EDIT: Alright, let's take a look at this now.
IOTL, as CanadianGoose pointed out, we have the Decembrist uprising. In brief, the state smashed it quite convincingly, and it would take a lot to make it successful - enough butterflies to bear Chris Moyles high into the sky, all with the coordination required to collectively release him at the height calculated to be funniest.
First, let's look at Alexander II's reign, specifically, the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861.
Why were the serfs emancipated? One key issue is the Crimean War; not until t.A.T.u.'s debut at the eurovision song contest would Russia taste such humiliation again. The war showed the existing servile order to be backward and weak, and also struck down the most potent argument against reform, namely that the existing order was behind the Empire's stability and power.
Boris Chicherin is a useful name to drop at this point. He was far from a rabid revolutionary, but he was a liberal, and advanced that without the abolition of serfdom,
...no questions can be resolved -- whether political, administrative, or social.
People like
Nikolai Miliutin and
Alexei Strolman are worth mentioning too; the enlightened bureaucrats. Along with them, we have General
Gorchakov and Admiral
Konstantin, military figures who, whatever their personal feelings toward the serfs, didn't want another Crimean War on their hands. A committee weighted in the favour of conservative interests produced the actual work; Alexander II took the nickname of 'Tsar-Liberator', but he was a lukewarm reformer at best. From a speech he gave to the nobility of Moscow in 1856:
Rumours have spread among you of my intention to abolish serfdom. To refute any groundless gossip on so important a subject, I consider it necessary to inform you that I have no intention of doing so immediately [...] It is better to begin abolishing serfdom from above than to wait for it to begin abolish itself from below.
Debate went back and forth for a long time, with the Third Section (secret police) keeping Alexander informed at all times; the nobility believed that the peasantry was far too uncultured to comprehend civil law and that emancipation would result in anarchy - the nobles were also absolutely opposed to any scheme for compulsory alienation of their property.
As it happens, Alexander was far more worried about creating a landless, rural proletariat than he was about annoying the nobles. After a fairly desultory 'consultation' with the nobles, Alexander II signed the Emancipation Statute into law on February 19th, 1861.
The government didn't actually
tell anyone about the change in law until Lent had begun, to ensure the news was met by a sober and docile peasantry. That's because the Statute in no way met the expectations of those it was supposed to free.
In short, the serfs were granted the right to marry, acquire property, conduct trade and so forth, they were still second-class citizens. Instead of being legally bound to their squire, they were bound to their local administration and courts. To ensure police power over them, the government had shifted authority from the squire to the commune and resorted to traditional, collective responsibility.
Worst of all was the land settlement. Firstly, it was not to take place for two years, so they would still be bound to their squire in practice if not in theory. These two years were to be used by the government to conduct a census, after which, the self-same obligation to the squire would still be in effect until the government and the squire could reach an agreement. Then, and only then, would the ex-serfs be able to buy a portion of the land.
In essence, the ex-serfs found that the land they thought to be theirs would have to be bought through immense redemption payments over forty-nine years. Redemption payments calculated by taking the market value of the land pre-emancipation and doubling it. Oh, and the squire reserved the right to keep between 10% and 26% of his land, so they would actually be suffering a loss of land they had utilized before emancipation.
The announcement of emancipation ignited some 1,800 protests, which the military was generally called in to quell. The nobles were pretty appalled too; not only had they lost their police powers, but they were short of capital and uncertain of labour.
IOTL, this was a case of a few riots, and an uproar from the nobles, as well as the beginnings of reactionary, anti-reform calls for greater representation of the nobles.
We could make the emancipation even more insulting to the serfs, and see if we can spark 10,000 more revolts on top of that. Or we can make them even more insulting to the gentry, and see if we can get them to rise up against the state bureaucracy.
More later.