Download or read book Up from Serfdom written by Aleksandr Nikitenko and published by . This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aleksandr Nikitenko, born into Russian serfdom in 1804, almost miraculously gained his freedom as a young man, 37 years before serfdom was abolished in the Russian Empire. His compelling autobiography - here translated into English - is one of the very few ever written by a former serf. Nikitenko describes the tragedy, despair, unpredictability, and astounding luck of his youth, bringing to life the experience of a serf in 19th-century Russia.

Download or read book Up from Serfdom written by Aleksandr Nikitenko and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 2 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “It was the arbitrary nature of the serfholder’s power that weighed on serfs like Nikitenko, for as they discovered, even the most benevolent patron could turn overnight into an overbearing tyrant. In that respect, serfdom and slavery were the same.”—Peter Kolchin, from the foreword Aleksandr Nikitenko, descended from once-free Cossacks, was born into serfdom in provincial Russia in 1804. One of 300,000 serfs owned by Count Sheremetev, Nikitenko as a teenager became fiercely determined to gain his freedom. In this memorable and moving book, here translated into English for the first time, Nikitenko recollects the details of his childhood and youth in servitude as well as the six-year struggle that at last delivered him into freedom in 1824. Among the very few autobiographies ever written by an ex-serf, Up from Serfdom provides a unique portrait of serfdom in nineteenth-century Russia and a profoundly clear sense of what such bondage meant to the people, the culture, and the nation. Rising to eminence as a professor at St. Petersburg University, former serf Nikitenko set about writing his autobiography in 1851, relying on his own diaries (begun at the age of fourteen and maintained throughout his life), his father’s correspondence and documents, and the stories that his parents and grandparents told as he was growing up. He recalls his town, his schooling, his masters and mistresses, and the utter capriciousness of a serf’s existence, illustrated most vividly by his father’s lurching path from comfort to destitution to prison to rehabilitation. Nikitenko’s description of the tragedy, despair, unpredictability, and astounding luck of his youth is a compelling human story that brings to life as never before the experiences of the serf in Russia in the early 1800s.

Download or read book A Life Under Russian Serfdom written by Savva Dmitrievich Purlevskii and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gorshkov's introduction provides some basic knowledge about Russian serfdom and draws upon the most recent scholarship. Notes provide references and general information about events, places and people mentioned in the memoirs."--Jacket.

Download or read book Unfree Labor written by Peter KOLCHIN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two massive systems of unfree labor arose, a world apart from each other, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The American enslavement of blacks and the Russian subjection of serfs flourished in different ways and varying degrees until they were legally abolished in the mid-nineteenth century. Historian Peter Kolchin compares and contrasts the two systems over time in this magisterial book, which clarifies the organization, structure, and dynamics of both social entities, highlighting their basic similarities while pointing out important differences discernible only in comparative perspective. These differences involved both the masters and the bondsmen. The independence and resident mentality of American slaveholders facilitated the emergence of a vigorous crusade to defend slavery from outside attack, whereas an absentee orientation and dependence on the central government rendered serfholders unable successfully to defend serfdom. Russian serfs, who generally lived on larger holdings than American slaves and faced less immediate interference in their everyday lives, found it easier to assert their communal autonomy but showed relatively little solidarity with peasants outside their own villages; American slaves, by contrast, were both more individualistic and more able to identify with all other blacks, both slave and free. Kolchin has discovered apparently universal features in master-bondsman relations, a central focus of his study, but he also shows their basic differences as he compares slave and serf life and chronicles patterns of resistance. If the masters had the upper hand, the slaves and serfs played major roles in shaping, and setting limits to, their own bondage. This truly unprecedented comparative work will fascinate historians, sociologists, and all social scientists, particularly those with an interest in comparative history and studies in slavery.

Download or read book The New Serfdom written by Angela Eagle and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great Britain is one of the wealthiest, most successful nations in the world. Why, then, do so many people feel short-changed? The old assumption that 'if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get on in life' looks increasingly like a cruel joke. Homeownership, secure employment and fair wages seem like relics of a bygone era. Meanwhile exploitative workplace practices have created a new serfdom, leaving many people trapped in unfulfilling, underpaid work. At a time of huge political upheaval and ever-increasing inequality, this powerful new book asks: how can we build a successful economy, powered by a happy and productive workforce that benefits everyone in the twenty-first century?

