Determining the zemstvos outcome is harder. Roberta Thompson-Manning points out in the development of constitutionalism, they played a minor role. While the zemstvos did petition the state increasingly for a national representative body, the vast majority of their requests were for changes that worked within the preexisting autocratic system. She argues they also did perpetuate the desires of the gentry far more than that of the peasantry. The zemstvo did not unite the social classes, but rather provided further antagonism between them, further depleting the body’s chances of developing into a wider movement. Dorothy Atkinson argues that the peasants were in many ways opposed to the zemstvos because they saw them as another taxing body that
