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[AMERICAN CIVIL WAR FOR RUSSIAN CHILDREN] Chiornoe serdtse. Povest’ is epokhi Osvoboditel’noi voiny Severo-Amerikanskikh shtatov [i.e. Black Heart. A Story from the Times of the Liberation War of the Northern American States]

Fedorov-Davydov, A.A.

Item #1128

Moscow: t-vo I.D. Sytina, [1909]. 152 pp.: ill. 23x15 cm. 2nd edition. Publisher’s illustrated binding, decorated endpapers. Good, some soiling and rubbing to the boards, visual wear of the extremities, fading of the spine, crack along the spine on the front and back endpapers, occasional spots in the text.

Extremely rare pre-Revolutionary edition. One of the first Russian books about African-Americans, slavery and abolitionism in America. A novel for Russian children and young adults of the beginning of the 20th century about hardships of African-Americans slaves living on a Southern plantation in Virginia during the American Civil War.

Alexander Fedorov-Davydov (1875-1936) was a writer and author of children’s books. His first children’s book was published in 1895, and overall he wrote 125 books for children as well as many articles and essays. In general Fedorov-Davydov was very popular in the 1900s, he also was the publisher and editor of children’s magazines such as ‘Ogonyok’, ‘Delo i potekha’, ‘Putevodnyi ogonyok’ which were promoting liberal and humanistic ideas about ‘achieving human’s happiness through love, labor and altruism’. Even though this programme was very vague it was much more progressive than official children’s literature that was introducing the ideas of Orthodox christianity, false patriotism and autocracy.

Some of his works were accused of having too much didacticism which in case of this edition is probably true. For example, in this novel a white plantator from the South is reformed by the end of the book, and not only frees his slaves but promises to help them get safe to the North where they can live a free life. This novel is imbued with empathy and compassion for African Americans during slavery and abolitionism. The author paints a vivid image and shows how difficult life was on slave plantations of the South, and explains the ideas behind the war between the North and South. The action takes place on a plantation in Virginia after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on December 30, 1862. The book also mentions real events, such as the uprising and execution of the white abolitionist John Brown.

In the eyes of Europe, the proclamation on the emancipation of slaves radically changed the nature and purpose of the war: from that moment on, the struggle was waged not for the unity of the Union, but for the abolition of slavery. Russia, which had liberated its serfs a year earlier, also adopted a benevolent stance towards the Union.

Worldcat locates copies at Harvard and University of Virginia Libraries.

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