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12  1 Be­ fore Eman­ ci­ pa­ tion It isn’t so in Ver­ mont. Miss Ophe­ lia Tsar Al­ ex­ an­ der II of­ fi­ cially abol­ ished serf­ dom in Rus­ sia on 19 Feb­ ru­ ary 1861, thus free­ ing circa ­ twenty-two mil­ lion men, women, and chil­ dren (or over 35 per­ cent of the en­ tire pop­ u­ la­ tion of the coun­ try) from the ap­ prox­ i­ mately one hun­ dred thou­ sand no­ bles who owned them. Al­ though his­ to­ rians have ­ argued that the ac­ tual ab­ o­ li­ tion pro­ cess began long be­ fore and ended long after this date, we can for­ convenience’s sake take it as the ­ pivotal mo­ ment in the his­ tory of the dis­ ap­ pear­ ance of this form of chat­ tel slav­ ery.1 In the years lead­ ing up to the proc­ la­ ma­ tion, there was, of ­ course, no “sec­ tional” jour­ na­ lis­ tic po­ lemic in Rus­ sia of the type that ­ helped give birth to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: no North from which to ­ launch ab­ o­ li­ tion­ ist at­ tacks on bond­ age, no South where pro­ slav­ ery ­ thought might be nur­ tured and prop­ a­ gated. Under con­ di­ tions of ab­ so­ lute mon­ ar­ chy, the de­ gree of govern­ ment inter­ fer­ ence with the press (in the form of cen­ sor­ ship) was mark­ edly­ greater in Rus­ sia than in the ­ United ­ States, and the num­ ber of ac­ tual jour­ na­ lis­ tic or­ gans con­ sid­ er­ ably ­ smaller.2 The “peas­ ant ques­ tion” had been a topic of con­ cern, how­ ever, since the late eigh­ teenth cen­ tury, with sa­ lons, govern­ ment com­ mit­ tee meet­ ings, pri­ vate oral or epis­ to­ lary ex­ changes, and se­ cret so­ ci­ eties as the main set­ tings for de­ bate. And some writ­ ing ­ openly or ­ obliquely crit­ i­ cal of serf­ dom did ap­ pear even be­ fore­ Alexander’s ac­ ces­ sion to the ­ throne in 1855, after which time one can de­ tect a cer­ tain sof­ ten­ ing in re­ stric­ tions on the press, ­ though ­ hardly a­ full-scale re­ lax­ a­ tion.3 What is clear (from a com­ par­ a­ tive angle) is that Before Emancipation 13 the ­ amount of Rus­ sian print de­ voted from what­ ever per­ spec­ tive to the ques­ tion of bond­ age was, by US stan­ dards, very small in­ deed.4 Al­ ready by 1857, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had ap­ peared in Ar­ me­ nian (1854; pub­ lished in Ven­ ice), Czech (1854), Dan­ ish (1853), Dutch (1853), Finn­ ish (1856), Flem­ ish (1852), ­ French (eleven dif­ fer­ ent trans­ la­ tions, and more edi­ tions, in the space of ten ­ months in 1852–53), Ger­ man (at least­ twenty-nine edi­ tions in 1852–53), Hun­ gar­ ian (thrice: 1853,1856,1857), Ital­ ian (1853), ­ Polish (1853), Por­ tu­ guese (a Pa­ ri­ sian edi­ tion from 1853), Slo­ vene (1853), Span­ ish (six 1853 edi­ tions, pub­ lished in Mex­ ico, ­ Bogotá, and Ma­ drid), Ro­ ma­ nian (1853), and Welsh (1853).5 This dis­ semi­ na­ tion, ex­ traor­ di­ nary by any stan­ dards and prob­ ably of ­ greater scope than my­ sources in­ di­ cate, ­ helped to make the novel a point of ref­ er­ ence for dis­ cus­ sions of bond­ age inter­ na­ tion­ ally in the 1850s. But Uncle Tom’s Cabin had to wait until very late in 1857 to ap­ pear in Rus­ sian, al­ though it was (as we will see later) al­ ready fa­ mil­ iar to many in in­ tel­ lec­ tual cir­ cles, usu­ ally in ­ French or Ger­ man trans­ la­ tion. The rel­ a­ tive late­ ness of the Rus­ sian ver­ sion (given the rapid early pro­ life­ ra­ tion of trans­ la­ tions) has led some to guess that the ­ book’s pub­ li­ ca­ tion had ­ hitherto been­ banned.6 And al­ though we have no ac­ tual writ­ ten ­ record of an of­ fi­ cial pro­ hi­ bi­ tion, there is in­ deed some ev­ i­ dence, neg­ a­ tive and pos­ i­ tive, of sup­ pres­ sion. Jour­ nals of all po­ lit­ i­ cal ­ stripes made it a prac­ tice in the...

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