Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

by Robert K. Massie

In many ways, the condition of Russian serfs resembled that of black slaves in America. They were considered a human subspecies by their owners, and this chasm between serfs and masters was believed to be sanctioned by God. They were bought and sold like animals. They were subject to arbitrary treatment, hardship, and, all too often, cruelty. In Russia, however, there was no color barrier between master and slave. Russian serfs were not aliens in a foreign land; they had not been violently abducted from their homelands, languages, and religions, and carried thousands of miles across an ocean. Serfs in Russia were the descendants of impoverished, uneducated people of the same race, the same blood, and the same language as their owners. Nevertheless, as with slave owners in America, Russian serf owners had complete control over the lives of their human property. A serf could not marry without his master’s permission. The law set no limit on the right of owners to administer corporal punishment to their serfs; disobedience, laziness, drunkenness, stealing, fighting, and resisting authority were cause for being beaten with whips, cudgels, and the knout. The only limit on a nobleman’s power was that he was not permitted to execute a serf; he was, however, allowed to inflict punishment likely to cause death. A French traveler in Russia wrote, “What has disgusted me is to see men with grey hair and patriarchal beards, lying on their faces with their trousers down and flogged like...