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Cargando... Up from Serfdom: My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804-1824por Aleksandr Nikitenko
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. I found this rather disappointing. Although the concept of a diary written by a former Russian serf is very interesting, Aleksandr Nikitenko was a very unusual serf in being highly educated and intelligent, thus able to rationalise his way towards seeking his own freedom; hence his transformation is not as dramatic as one might think. I have to say also that much of the actual writing is rather dull, until the description of his efforts to secure his own liberty, which begins rather matter of factly. Some interesting pictures, nearly all concentrated towards the beginning of the book. The best bit of this book is probably the introduction, where the situation of Russian serfs is compared to that of US slaves at the same time, and Nikitenko compared to Booker T Washington. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"It was the arbitrary nature of the serfholder'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, Up from 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 1800's. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)891.709Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Russian and East Slavic languages Russian literature History and criticism of Russian literatureClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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If you're looking for a balanced view of how serfdom worked for most serfs, you should probably look elsewhere. ( )