The Legacies of Slavery and Serfdom — Two Personal Encounters
The extraordinary global response to the Black Lives Matter movement as a consequence of the killing of George Floyd brought back to me memories of living in the deep South as a child during Segregation; experiences that have stayed with me throughout my life.
To my surprise, these memories have now merged with recollections of living in Russia in the early 1990s during a time of great social and political upheaval. The two stories I’m about to tell are my attempt to make sense of these experiences, and how they helped form my view of social transformation. I am sharing them in the hope that they may help others make sense of the remarkable transformation of awareness that is happening today.
My first story is about moving to Georgia in the 1950s and how I reacted, as a 7-year-old white boy from the North, to the ways African Americans were treated under Segregation.
My second story is about living and working in Moscow in 1990, when a violent incident occurred; that, and the subsequent events, revealed the me the actual state of Russian society as the vast and powerful Soviet empire imploded from within.
The Confederacy and the Tsarist Empire: Both Built on Forced Labor
Both the deep South — the former Confederacy that fought a Civil War to protect the “peculiar institution” of slavery, and Tsarist Russia — an enormous empire ruled by autocrats and built on the practice of serfdom — share a significant point in history.
In the American South, the population of slaves brought from Africa as forced laborers expanded from small numbers in the seventeenth century to 4 million by the middle of the 19th century, mostly due to the growth of cotton as the world’s most profitable crop. In 1863, American slaves were officially freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was followed by the passing of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that provided basic legal rights, at least officially.
A century later, we enacted additional laws including the Civil Right Act and the Voting Rights Act, then the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act, and more — all attempts to legislate fairness and justice. Still, inequality continues.
The issues we witness today are continuations of that ongoing struggle for equal rights, freedom and justice, 150 years after they were made law.
In Russia, peasants — who for centuries worked the land, served in households or practiced skilled crafts — were held in bondage, meaning they could not own land, change where they lived, or take part in civil activities such as voting. Serfdom, more a form of feudalism than slavery but just as oppressive and violent, evolved over centuries in Russia, expanding as the Russian Empire grew and becoming increasingly restrictive. The number of serfs in Russia had reached 20 million by the time they were officially liberated by Tsar Alexander II in 1861, just 2 years before Lincoln’s Proclamation.
In both countries, these historical forms of bondage resulted in much more than personal suffering and the lack of freedom; they are deeply rooted in the economics of each country, and continue to affect daily life in countless ways. Even as both the U.S. and Russia industrialized in the 19th and 20th centuries, and as former slaves and serfs, then their children and grandchildren, moved out of the villages into the cities and towns to work in factories, the legacy of their bondage to the land and to the “master” lived on in the hearts and minds of those who would benefit from their servitude.
These historical forms of bondage resulted in much more than personal suffering and the lack of freedom; they are also deeply rooted in the economics of each country and they continue to affect daily life in countless ways.
I’m not attempting to explain the politics or economics of exploitation. All I’m doing here is sharing my two stories: the first, while living in Atlanta in the 1950s, the second, while living in Moscow, Russia, 35 years later.
Moving from the Midwest to the Deep South
I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a neighborhood of mixed ethnic groups, mostly European: German, Polish, East European Jewish, Lithuanian, and like us, Irish. I lived on the same street where my father had been born, my mother had grown up nearby. We had relatives scattered all over the Chicago area.
My father was an ambitious and successful sales executive with a growing family. When he was promoted to regional sales manager, we moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1955, where racial Segregation — a holdover from 350 years of slavery — was still the law of the land.
Chicago had been de facto segregated, with blacks and whites living in mostly separate neighborhoods, but I did attend an integrated school when I was in first grade. When we moved the following year to a strictly segregated Georgia, it was a shock; as a seven-year-old, my understanding of race relations was still largely unformed. One day at a movie theater in Atlanta, I was waiting with my sisters for our mom to pick us up, and I made the mistake of walking into a “colored only” men’s room, only to be pulled out by a white man with harsh and angry words of warning. I was simply unaware of what “colored” meant on a men’s room sign.
During the time we lived in Atlanta, life was full of constant reminders of the separation of people entirely by skin color; life under Segregation created a mood of oppression and hostility, and the implied threat of violence — even for white people who dared to defy the social and political norms.
Life under Segregation created a mood of oppression and hostility, and the implied threat of violence — even for white people who dared to defy the social and political norms.
