The author is Peter Kolchin, and the subtitle is The Abolition and Aftermath of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom.  Here is one interesting excerpt of many:

Despite the surge in schools and teachers after 1880, Russian peasant children were considerably less likely to receive schooling than were African American children, especially if they were girls. As the statement about not needing literacy in order to make cabbage soup indicated, the subordination of females that characterized Russian society in general was as evident in peasant education as in any other sphere of life. Statistics on school attendance by sex indicates that, in contrast to former slaves in the Southern United States, for whom serfs in Russia rarely sent their daughters to school during the 1860s and 1870s, regarding it as a waste of time that would fill their heads with needless knowledge and make them less fit for their feminine duties. The

Keep reading this article on Marginal Revolution.