A further aid to the authorities in maintaining control was the reorganisation of local government, which was one of the key reforms that followed in the wake of emancipation. The government, through its land ‘commandants’ (officials appointed to oversee emancipation) insisted that the mir (the village commune) become the focus of life in the countryside. The motive was not cultural but administrative. The mir would provide an effective organisation for the collection of taxes to which the freed serfs were now liable; it would also be a controlling mechanism for keeping order in the countryside. Arguably, after 1861, the freed Russian peasant was as restricted as he had been when a serf. Instead of being tied to the lord, the peasant was now tied to the village.