For us there was a constant sense of being an outsider, and of some people with ill intent watching us, waiting for the reason to strike out. I remember fights in the school yard, of southern boys attacking those of us who were “Yankees.” That resentment was something we had to learn to live with.
As outsiders, our greatest anxiety wasn’t Segregation — of which we were not the victims, at least not directly. Instead, our deepest concern was that the face of Segregation in Georgia was still the Ku Klux Klan, the violent, illegal organization formed after the Civil War supposedly to protect the rights, property and privileges of former slave holders and other whites. That is, at least *some* other whites. For a century, the Klan had committed atrocities and systematic acts of violence, and had been declared a “terrorist” organization as early as 1870, but it continued to draw followers over the course of the next century.
My two sisters and I were students at Christ the King Elementary school on Peachtree Road. We attended classes, and even car pooled, with children from some of the wealthy elite of the Atlanta region, including the Krafts, Spaldings, and Dinklers.
Our neighbors were traditional Southern whites, with a strong sense of graciousness and hospitality and mostly neighborly good will, so we got along with them and did not feel threatened. However, we sometimes did feel excluded because we were Catholic; one boy told me his father warned him against playing with me because of our faith. If you were Jewish, you were even more resented than Catholics. African Americans, Jews and Catholics were all suspect, considered by some as undesirable and potential targets of abuse, hatred or violence.
Ironically, our Catholic school had been built in the 1930s on land formerly owned by the Klan. As students we heard stories that the Klan still occupied the building next door, and that there was a “secret tunnel” connecting our school with that sinister organization; I remember going with other students to timidly look in basements and back entrances during recess to try to find the tunnel. I long considered it a legend, until a few years ago when I found reference to the story on the school’s website:
https://cathedralctk.com/ourstory/
A Glimpse of the Antebellum South
One incident from those years stands out in my memory for all the lessons it taught me about what it meant to be African American in a former slave state.
My mother, Dorothy, born and raised in an ethnically European neighborhood in Chicago, found it difficult to adjust to life in the South. She probably had a nervous breakdown one day when driving home from dropping us off at school. She had lost track of the route home and found herself deep in the forested hills outside of town. She didn’t talk about it at the time, but years later she admitted she froze in terror and struggled to find her way back.
That may be why at some point, Dorothy decided she needed some help with housework and raising 4 children, so she asked the neighbors and they suggested she take advantage of the services of a maid. Young black women could be hired for a full 8 hours for $5 per day. So a young, slender and shy woman — I don’t recall her name, but I’ll call her Daisy — came weekly to house clean. All went well for several weeks, until one day, either because my mother gave her extra work, or she simply lost track of time, she suddenly let out a moan, and said, “Oh Lord, I missed the bus.”
It was late in the afternoon; I was home from second grade as was my sister Mary, who was then enrolled in kindergarten.
Dorothy asked, “Can’t you get the next bus?” But she replied, “Oh no, ma’am, there’s no more busses today.” Mother asked, “So how will you get home?” Daisy answered, “I’ll have to walk.”
Dorothy inquired how far it was, and Daisy’s response was something like 5–10 miles. Dorothy said, “There is no way I’m letting you walk home,” and then told us, “C’mon, children, get in the car.” Daisy tried to protest, but my mother wouldn’t stand for it, so we all piled into the car and set off.
Dorothy asked, “Can’t you get the next bus?” But she replied, “Oh no, ma’am, there’s no more busses today.” Mother asked, “So how will you get home?” Daisy answered, “I’ll have to walk.”
We drove well outside of town for several miles, then at some point, turned down a dirt road in a dense pine forest. Pine forests usually don’t have a lot of ground cover, so the forest floor was bare red Georgia clay. After a while, we came to a group of shacks amid the trees, and I saw young black children playing barefoot in the dust. Then I noticed a young boy, a bit younger than I was, pumping water from a hand well. “Look mom,” I remember saying, “they have a real well!” I suppose I found it sort of charming and exotic, and did not realize that a well was the only alternative when you have no access to plumbing, electricity, or other public utilities.
What shocked me as I looked closer at those poor shacks was the windows — or rather, openings — all covered in tar paper. I recall asking, “Why don’t the windows have glass?” And Daisy said something like, “Oh, we got no money for glass.”
I remember thinking what we saw in those ramshackle homes was a glimpse of life for poor African Americans that was virtually unchanged since before the Civil War — the antebellum South. I thought that a photograph of that scene could have been mistaken for one taken a century earlier.
