"We were bad, but now we're good" vs. "Let me twirl my mustache a little"

Explanation: After profiting from the slave trade for ~200 years, the spread of (more) modern moral standards after the Enlightenment made most European countries a touch ashamed of slavery, and eventually turned them towards not just the abolition of slavery domestically, but also its international suppression. Better late than never.

Russia was one of the last European countries to ban serfdom, at the same time the US Civil War was starting over slavery. Russian ‘serfs’ were in an immensely degraded position even compared to serfdom in other European countries (itself having also been widely banned) and usually considered closer to slavery than serfdom. This is not helped by the ‘affectionate’ terms Russian nobility used for ‘their’ people.