Tolstoy was lenient land-owner, admired by his Krasny Rog peasants who were permitted to use his fields as common pastures and given free timber and primary education for their children in a school he built for them in 1859. In 1861 he personally gathered all of his peasants together, read them the Emancipation reform of 1861 decree, gave money to everybody present and participated in the grandiose drinking spree that followed. Being a lavish spender and having no knowledge of the practical side of life, by the end of the 1860s he found himself on the verge of bankruptcy, but loathed the idea of returning to the Tsar's Court.