Download or read book Four Russian Serf Narratives written by John MacKay and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although millions of Russians lived as serfs until the middle of the nineteenth century, little is known about their lives. Identifying and documenting the conditions of Russian serfs has proven difficult because the Russian state discouraged literacy among the serfs and censored public expressions of dissent. To date scholars have identified only twenty known Russian serf narratives. Four Russian Serf Narratives contains four of these accounts and is the first translated collection of autobiographies by serfs. Scholar and translator John MacKay brings to light for an English-language audience a diverse sampling of Russian serf narratives, ranging from an autobiographical poem to stories of adventure and escape. “Autobiography” (1785) recounts a highly educated serf’s attempt to escape to Europe, where he hoped to study architecture. The long testimonial poem “News About Russia” (ca. 1849) laments the conditions under which the author and his fellow serfs lived. In “The Story of My Life and Wanderings” (1881) a serf tradesman tells of his attempt to simultaneously escape serfdom and captivity from Chechen mountaineers. The fragmentary “Notes of a Serf Woman” (1911) testifies to the harshness of peasant life with extraordinary acuity and descriptive power. These accounts offer readers a glimpse, from the point of view of the serfs themselves, into the realities of one of the largest systems of unfree labor in history. The volume also allows comparison with slave narratives produced in the United States and elsewhere, adding an important dimension to knowledge of the institution of slavery and the experience of enslavement in modern times.

Download or read book American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post Emancipation Imagination written by Amanda Brickell Bellows and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-04-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865 transformed both nations as Russian peasants and African Americans gained new rights as subjects and citizens. During the second half of the long nineteenth century, Americans and Russians responded to these societal transformations through a fascinating array of new cultural productions. Analyzing portrayals of African Americans and Russian serfs in oil paintings, advertisements, fiction, poetry, and ephemera housed in American and Russian archives, Amanda Brickell Bellows argues that these widely circulated depictions shaped collective memory of slavery and serfdom, affected the development of national consciousness, and influenced public opinion as peasants and freedpeople strove to exercise their newfound rights. While acknowledging the core differences between chattel slavery and serfdom, as well as the distinctions between each nation's post-emancipation era, Bellows highlights striking similarities between representations of slaves and serfs that were produced by elites in both nations as they sought to uphold a patriarchal vision of society. Russian peasants and African American freedpeople countered simplistic, paternalistic, and racist depictions by producing dignified self-representations of their traditions, communities, and accomplishments. This book provides an important reconsideration of post-emancipation assimilation, race, class, and political power.

Download or read book The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia written by David Moon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 1861 Tsar Alexander II issued the statutes abolishing the institution of serfdom in Russia. The procedures set in motion by Alexander II undid the ties that bound together 22 million serfs and 100,000 noble estate owners, and changed the face of Russia. Rather than presenting abolition as an 'event' that happened in February 1861, The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia presents the reform as a process. It traces the origins of the abolition of serfdom back to reforms in related areas in 1762 and forward to the culmination of the process in 1907. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, the book shows how the reform process linked the old social, economic and political order of eighteenth-century Russia with the radical transformations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that culminated in revolution in 1917.

Download or read book The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom written by Tracy Dennison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian rural history has long been based on a 'Peasant Myth', originating with nineteenth-century Romantics and still accepted by many historians today. In this book, Tracy Dennison shows how Russian society looked from below, and finds nothing like the collective, redistributive and market-averse behaviour often attributed to Russian peasants. On the contrary, the Russian rural population was as integrated into regional and even national markets as many of its west European counterparts. Serfdom was a loose garment that enabled different landlords to shape economic institutions, especially property rights, in widely diverse ways. Highly coercive and backward regimes on some landlords' estates existed side-by-side with surprisingly liberal approximations to a rule of law. This book paints a vivid and colourful picture of the everyday reality of rural Russia before the 1861 abolition of serfdom.

Download or read book The Road to Serfdom written by Friedrich A. Hayek and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Road to Serfdom F. A. Hayek set out the danger posed to freedom by attempts to apply the principles of wartime economic and social planning to the problems of peacetime. Hayek argued that the rise of Nazism was not due to any character failure on the part of the German people, but was a consequence of the socialist ideas that had gained common currency in Germany in the decades preceding the outbreak of war. Such ideas, Hayek argued, were now becoming similarly accepted in Britain and the USA.On its publication in 1944, The Road to Serfdom caused a sensation. Its publishers could not keep up with demand, owing to wartime paper rationing. Then, in April 1945, Reader's Digest published a condensed version of the book and Hayek's work found a mass audience. This condensed edition was republished for the first time by the IEA in 1999. Since then it has been frequently reprinted and the electronic version has been downloaded over 100,000 times. There is an enduring demand for Hayek's relevant and accessible message.The Road to Serfdom is republished in this impression with The Intellectuals and Socialism originally published in 1949, in which Hayek explained the appeal of socialist ideas to intellectuals - the 'second-hand dealers in ideas'. Intellectuals, Hayek argued, are attracted to socialism because it involves the rational application of the intellect to the organisation of society, while its utopianism captures their imagination and satisfies their desire to make the world submit to their own design.

