Many thanks for reading and commenting. In Russia serfdom is an amazingly versatile institutional cross-dresser. Each generation or two it dresses up in a new institutional costume. It's both the cause and symptom of autocracy deinstitutionalizing the state in Russia's service of the futile pursuit of empire. Russia's elites see empire as existential and a matter of civilizational and national identity. They repeatedly enserf themselves to an autocrat to close the gap between their geopolitical ambition and state capacity in a game of catch up with a more powerful West they import technology and IP from and can't win empire maintenance wars without. Like the Muslim world, they want the technological sources of western power without social and political westernization. But my reply is, in one word: fuhgetaboutit. Not gonna happen.