The Liberation of the Serfs As a Cultural Symbol

Abstract

In a large body of cultural texts from the period of the emancipation, the of serfdom is surrounded by stable symbolic associations. The liberation comes to be understood through the prism of Christian symbolism. It is the task of the present paper to describe this symbolic system, that is, to analyze and interpret the liberation of the serfs as a historical reality, but as a fact of cultural consciousness, as a cultural symbol. For many, the point of departure for deciding the peasant question was the evaluation of serf ownership from the standpoint of Christian doctrine. In the majority of texts written by both Slavophile and Westernizer adversaries of serfdom in the 1840s and 1850s, serfdom, or slave ownership, was presented as a sin, and the existing social order was equated with a life in sin.1 A. I. Koshelev, for example, argued that since the essence of Christ's teaching was found in the commandment of love and brotherhood, ownership of one human being by another was sinful in the extreme; the sin of serf ownership was a threat to salvation. In the draft of a letter to I. V. Kireevskii from 22 October 1852, Koshelev further maintained that acknowledging the sinfulness of this state and yet continuing to remain within it was not the sin of a moment, from which one might be cleansed by repentance .. .2 Belinskii had recourse to this type of argument in his letter to Gogol in