From "Russia, 1801--19something", Ency Britannica...Russia 1869, serfs

[Mark Kohut]

But the bulk of the landowning class was determined, if it could not prevent abolition of serfdom, to give the freed peasants as little as possible. The settlement, proclaimed on Feb. 19 (March 3, New Style), 1861, was a compromise. Peasants were freed from servile status, and a procedure was laid down by which they could become owners of land. The government paid the landowners compensation and recovered the cost in annual “redemption payments” from the peasants. The terms were unfavourable to the peasants in many, probably most, cases. In the north, where land was poor, the price of land on which the compensation was based was unduly high; in effect, this served partly to compensate the landowners for the loss of their serfs and also for the loss of the share that they had previously enjoyed of the peasants’ earnings from nonagricultural labour. In the south, where land was more valuable, the plots given to the peasants were very small, often
 less than they had been allowed for their own use when they were serfs.