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
What Was Lost What Was Lost What Was Lost is the 2007 début novel by Catherine O'Flynn. The novel is about a girl who goes missing in a shopping centre in 1984, and the people who try to discover what happened to her twenty years later. "What Was Lost" won the First Novel Award at the 2007 Costa Book Awards, and was short-listed for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award. O'Flynn found inspiration for "What Was Lost" while she was working as an assistant manager in a record shop. She was interested in the difference in shopping centres by day and