Great Reforms of Alexander II

Russia's defeat in the Crimean War intensified demands for institutional change. Alexander II's government introduced reforms affecting serfdom, courts, local administration, the army, education and censorship.

The reforms changed legal structures without ending autocracy or social hierarchy. Landowners, officials, peasants and professionals encountered new opportunities alongside debt, bureaucratic resistance and continuing inequality.

Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich belong to this reform-era society. Tolstoy uses estate management, local government, professional advancement and the courts to show how public reform coexists with private convention.