Download or read book Back on the Road to Serfdom written by Thomas Woods and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leviathan is back The threat of statism has reemerged in force. The federal government has radically expanded its power—through bailouts, “stimulus” packages, a trillion-dollar health-care plan, “jobs bills,” massive expansions of the money supply, and much more. But such interventionism did not suddenly materialize with the recent economic collapse. The dangerous trends of government growth, debt increases, encroachments on individual liberty, and attacks on the free market began years earlier and continued no matter which political party was in power. This shift toward statism “will not end happily,” declares bestselling author Thomas E. Woods. In Back on the Road to Serfdom, Woods brings together ten top scholars to examine why the size and scope of government has exploded, and to reveal the devastating consequences of succumbing to the statist temptation. Spanning history, economics, politics, religion, and the arts, Back on the Road to Serfdom shows: · How government interventionism endangers America’s prosperity and the vital culture of entrepreneurship · The roots of statism: from the seminal conflict between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to the vast expansion of federal power in the twentieth century · Why the standard explanation for the recent economic crisis is so terribly wrong—and why the government’s frenzied responses to the downturn only exacerbate the problems · Why the European welfare state is not a model to aspire to but a disaster to be avoided · How an intrusive state not only harms the economy but also imperils individual liberty and undermines the role of civil society · The fatal flaws in the now-common arguments against free markets and free trade · How big business is helping government pave the road to serfdom · Why the Judeo-Christian tradition does not demand support for the welfare state, but in fact values the free market · How the arrogance of government power extends even to the cultural realm—and how central planning is just as inefficient and destructive there It’s been more than sixty-five years since F. A. Hayek published his seminal work The Road to Serfdom. Now this impeccably timed book provides another desperately needed warning about—and corrective to—the dangers of statism.

Download or read book Serfdom Society and the Arts in Imperial Russia written by Richard Stites and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Serf-era and provincial Russia heralded the spectacular turn in cultural history that began in the 1860s. Examining the role of arts and artists in society’s value system, Richard Stites explores this shift in a groundbreaking history of visual and performing arts in the last decades of serfdom. Provincial town and manor house engaged the culture of Moscow and St. Petersburg while thousands of serfs and ex-serfs created or performed. Mikhail Glinka raised Russian music to new levels and Anton Rubinstein struggled to found a conservatory. Long before the itinerants, painters explored town and country in genre scenes of everyday life. Serf actors on loan from their masters brought naturalistic acting from provincial theaters to the imperial stages. Stites’s richly detailed book offers new perspectives on the origins of Russia’s nineteenth-century artistic prowess.

Download or read book The Decline of Serfdom in Late Medieval England written by Mark Bailey and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars from various disciplines have long debated why western Europe in general, and England in particular, led the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The decline of serfdom between c.1300 and c.1500 in England is central to this "Transition Debate", because it transformed the lives of ordinary people and opened up the markets in land and labour. Yet, despite its historical importance, there has been no major survey or reassessment of decline of serfdom for decades. Consequently, the debate over its causes, and its legacy to early modern England, remains unresolved. This dazzling study provides an accessible and up-to-date survey of the decline of serfdom in England, applying a new methodology for establishing both its chronology and causes to thousands of court rolls from 38 manors located across the south Midlands and East Anglia. It presents a ground-breaking reassessment, challenging many of the traditional interpretations of the economy and society of late-medieval England, and, indeed, of the very nature of serfdom itself. Mark Bailey is High Master of St Paul's School, and Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. He has published extensively on the economic and social history of England between c.1200 and c.1500, including Medieval Suffolk (2007).

Download or read book Owned written by Joshua A. T. Fairfield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Owned provides a legal analysis of the legal, social, and technological developments that have driven an erosion of property rights in the digital context.

Download or read book Russia s Age of Serfdom 1649 1861 written by Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2008-02-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a broad interpretive history of the Russian Empire from the time of serfdom's codification until its abolition following the Crimean War, Wirtschafter considers the institution of serfdom, official social categories, and Russia's development as a country of peasants ruled by nobles, military commanders and civil servants.

Download or read book Peasants in Russia from Serfdom to Stalin written by Boris B. Gorshkov and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The peasantry accounted for the large majority of the Russian population during the Imperialist and Stalinist periods – it is, for the most part, how people lived. Peasants in Russia from Serfdom to Stalin provides a comprehensive, realistic examination of peasant life in Russia during both these eras and the legacy this left in the post-Soviet era. The book paints a full picture of peasant involvement in commerce and local political life and, through Boris Gorshkov's original ecology paradigm for understanding peasant life, offers new perspectives on the Russian peasantry under serfdom and the emancipation. Incorporating recent scholarship, including Russian and non-Russian texts, along with classic studies, Gorshkov explores the complex interrelationships between the physical environment, peasant economic and social practices, culture, state policies and lord-peasant relations. He goes on to analyze peasant economic activities, including agriculture and livestock, social activities and the functioning of peasant social and political institutions within the context of these interrelationships. Further reading lists, study questions, tables, maps, primary source extracts and images are also included to support and enhance the text wherever possible. Peasants in Russia from Serfdom to Stalin is the crucial survey of a key topic in modern Russian history for students and scholars alike.

Download or read book Up from Bondage written by Dale E. Peterson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first systematic comparison of the emergence of cultural nationalism among Russian and African-American intellectuals in the post-emancipation era.