Reddit mentions of The Russian Nanny, Real and Imagined: History, Culture, Mythology

In Russia Serfs were predominantly local poor people - not imported from foreign nations - the system was of indentured servitude - whereby a serf would work on land for his or her entire life in exchange for the right to live in a house on the owner's property and in exchange for basic food, clothing etc. Serfs were treated like property and could only marry, move, have kids etc with the approval of their owners. Corporal punishment was used to keep them in line if they dissobeyed landowners, and because they were considered as property, they had virtually no rights pre-1861.

Serfs were an integral part of country life like slaves on plantations in the US. They would raise the children (along w/ foreign language professors for richer families - usually young girls from France) The "nanny" who was often an old serf woman who is no longer suited for work in the fields plays a central role in much Russian pre-20th century litterature. She is a key figure in Pushkin's works (ex: "Eugene Onegin") and is present in "War and Peace" "The Brothers Karamazov" as well as numerous other works. After the Emancipation of the Cerfs in 1861 - see wiki article - Serfs gained many rights de jure, but de facto because they still had debts to their masters and had few ways of getting out of indetured servitude, continued to function along the same lines, up until the 1917 revolution.

Bottom line : if you want to know about how serfs were treated look to Russian litterature from the 1700 + 1800s - Pushkin, Gogol (Ukraine), Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy etc - there are also films that were made based on their works but no specific Cerf film / cultural movement that is comparable to the one in the US with Slaves / African-Americans.

The only explanation I can think of is that in Russia it was about money and bloodlines - not about difference of ethnicity and culture.

Nannies - numerous Russian sources and a [book on Amazon :] (http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0985569816)

VERY interesting book that I will now be enticed to order : comparing African-American and Russian slaves/cerfs plight from a cultural heritage perspective :