The Emancipation of the Serfs
   Though it is impossible to pinpoint something as broad as the fall of the Romonav dynasty, for convenience sake I will start with the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Though technically emancipation abolished all legal obligations the peasantry had towards the land-owning nobility and allotted them their own strips of land, they were required to reimburse the landowners. Although their new land was expensive, it was not expansive. Tsar Alexander II gave the landholding elite the power to decide what land could be allotted to the serfs and how much. Naturally this resulted in the serfs owning little of the nobility's land, and the worst of it. The puny amounts of land the peasantry did own were often so inefficient that they could barely raise their livestock on it.

   The situation the serfdom found themselves in after emancipation caused such strong resentment that many serfs took to seizing the land of non-peasants. On entering World War I, the situation worsened, and the possibility of rectifying it became increasingly futile (Gill 3-7).

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