The World Sieve Text Book

Russia was not doing so hot in the id 18 forties, though the symptoms were not exactly the same. The russians were dealing with a cholera outbreak and unseasonably dry weather that caused fires and bad harvests. D nicholas himself personally disliked serfdom, and he would have abolished it by fiot if he thought he could. But he was convinced that would lead to one of the two types of rebellion that russian history was so familiar with - the peasant revolt. And so he left the serfs in their bondage, and the russian economy stagnated.