A week later Daisy returned to our house for her chores. She and my mother spoke about the previous week, and Dorothy asked her, “Was everything OK when you got home?” She replied, “Oh, yes ma’am, just fine.”
Then Dorothy shared, “You seemed anxious when we drove you home; I was afraid you might be punished.”
I didn’t recall Daisy’s answer, but years later, in 2010 just before she died, my mom reminded me of this story, and she told me Daisy’s response: “Yes, ma’am, I was worried,” Daisy had told her. “But I was not worried for me; I was worried for you.”
She said, “Yes ma’am, I was worried. But I was not worried for me; I was worried for you.”
We left Atlanta 3 years later for Dallas, Texas, also segregated, but less overtly than in Georgia. Two years after that we moved to California, leaving behind the experiences of Segregation — or so we thought. Four years later, the Civil Rights Act was passed, outlawing discrimination, and was repeatedly enhanced to increase protections, but the struggle by black Americans to claim their legal rights as citizens continues to this day.
A Fight in a Russian Village
In March 1990 I moved to Moscow to serve as the first employee from Apple in Russia. My job was to manage the creation of the first Russian language version of the Macintosh operating system. I was supported by a Soviet consulting firm, LINK, which provided me an office, staff and other support.
Naturally, I needed a car to get around the sprawling city of 8 million people. A branch of Apple Europe had leased a car for me in Helsinki, Finland, so I flew there and picked up the car, and planned to drive it to Moscow. I had requested a vehicle that would not stand out, and could withstand the treacherous Russian roads: I had asked for a black Volvo. Instead, I was provided with a gleaming white Mercedes 190 that exposed me to a lot of unwanted attention — apparently there was only one other car like that in Moscow, and it reportedly belonged to a drug dealer.
I had an assistant provided by LINK, a young Russian named Misha, a burly, blue-eyed, confident 25-year-old, well educated and spoiled, attractive to women, and with a sense of privilege that was common among the party elite in Russia. He was also smart, streetwise and helpful in more ways that I could count — I would have been lost without him. Like the Mercedes, Misha sometimes caused as much trouble as the good he did, but for me both were absolutely necessities.
Crossing the border took three days of bureaucratic runaround due to issues with my multiple entry visa. Finally, I was able to drive into the USSR, and Misha met me just across the border in the town of Vyborg. From there we drove the 700 kilometers to Moscow — a tale worth its own blog.
Misha’s family had influence: his late father had been a chief architect of rebuilding the city of Moscow after the destruction in World War II. His mother was a high ranking member of the Communist party, which meant she had access to supplies and services that were not available to the average Soviet consumer. This included free access to hotels and vacations; we had spent a week at a resort in Yalta on the Crimean peninsula as part of this largesse.
May Day is a major national holiday in Russia, the equivalent of Labor Day in the U.S. For Russians May First is a day of national pride, as it falls just a week before the Victory Day, May 9, when Nazi Germany surrendered and the USSR became a victorious, global power.
But for many, including the wealthy and privileged, as well as the poor and uneducated members of the working class, May Day was an excuse — or a reason — to drink.
My diary from my time in Russia tells the story. After 2 months living in Moscow, I was tired and suffering from a cold while preparing to fly home to California in a few days. Misha had a friend, Georgy, whose father was a man of considerable political influence and authority — a world-renowned biologist and professor at Moscow State University. Georgy (who preferred to be called George), had invited us to his family’s private dacha, the Russian word for a cabin in the woods, but for the wealthy and powerful, more like a private summer home.
But for many, including the wealthy and privileged, as well as the poor and uneducated members of the working class, May Day was an excuse — or a reason — to drink.
The next day, I wrote in my diary:
On Monday, we drove out to George’s family dacha, out the beautiful road to Zvenigorod, and ancient village on the Moskva River, an hour west of Moscow. Quiet evening, outdoor barbecue, lots of vodka and cognac. A pleasant time — preceded by a wonderful visit to my first Russian banya, a steam bath very popular with Russians as a source of good health and friendship. And I loved it — it was a large, public sauna, with a dozen Russian men sitting around like in the old days, telling stories. After the steam bath, there’s a cold water dip, and then you slap your back gently with fragrant birch leaves, the smell of which reminded me of my childhood in Atlanta. My head cold seemed to disappear almost at once. It was relaxing and enjoyable, and a relief from the stresses of living in Moscow.
