Peter Kolchin

Really interesting book comparing the two systems. Among other things, Kolchin argues that, in the US, “the combination of race and democracy served to reinforce the commitment to slavery” because American whites saw blacks as alien to the polity, rather than forming the base of society as the Russian peasantry did, and relatedly understood that male citizens would be political equals while Russians understood that an emancipated peasant would still lack political equality with a noble. Lack of democracy and public discussion meant that Russian serfowners never needed to, or got to, defend slavery as Southern whites did, and anyway there was no “public” for them to address. Serfdom was not sectional, and Russian serfowners were not an independent political class but rather always in service to the state.

Mostly living away from their estates and unconnected to their serfs, Russian serfowners lacked both ability and motivation compared to Southern enslavers. The fact that Russian estates were, on average, orders of magnitude bigger than Southern estates likewise meant that Russian serfowners were less personally connected to their serfs, which made the conditions of serfdom different from the conditions of American enslavement, although this was not quite as big a difference for house serfs. It also mattered that the South was so much warmer and more agriculturally rich than most of Russia, capable of feeding and housing the average enslaved person better—though that capacity was not always exercised. Though both sets of owners endorsed concepts of their “people” as childlike, lazy, and incapable of self-governance, the conditions of life were systematically different. While Russian serfowners believed that their serfs were responsible for their own livelihoods and basically just owed money or work to their owners, Southern enslavers were highly likely to live among enslaved people and thus had more opportunity to beat, rape, feed, and provide medical care to them. Advice to enslavers was, for example, that allowing enslaved people to cook their own food “promoted excessive independence.” This distribution also differentially affected people’s ability to foment large-scale rebellion or collective resistance, which occurred many more times in Russia.

Because Russian serfowners were close to rentiers who mostly sought income from their estates, they also had less incentive to oppose emancipation if they could be kept economically superior; their lives wouldn’t have to change very much, compared to the lives of Southern enslavers, and indeed they secured generous compensation for emancipation. The fact that serfs shared a history with nobles contributed to the bureaucratic treatment of their petitions for help to higher authorities, which though rarely granted did exert some control over bad behavior by owners; the American ethos of individualism/lack of government intervention combined with racial exclusion to largely preclude any such potential for enslaved Blacks. Flight was far more common among both groups, though again the Russian serfs were more likely to move en masse.… (meer)