Everybody knows that the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States, finally passed by the House on January 31, 1865, at the end of The American Civil War. The United States was one of the last nations to outlaw the barbaric practice of trading humans. The abolition of slavery in Europe began much earlier: in Britain in 1807, in Spain in 1811, in France in 1826 and in her colonies in 1848.

Almost all slave trade in Europe and it’s colonies during that time included people from Africa. African slaves were replacing local peasants, who by the feudal rule of ownership belonged to the Lord of the Manor. Such peasants in the Middle Ages – serfs – were at the bottom of society, but unlike slaves, had some rights. Uprisings and riots by the serfs forced some European countries to end serfdom at around the time of the Renaissance.

In The Russian Empire serfdom survived for much longer than in Europe. In landed estates around Moscow and Kiev, in Western Ukraine and in the Russian South, feudal lordship was so typical that almost all peasants and servants had a little more rights than slaves. Prior to the 17th century, peasants in Russia were, at least, allowed  to change their landowner once a year – it was called Yuriev’s Day. For every other day of the year the only way for the serfs to free themselves was to run and join the Cossacks. Revolts by serfs were very common and at the end of the 18th century culminated in a legendary three year long Rebellion of peasants and Cossacks, lead by Yemelyan Pugachev, the serf, who promised them land and freedom. That uprising was ruthlessly smashed by Catherine the Great, but smaller revolts continued. A world famous book written about that time, and the people on both sides of society, is the classic novel “Captain’s Daughter” by Alexander Pushkin (The 2014 Robert and Elizabeth Chandler translation has been praised as one of the best).

The reason that serfdom was so hard to abolish, was because serfdom determines the wealth of the Russian Land Lords, which was counted not only by the size and location of the land, but also by the number of serfs – it was called the Number of Souls. Nikolai Gogol wrote, in the classic novel Dead Souls, about the tragedy and bitter comedy of the provincial life and the absurd rules of the Russian Empire’s government.

Gogol was born and grew up in Malorussia (now – Ukraine) were such insanity came to extremes, multiplied by Moscow’s attitude toward “The Little Russia” – the official name given to central and western regions of present day Ukraine, but often with the derogatory meaning – Russia’s Dwarf.

Social and economic pressure finally led to the emancipation reform of 1861 by Russian Tsar Alexander II, when serfdom was at least formally abolished.

Even prior to that, since  the 17th century, when The Russian Empire expended to the North, the Urals and Siberia, there was no serfdom in the new territories. Good lands, natural resources, work opportunities, and freedom attracted many former serfs, free peasants, and industrial workers to migrate there, despite the harsh climate and enormous distance from their native lands. Several of our ancestors were part of that migration to Siberia and Altay at different times, some volunteering, others – moved there by force.

The bigger question was how to move produce and resources from Siberia to Western Russia for export to Europe and to the East, where the military outposts and the ports were situated. The only solution was to build a railway. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Russia built The Trans-Siberian Railroad, stretching from Moscow to the Far-East and China – which is still the longest railroad in the World.

The Trans-Siberian Railroad still runs through many of regions and cities where our past generations lived for more than a century, both in Russia and China.

But those will be different stories.