Serf Life in Russia - The Childhood of a Russian Grandmother #245001

The pictures of serf life in Russia (as it existed before 1861) collected together in this volume are not only interesting as being what the French would call "sensations vécues" but are also of psychological value as being the self-revelation of the outwardly wayward, but vibratingly sensitive child soul of a little girl, brought up under almost mediæval conditions in the middle of the nineteenth century. Old social and economic forms were crumbling away around the child, who played and dreamed, and often revolted, in the garden of the old Russian manor house. The first faint impulses of modern thought, science, and economic outlook were making themselves felt in town and university centres throughout the civilised world. Steam and electricity were already beginning to undermine stealthily the fortresses of the "old order."