This paper examines the different relationships that emerged from ostensibly parallel shifts in relative power after the abolition of serfdom in Russia and slavery in the United States. As Russian and Southern elites grappled with the political, economic, and social changes catalyzed by the elimination of these entrenched institutions, they presented and promoted divergent portrayals of the former serfs and slaves in fictional literature; these depictions are encompassed within the South's Lost Cause myth and Russia's Peasant myth. The emergence of disparate myths indicates that the post-emancipation power relations that developed between the masters and their former bondsmen in each region differed radically. More broadly, this comparison explores the causal processes that lead to the creation of myths, the function of myths in societies, and the ways in which changing political and economic factors shape the power relationships between individuals.