wage laborers. Finally, Uncle Tom's Cabin is classified as a realist narrative that not only accurately depicts the history of black Americans as slaves but also, through inducing proper feelings, moves "us, " progressive people from all nations, to a course of action against post-World War II U.S. imperialism and toward "a happy future. "