Tuesday was supposed to be a quiet day, and it was, except George started off the morning with a bottle of vodka he found in the refrigerator. This guy is 25 years old, and like his father is a fine biologist; his grandfather and great-grandfather are buried with Russia’s greatest leaders in Novodevichy cemetery, and he is a proud Russian. “I drink as often and as much as possible,” he told me grandly; “I’m Russian.” When he discovered the bottle of vodka, left over from the night before, he was as happy as a child who had found a new toy.
Later on, we stopped by some small hotel in the country so Misha could visit a pretty young woman he had somehow met while George and I were in the sauna. I waited in the car with George’s step-mother and a friend. Suddenly, a fight broke out, just as it started to rain; the windows were fogged so I couldn’t see what was going on. I jumped out of the car and ran over to where Misha, George and two young men were fighting.
Suddenly, the fight was over; the two young men, who were completely drunk, were both lying on the ground bleeding. Misha was sitting on a brick platform with a shattered right leg. I asked him what happened, and he said he had repeatedly kicked one of the guys, and thrown him over a wall. He then jumped on the wall to get to the other side to finish the job, but when he landed, he shattered his leg, which must have been weakened by the kicking. Meanwhile, George was slamming the other guy’s head against the pavement.
A quiet, peaceful holiday had come to a sudden, screeching end.
The fight had erupted when two young local workers, hungover after an all-night binge, staggered out of the forest where they had apparently spent the night, and wandered onto the grounds of the hotel. There they had come across Misha, walking out of the hotel wearing a very expensive, colorful sweater that his mother had bought from him in Germany. Misha told me that one of the workers, who had cut himself on the hand, started to swear at him for his nice clothes, then smeared his own blood on Misha’s sweater. That’s when the fight broke out.
It was “class warfare,” Soviet style — the rich, educated well-dressed son of a party bureaucrat was being put in his place for all his luxuries and attitudes by a member of the working class. But it had backfired, and the two young workers were lying on the concrete, either unconscious or dead. I never found out.
It was “class warfare,” Soviet style — the rich, educated well-dressed son of a party bureaucrat was being put in his place for all his luxuries and attitudes by a member of the working class. But it backfired, and the two young workers were lying on the concrete, either unconscious or dead.
This occurred in a small village outside Moscow; we rushed Misha to the local clinic. There, a technician took X-rays of his leg, showing a triple-compound fracture of the tibia; Misha needed immediate surgery to save his leg. But when the performing surgeon staggered into the room, as drunk as the workers had been, I literally smelled the vodka on his breath across the room. George, Misha and I conferred (speaking in English), took the X-rays, and decided to rush back to Moscow to get better quality medical attention.
Since George was still drunk from his morning binge, I drove the 50 kilometers back to Moscow, and it was an experience I’ll never forget. We were out in the country, miles up a rutted and unmaintained dirt road. Each time I slowed down or braked to soften the impact of a deep rut, it caused a lot of pain in Misha’s leg, and he would scream and moan. “David, ne tormozhi!” He would cry: “David, don’t brake!” So I had to use my Mercedes to attack the road holes and not be intimidated. Once we got off the dirt road onto the highway there was a lot of traffic, so we couldn’t drive too fast — I just cruised at a modest rate to protect Misha’s leg from further damage.
We arrived at the hospital in Moscow — the Sklifosovskiy Trauma Center, considered one of the finest in Russia at the time. This experience offered yet another taste of real Soviet life. As I said in my diary: “I’ll save that description for a day when my stomach is stronger.”
Since it was still May Day, no one came to assist us; few staff were visible, but even those who were seemed either drunk or preoccupied; they paid no attention to our cries for help. So, after building up a raging anger and a head of steam, I decided to drive my Mercedes right up the granite front steps of the imposing hospital to see what they would do — hoping they didn’t call the police but would come to help. When we got to the front door, no one reacted; they just stared. I said, to George, “I should just drive right through the window,” but he calmed me down and ran inside. Still no one came, so George and I went inside together and commandeered an empty gurney, which we used to wheel Misha into the front office. The astonished staff continued just to stare at us. Misha, lying on his back with a shattered leg, calmly reached up and through the window and handed them his X-rays, taken 2 hours earlier. He was admitted.
