Understanding the process of Russian serf emancipation

"The emancipation of the Russian serfs was accompanied by a complex set of land and institutional reforms that changed the organizational structure of local governance, the allocation of property rights, and the working of rural factor markets. These measures were not all initiated immediately, and it took over twenty years for the new institutional structure to be fully enacted. While the main parameters of these changes are explored elsewhere (Nafziger, 2011 and 2013b), this paper highlights five relatively unexplored aspects of the reforms that affected the nature of growth and structural transformation in the countryside. We summarize available data on each of these five components of the reforms, especially as to their timing. We speculate as to their potential effects in subsequent decades, and propose several additional empirical and theoretical directions we intend to take in future work."