What were the most important causes and most important consequences of the emancipation of the Serfs?

Serfdom, a system of virtual slavery tying the Russian peasants to their landlords, was abolished in 1861 under the imperial demand of Tsar Nicholas II. This change was put in place for many reasons, including military defeat in Crimea, the economy and political system, which all contributed to the backwardness of Russia as a nation, as they prohibited the introduction of other major reforms. In my view, the most important cause of emancipation was the state of the economy, because the nature of serfdom prevented the country from catching up with the west, and the most important consequence was that the military was able to dramatically improve.

One major reason that serfdom was abolished was because of the poor economic situation and general backwardness of the nation. Due to the nature of serfdom the economy was prevented from evolving; the serfs weren’t paid, so there could be no market, there could be no interest, and enterprise was prevented. This left Russia far behind the west, and with a struggling and starving workforce; they starved since the increasing famines and noble taxations left them with no food reserves. To combat this, they wanted to modernise agriculture, industry and railways to increase Russia’s economic strength. However, with serfdom in place, this was impossible to implement because serfs didn’t have money to invest in increasing agricultural efficiency, and the Government was reluctant to encourage industrialisation whilst serfdom survived as they relied on the static nature of the serfs. Due to these harmful effects, there was growing criticism about the system of serfdom and emancipation became inevitable in this respect, to free up labour for industrialisation, meaning that peasants would have money to contribute to the market,