History of serfdom process, referred to as "second serfdom" or "export-led serfdom", persisted until the mid-19th century and became very repressive and substantially limited serfs' rights. Before the 1861 abolition of serfdom in Russia, a landowner's estate was often measured by the number of "souls" he owned, a practice made famous by Gogol's 1842 novel "Dead Souls". Many of these countries abolished serfdom during the Napoleonic invasions of the early 19th century. Serfdom remained in force in most of Russia until the Emancipation reform of 1861, enacted on February 19, 1861, though in the Russian-controlled Baltic provinces it had been abolished at the
History of Russia (1855–92) tended to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry: the poll tax was abolished in 1886, a law was passed to accelerate legal transfer of the land allotted to the peasants in 1861, the payments due from them for this land were greatly reduced, Crown lands were made available for leasing or purchase to the peasants on advantageous terms, and great stretches of Crown lands in Eastern Russia and Siberia were opened for peasant emigration and resettlement. Labour legislation was first introduced in 1882 with the creation of the inspectorate of factories (in charge of health and life saving regulations), the