They believed you needed a free labour market where peasants could move around to where they could be most productive.
Many enlightened government officials and intellectuals believed that serfdom needed to be abolished in order for the Russian economy to advance.
Nicholas Milyutin, an official in the Ministry of interior Affairs, wrote, "Serfdom serves as the main- even the only- hiderance to the development in Russia at the present time... Only with the emancipation of the serfs will the betterment of our rural economy be possible.
Some of these officials accepted the arguments of economists, for example Adam smith, that free labour was more productive than forced labour.

	Created by Georgia Brooke over 8 years ago

A-Level History Slide Set on Reasons for Emancipation, created by Georgia Brooke on 27/11/2015.