19th century Russia question?

It is a difficult question to answer, in that the serfs were effectively slaves, and after emancipation they could freely sell their labour - so for them it was a massive improvement.

However, they had to pay back their freedom - over 50 years, and, in 1917 when the October Revolution broke out, millions still owed money. Also the landlords took the best grazing and arable land, as well as enclosing village common land, so the peasants had poor land, were massively in debt, still had no political rights and, due to the internal passport system, were still tied to the land.

For some nobles, emancipation did bring hardship - they could no longer rely on free labour to bring in their harvests, to work in their homes or factories (there were urban serfs who had to work for free). Debt levels for nobles went up, as many did not curb their spending habits.

For nobles at the lower end of the scale - (the lower reaches of the nobility were based on certain employment positions, not property or wealth - Lenin was a heredity noble based as his father had been a schools' inspector) - life did become very difficult as they often were only just making ends meet.

For a brilliant dramatisation of how this affected the lower end of nobility see Chekov's The Cherry Orchard.

Despite the fact that some nobles had financial problems directly because of emancipation, the peasants certainly had it worse, they were much poorer to begin with, and emancipation only exacerbated their poverty.

To see what Russia was like at the start of the 20th Century see:

http://englishrussia.com/?p=2080#more-2080