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
Sociology in Russia Sociological Society and the Society of Professional Sociologists,), and it is not clear what is the proper successor to the Soviet Sociological Association (disbanded in 1999). Two major centers of sociological research are the Institute of Sociology and the Institute of Sociopolitical Research, both at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The M. Kovalevskii Prize is the most prestigious modern Russian award for sociological research. There are about 30 sociology journals published in Russia, two of which are published in English: "Sociological Research" and "Society and Education". Between 1998 and 2006 more than 1,000 sociological books and monographs, including several dictionaries