WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Act of February 19, 1861, gave personal freedom to 23 million serfs, or 34.4 percent of the total population of Russia, promoting them to the status of “free rural inhabitants."

Detailed explanation-2: -Emancipation Manifesto, (March 3 [Feb. 19, Old Style], 1861), manifesto issued by the Russian emperor Alexander II that accompanied 17 legislative acts that freed the serfs of the Russian Empire.

Detailed explanation-3: -Alexander took action first, freeing some 20 million serfs through the Emancipation Manifesto on March 3, 1861. In one of several striking historical connections between the two men, that happened to be the day before Lincoln’s first inauguration.

Detailed explanation-4: -The official estimate is that 23 million Russians were privately owned, 18.3 million were in state ownership and another 900, 000 serfs were under the Tsar’s patronage (udelnye krestiane) before the Great Emancipation of 1861.

Detailed explanation-5: -The peasants’ reform laid the foundations of the country’s industrial development. No progress was possible without free work, and serfdom, which concerned 47 million inhabitants, was no longer viable. On 19 February 1861, in the sixth year of the reign of Tsar Alexandr II, serfdom was abolished.