Paul I of Russia
Paul I (; "Pavel Petrovich") ( – ) reigned as Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. Officially, he was the only son of Peter III and Catherine the Great, though Catherine hinted that he was fathered by her lover Sergei Saltykov, who also had Romanov blood, being a descendant of the first Romanov tsar's sister, Tatiana Feodorovna Romanova.
Emancipation reform of 1861
In 1797, Paul I of Russia decreed that corvee labor was limited to 3 days a week, and never on Sunday, but this law was not enforced. Beginning in 1801, Alexander I of Russia appointed a committee to study possible emancipation, but its only effect was to prohibit the sale of serfs without their families. Beginning in 1825, Nicholas I of Russia expressed his desire for emancipation on many occasions, and even improved the lives of serfs on state properties, but did not change the condition of serfs on private estates.