5fish
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Here is an article that compares the two...
With the stroke of his pen, the nation’s leader abolished a system of servitude that had lasted generations. Over twenty million people received their liberty in this declaration of emancipation. In 1861, Alexander II of Russia freed the serfs almost two years before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Russians, however, did it without war. The Tsar allegedly said that his top-down decree precluded a bottom-up revolt.
Snip...
Serfdom was a form of agricultural servitude that most of Europe had left behind in the medieval period. Russian serfdom developed, as historian William C. Hine writes, during roughly the same time period as American slavery. The Russian Code of 1649 “firmly embedded serfdom” as a labor system. The Virginia House of Burgesses’s first piece of slave legislation, allowing African slavery for life, passed in 1661. Though both slavery and serfdom mandated total control over the bodies of those in bondage, Hine says the Russian experience was “incredibly more varied and complex than its American counterpart” because of the time-honored relationship between peasants and the land.
Snip...
Nonetheless, as historian Peter Kolchin shows, the defenders of both systems used much the same justification through the eighteenth century.
Defenders of slavery in the United States pointed to an alleged racial difference as the reason Africans and African-Americans needed to be enslaved. In this racist argument, blacks were not fit for freedom
Russian lords believed the same thing about serfs. The class difference was so great, Kolchin says, that “Russian noblemen had come to regard themselves as inherently different from their peasants.”
Kolchin writes that the Russian nobles “invented many of the same kinds of racial arguments to defend serfdom that American slave-owners used to justify” slavery. Some nobles went so far as to say they had white bones, while the serfs had black bones. Kolchin calls this an “essentially racial argument in defense of serfdom, even though no racial distinction divided lord and peasant.”
Both Russians and Americans argued that their systems of bondage resulted in a superior society.
Link to the article:https://daily.jstor.org/how-american-slavery-echoed-russian-serfdom/
There is a book...
Summary:
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.
With the stroke of his pen, the nation’s leader abolished a system of servitude that had lasted generations. Over twenty million people received their liberty in this declaration of emancipation. In 1861, Alexander II of Russia freed the serfs almost two years before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Russians, however, did it without war. The Tsar allegedly said that his top-down decree precluded a bottom-up revolt.
Snip...
Serfdom was a form of agricultural servitude that most of Europe had left behind in the medieval period. Russian serfdom developed, as historian William C. Hine writes, during roughly the same time period as American slavery. The Russian Code of 1649 “firmly embedded serfdom” as a labor system. The Virginia House of Burgesses’s first piece of slave legislation, allowing African slavery for life, passed in 1661. Though both slavery and serfdom mandated total control over the bodies of those in bondage, Hine says the Russian experience was “incredibly more varied and complex than its American counterpart” because of the time-honored relationship between peasants and the land.
Snip...
Nonetheless, as historian Peter Kolchin shows, the defenders of both systems used much the same justification through the eighteenth century.
Defenders of slavery in the United States pointed to an alleged racial difference as the reason Africans and African-Americans needed to be enslaved. In this racist argument, blacks were not fit for freedom
Russian lords believed the same thing about serfs. The class difference was so great, Kolchin says, that “Russian noblemen had come to regard themselves as inherently different from their peasants.”
Kolchin writes that the Russian nobles “invented many of the same kinds of racial arguments to defend serfdom that American slave-owners used to justify” slavery. Some nobles went so far as to say they had white bones, while the serfs had black bones. Kolchin calls this an “essentially racial argument in defense of serfdom, even though no racial distinction divided lord and peasant.”
Both Russians and Americans argued that their systems of bondage resulted in a superior society.
Link to the article:https://daily.jstor.org/how-american-slavery-echoed-russian-serfdom/
There is a book...
Summary:
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.
