Serfdom in Russia Great, businesses began to send serfs into those areas in an attempt to harvest their large amount of untapped natural resources Tsar Alexander I wanted to reform the system but was thwarted in this ambition. New laws allowed all classes (except the serfs) to own land, a privilege that had previously been confined to the nobility. Russian serfdom was finally abolished in the emancipation reform of 1861 by Tsar Alexander II. Scholars have proposed multiple overlapping reasons to account for the abolition, including fear of a large-scale revolt by the serfs, the government's financial needs, evolving cultural sensibilities, and the
Time in Russia its time zone from MSK+1 to MSK. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+5 to UTC+4, the offset without DST was therefore changed from UTC+4 to UTC+3. On 26 March 1989, the following changes were introduced, which, in particular, some oblasts switched to Moscow Time (thus eliminating Samara Time; MSK+1 or UTC+4 without DST): Some oblasts switched from Moscow Time to Eastern European Time: Russia and most republics in the Soviet Union abolished the decree time (not moving the clocks) on 31 March 1991, but Russia reversed this the following year (except Samara Oblast which was