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The cultivation of Russia's great lands depended on the labour of millions of serfs, and they had for hundreds of years been at the very bottom of the social ladder. But, under a new Tsar, it seemed, at last, that their lowly place was going to change. On March the 3rd 1861 Alexander II took a step that many tsars before him had considered taking, but had always drawn back from.

The Manifesto on the Emancipation of the Serfs did something that had petrified previous rulers: it offered freedom to twenty three million Russians who for centuries had been little more than slaves. The liberation of the peasants was the biggest shake-up in Russian society since the time of Peter the Great. It affected nearly every member of the population, placed the whole economic and social structure on a new footing, and created shock waves that would rumble through the nation for decades.

The reform was long overdue. Peasant unrest had been growing since the end of the Napoleonic invasion, turning to violent uprisings during and after the recent military disaster of the Crimean War. The Manifesto is full of pleas for restraint that betray the very real fear of conflict. But as Martin Sixsmith points out, the Emancipation was 'a botched job - too little, too late - it disappointed and angered nearly everyone'.

And in 1881 an extremist revolutionary threw a bomb at the Tsar's carriage with fatal results. "Why," asks Sixsmith "did the man who brought emancipation, peace and the possibility of democracy in Russia end up with his legs blown off, his face shattered, bleeding to death?' The question's all the more poignant because in the minutes before he set off on his last, fatal carriage ride Alexander had just put his signature on a document that could have changed Russia forever.

Historical Consultant: Professor Geoffrey Hosking

Producers: Adam Fowler & Anna Scott-Brown
A Ladbroke Production for 鲍鱼tv Radio 4.