Slaves and Serfs in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, 1861-1915
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SLAVES AND SERFS IN THE POST-EMANCIPATION IMAGINATION, 1861-1915 Amanda Brickell Bellows A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: William L. Barney W. Fitzhugh Brundage Peter Kolchin Louise McReynolds Heather A. Williams © 2016 Amanda Brickell Bellows ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Amanda B. Bellows: Slaves and Serfs in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, 1861-1915 (Under the direction of W. Fitzhugh Brundage and Louise McReynolds) This dissertation is the first comparative analysis of mass-oriented representations of African-American slaves and Russian serfs produced during the post-emancipation era. The abolition of Russian serfdom (1861) and U.S. slavery (1865) were pivotal events that inaugurated a half-century of significant change. Emancipation freed two enslaved groups of people, but liberty proved to be disquieting as the former bondsmen, suddenly citizens and subjects, strove for absorption into the national polity. In both countries, the processes of assimilation occurred during decades characterized by territorial expansion, population growth, and industrialization, phenomena that further complicated conceptions of American and Russian national identity. This study analyzes the ways in which authors, artists, and businesses responded to emancipation by deploying images of serfs, peasants, slaves, and freedpeople in literature, periodicals, paintings, and advertisements. In these sources, serfs and slaves appeared as victims on the eve of abolition, as contented rural laborers whose simple way of life attracted nostalgic audiences during an industrial, expansionist age, and, at the turn of the twentieth century, as urban migrants striving to improve their lives. Acts of imagination and remembrances, these portrayals were a lexicon of representation that creators and audiences endowed with significance and interpreted in competing ways. iii This dissertation demonstrates the ways in which textual and visual images shaped and reflected collective memories of serfdom and slavery, affected the development of national consciousness, and influenced popular opinion as Russians and Americans struggled to incorporate former bondsmen into the social order. Furthermore, this project’s examination of representational similarities and differences within their respective historical contexts prompts the consideration of the extent to which factors like race, ethnicity, economic status, and political power influenced Russians’ and Americans’ attitudes toward former bondsmen during an era of societal transformation. iv TO MY SON May you grow to love the pursuit of knowledge TO MY HUSBAND Thank you for encouraging me to study history v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the research and writing phases of this project, I received a great deal of support for which I am deeply appreciative. American Councils funded my archival research in St. Petersburg and Moscow through its Title VIII Research Scholar Program. The members of the History Department of the European University at St. Petersburg facilitated my access to local archives and warmly welcomed me into their community. My Russian language training was made possible by the U.S. Department of Education through its Foreign Language Area Studies Academic Year and Summer Fellowships, granted by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My archival research in the United States was supported by seminars hosted by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Robert Bosch Foundation in conjunction with the German Historical Institute, the University of Chicago’s Department of History, and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. The staff members of Russian and American archives were extremely helpful in finding and granting access to materials. In particular, I would like to thank Alexander Tarasov of the Russian National Library for allowing me to view the Poster Collection, for discussing notable advertisements with me, and for directing me to the Russian National Library’s rich Ephemera Collection. I’m very grateful to Lisa Egorova for her assistance in locating pertinent documents at the State Tret’iakov Gallery. I would also like to thank Nicholle Young of the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive at Fayetteville State University and Jerrold Brantley of Emory University for his aid in viewing the Joel Chandler Harris vi Collection holdings. The librarians and archivsts at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the Russian Historical Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Antiquarian Society, the Frick Art Reference Library, and Harvard University’s Houghton Library were also very helpful. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s curators Nadia Zilper and Kirill Tolpygo and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s librarian Helen Sullivan provided helpful research guidance as well. Finally, I would like to give special thanks to Olga Malkina and Lucya Koroleva, who welcomed me to Russia in 2013 and have given me expert editorial advice over the years. I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to study at Middlebury College as an undergraduate student and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a graduate student. At Middlebury, John McCardell and Jay West guided my thesis, which was an early comparison of representations of serfs and slaves in several works of Russian and American literature. My UNC advisers Fitz Brundage and Louise McReynolds provided invaluable support during my six years of graduate study. They read numerous drafts of essays and chapters and provided extremely helpful editorial advice. I will especially miss our stimulating conversations about comparative history, slavery, and serfdom. As thoughtful researchers and devoted instructors, I admire them tremendously. I am also very appreciative of the intellectual guidance of Bill Barney, Peter Kolchin, and Heather Williams, the three other members of my dissertation committee who read and commented upon my chapter drafts. In addition, I would like to thank Don Raleigh and Bill Ferris for their kind support. Bill’s passion for his research and his generous spirit as a professor inspired me to apply to the University of North Carolina for graduate school. Lastly, my scholarship has been shaped vii by the intellectual discussions of the members of the Global South Working Group and the participants in the Carolina Seminar “Russia and Its Empires, East and West.” In closing I would like to thank Sarah McNamara, Liz Ellis, Stephen Riegg, and Alex Ruble for their friendship over the years. I couldn’t have written this dissertation without the love and support of my grandparents, Mary and Henry, my parents, Anita and Mark, my sister, Missye, my brother, Matt, and my brother-in-law Brian. I’m also thankful for the encouragement of family members Deb and Charlie Bellows, Maureen Bellows, Gary Demele, and Charles Bellows. I dedicate this dissertation to my husband, Marcus, who encouraged me to apply to graduate school to study history, and to my one-year-old son, Blake, whose curiosity about the world around him is a joy to behold. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .................................................................................................. xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN FOOTNOTES ....................................................... xiii INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 Historiography, Methodology, and Theory ....................................................................... 4 Representations of Serfs, Slaves, Peasants, and Freedpeople ......................................... 14 CHAPTER ONE: “THE FOULEST ABOLITIONISM THAT HAS EVER BEEN UTTERED:” RADICAL LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF BONDSMEN ON THE EVE OF EMANCIPATION .................................................................................................................. 23 Anti-Slavery and Anti-Serfdom Literature in the United States and Russia during the 1840s and 1850s ................................................................................. 27 Nikolai Nekrasov’s Sympathetic Poetry .......................................................................... 34 Martha Griffith Browne’s Autobiography of a Female Slave ........................................ 44 Aleksei Pisemskii’s A Bitter Fate ................................................................................... 57 Louisa May Alcott’s Short Stories ................................................................................. 67 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 78 CHAPTER TWO: SERFDOM AND SLAVERY IN POPULAR HISTORICAL FICTION, 1870s-1900s.................................................................................. 79 The Challenges of Absorption after Emancipation in the United States and Russia ............................................................................................................. 84 Origins of Historical Fiction about Slavery and Serfdom in the United States and Russia ................................................................................................. 95 Biographical Connections