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ALEKSANDR NIKITENKO
Up from Serfdom
My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1[zasłonięte]804-18
ALEKSANDR NIKITENKO Translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson Foreword by Peter Kolchin
Yale University Press 2001
Stron XXVII+228, format: 14,5x21,5 cm
Książka wycofana z biblioteki: nalepki i pieczątki na wewn. stronach okładki.
Stan dobry plus, bez defektów.
"It was the arbitrary nature of the serfhold-er'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, Upfront 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.
Contents
Foreword by Peter Kolchin ix
Translator's Note xxi
Acknowledgments xxiii
Maps xxv
xxi xxiii
UP FROM SERFDOM
Chapter i. My Roots i
Chapter 2. My Parents 6
chapter 3. Father's First Attempt to Introduce Truth Where It Wasn't Wanted 18
chapter 4. My Early Childhood 24
chapter 5. Exile 32
chapter 6. Home from Exile 39
chapter j. Father Returns from St. Petersburg 46
chapter 8.1811: New Place, New Faces 54
chapter 9. Our Life in Pisaryevka, 1812-181) 66
chapter 10. School 79
chapter 11. Fate Strikes Again 94
chapter 12. Waiting in Voronezh 104
chapter 13. Ostrogozhsk: I Go Out into the World 107
chapter 14. My Friends and Activities in Ostrogozhsk 119
chapter 15. My Friends in the Military; General
Yuzefovich; The Death of My Father 133
chapter 16. Farewell, Ostrogozhsk 149
chapter 17. Home Again in Ostrogozhsk 165
chapter 18. The Dawn of a New Day 177
chapter 19. St. Petersburg: My Struggle for Freedom 187
Translator's Epilogue 203
Notes
Glossary
Index
207 [zasłonięte] 223
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