George and I waited there in the lobby for 8 hours, while they set Misha’s leg; since the hospital had no anesthetic, he had to endure the pain. I cannot imagine what that was like.
George and I waited there in the lobby for 8 hours, while they set Misha’s leg; since the hospital had no anesthetic, he had to endure the pain.
After the operation, the surgeon, a square-jawed, intelligent man in his 40s wearing a white cap like a butcher’s hat, approached us in the lobby where we were waiting. Cigarette in hand, he told us that the break in Misha’s leg was serious, and that the first operation had not been successful. He would have to reset the leg in another day or two.
Meanwhile, he advised, we were to make daily trips to the farmers’ markets for fresh vegetables, what he called “organic” produce, and light meat, like chicken, that the hospital staff would prepare (as always, for a price), and which, the doctor advised, would be essential for Misha’s quick recovery. We did this each day for the next week; we would arrive with supplies at Misha’s hospital room and find him smoking — of course completely forbidden, but he would sneak in cigarettes by bribing the staff with … cigarettes.
In fact, during that entire week, doctors, nurses and orderlies repeatedly approached us, asking for cigarettes. An orderly showed us a back entrance to the hospital, so we could come visit Misha when we wanted. All for a price, of course. I even brought a bottle of Scotch to the surgeon to make sure he set the bone in Misha’s leg correctly, then later thought, “I’m here representing a major American corporation, and I’m reduced to bribing doctors.”
Late that evening, I left to go back to my apartment; but I had completely forgotten about my white Mercedes, and found it still standing at the main entrance to the clinic. With the adrenalin gone, my nerves strained, I had to carefully drive back down the steps to the street. That was in some ways the most terrifying aspect of the entire day.
Ten days after the incident, I flew home to California, then returned in late June. Misha did recover, and we continued to work together until I left Moscow later that year. He came to California a year or two year later and we met for a drink; he said his leg was doing well.
The real meaning of this incident in Russia eluded me for years. Today, the resurgence of the struggle by black Americans to gain their basic rights and freedoms somehow has made the meaning clear to me: that poor working class Russians continue to deeply resent — and also to suffer at the hands of — members of the abusive, better-educated, and privileged wealthy class that looks down on them and considers them, inferior, dirty, stupid, drunk and dangerous.
The violent clash between my two educated, privileged Russian acquaintances and the two young workers burned a lesson in my mind that remains today. I remember wondering: What motivated such violence, on both sides? Was it self defense? Anger? Resentment? Suppressing the working class?
This was not racism: everyone involved, as far as I could tell, was ethnic Russian. It’s true that Russia has a long and painful history of ethnic discrimination, but in this case, race was not the issue.
For me, the lesson was that Russia was built on the same kind of oppression and division that still haunts the United States; and that both countries bear legacies of a time when one segment of society ruled and subjugated another.
The lesson was that Russia was built on the same kind of oppression and division that still haunt the United States; and both countries bear legacies of a time when one segment of society ruled and subjugated another.
After 150 Years, How Much Has Really Changed?
Today, the Southern United States is a very different place than in was in the 1950s. On my last visit to Atlanta in 2011 I saw how that city has been transformed into a bustling, modern, reasonably prosperous metropolis, with high-rise offices and condos, and a vast and efficient metro system. Yet many of the legacies of slavery remain, and we are seeing them in the streets today.
In Russia today, the government is an autocracy, not a democracy, and the legacies of Soviet authoritarianism are still manifest. Millions of Russians live in poverty and squalor — one quarter of Russian households lack plumbing or sewer systems — and political freedom is still more an illusion than a reality.
My two personal experiences — exposure to the pervasive economic and social oppression of African Americans in the South during Segregation, and the poverty, lack of social services and medical care in Russia during the last years of the Soviet Union — may not appear to be closely related. But they share at least one commonality: both, I believe, show the deep legacies of long and dark histories, of oppression, denial of rights, class divisions, economic exploitation and human suffering. Each system had its own causes and consequences; but what they both share is that even today, in 2020, there are hauntingly grim echoes of these systems in how people live their daily lives and treat one another.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of these anecdotes is that oppression doesn’t just affect those who are being oppressed; it effects everyone it touches. In neither case was I one of the oppressed; in both cases, I was free and safe above the fray — or so I thought. As it turned out, in both cases, I was right in the middle of the fray, and I was touched in ways that were deeply disturbing then, and have undermined my sense of safety, justice and freedom to this very day.
