The Abolition of Serfdom

Serfdom was abolished by decree in Russia in 1861, as part of a project of modernizing that had become more clearly necessary in the Crimean war, which Russia had barely won despite formerly being a power of such scope that smaller countries' mountains would actually shake when they heard rumors that Russia might be displeased. Wishing to once more build itself such an awesome reputation, Russia's abolishing of serfdom represented its wish to once more build itself into a great power, and its idea that modernizing represented imitating the west. This idea had finally become almost universally accepted long after the death of Peter the Great.
Abolishing serfdom was a key step in making Russia a more modernized country. However, it was not undertaken for the slavophiles' reasons - to make Russia a collection of traditional Russian peasant communes - and not, truly, for the westernizers' reasons, because they emphasized Western liberalism rather than Western industrial power. Industrialism was the true focus of the abolition of serfdom - it left life just as bad as it had always been for the farmers, but also gave them the ability to leave and go to cities, where they could begin the slow process of turning Russia into an industrial nation.