Race and Russian Lit

A mid-twentieth century translation of a nineteenth century classic Russian novel is perhaps the last place one would expect to run across the N-word, much less in the following bizarre context:

A soldier on the march is as much shut in and borne along by his regiment as a sailor is by his ship. However far he goes, however strange, unknown and dangerous the regions to which he penetrates, all about him — just as the sailor sees the same decks, masts and rigging — he has always and everywhere the same comrades and ranks, the same sergeant-major Ivan Mitrich, the same regimental dog Nigger, and the same officers.

Tolstoy,
, tr. Rosemary Edmunds, p. 313. I found the name of the dog to be a minor but shocking revelation in its apparent casual equation of people of African descent with dogs, its casual use of a pejorative for people of African descent as the name of an Army unit's mascot. Although I have heard of such practices in this day and age, they do not generally go unremarked or unchallenged.

In one of the few other references to people of African descent in War and Peace, Natasha and Nikolai engage in an odd reminiscence about having encountered a possibly imaginary Black man at their house:

"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, how once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the study — that was in in the old house — and it was dark. We went in and all at once there stood . . . "
"A Negro," Nikolai finished for her with a smile of delight. "Of course I remember! To this day I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or if we only dreamt it, or were told about him."
'He had grey hair, remember, and white teeth, and he stood and stared at us . . . "
"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nikolai.
"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.
"You know, I've often asked papa and mamma about that Negro," said Natasha, "and they declare there never was a Negro." But you see, you remember about it."
"Of course I do. I can see his teeth now."
"How strange it is! As though it were a dream! I like that."

It seems bizarre that Tolstoy would have introduced these two anomalous references into a 1400-page novel. One of his few other references to the African continent, in which he deplores Napoleon's barbaric slaughter of the Egyptians, does not suggest any particularly strong animus toward people of color. Id. p. 1402. Moreover, he does not comment at all on the American South, which at the time was the other great imperial slaveholding state, along with Russia. (Unlike the American South, however, the Russians did not, as far as I know, import people of color to be slaves.) Still, it is worth remembering that the elegant lives of Tolstoy's Princes and Counts are made possible by the subjugation of thousands of their fellow countryman. (Prince Andrei Bolkonsky is regarded as notably enlightened because he is one of the few aristocrats to liberate his serfs.) Although Tolstoy goes to some length to humanize serfs such as Platon Karayatev, throughout the novel one has the sense that Russian society is able to function only by assuming that the serfs are not fully human. And if the serfs in the novel seem to be not fully human, the Blacks seem even less so. Tolstoy's pair of anecdotes are symptomatic of how deeply ingrained in European (and American) society racial stereotypes have been for centuries, and suggest reasons why we have so much difficulty overcoming them even today.

^[1] Of course, it says volumes about Sonya's status as the poor relation to Nikolai and Natasha that she does not really remember this odd incident, and yet feels compelled to pretend that she does.