Julia Herzberg: Onkel Vanjas Hütte

Uncle Vanya’s Cabin: Narratives of Serfdom in the Peasant Biographies of Tsarist Russia

The article examines peasant autobiographies in Tsarist Russia, published in what were called “thick journals” and historical periodicals after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. The first part of the article shows who in pre-Revolutionary journalism rose to speak as a peasant and how this came about. In the second part Herzberg takes a closer look at two autobiographies in particular, the narratives of Savva Purlevskij and Fedor Bobkov respectively. Focusing on the depiction of the relationship between serfs and masters, she elucidates the role bondage and serfdom played as instruments of addressing as well as being a strategy of the freed serfs to find and define their place within the changing society. The main argument of the article is that peasant writers were obliged to speak about their experiences of serfdom if they wanted their autobiographies to be published. In doing so, peasant writers used global speaking models about slavery and bondage to tell others about their lives. The published serf-autobiographies were – similar to the Afro-American slave narratives in the United States – a powerful tool in the discrediting of un-free labour and denouncing social inequality.

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