“Though conservative forces were able to suppress liberal movements in 1848, they could not restore old order.” Comment

After 1848, monarchs were beginning to realise that the cycles of revolution and repression could only be ended by granting concessions to the liberal-nationalist revolutionaries. Hence in the years after 1848, the autocratic monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce the changes that had already taken place in Western Europe before 1815. Thus, serfdom and bonded labour were abolished both in the Habsburg dominions and in Russia.