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(iv) Emancipation of the peasants, and not merely ofthe landlords' serfs, was in the main based on the preservationof the commune (mir) and the family household,which continued to be regarded as immemorialSlav institutions safeguarding peasant Russia from thecut-throat competition of Western individualism. Theobligations of the serfs to the state which had hithertobeen controlled by the landlords, acting through theirbailiffs and the village headmen, now mostly devolvedupon the commune alone, with its general meeting ofheads of families and its elected elders, and to someextent upon elected peasant officials of a newly createdadministrative unit, the canton, in which a number of communeswas grouped. The communes of those who hadbeen state peasants were retained and likewise receivedlegal recognition.The principal communal obligations were: collectiveresponsibility for payment of direct taxes and redemptionannuities; apportionment of direct taxes and recruiting;minor police duties; granting (until 1897 sale) of passports(a combination of the identity card and the labourbook without which, since Peter the Great, peasants andmost other classes could not legally move from theirlocality). Cantonal courts, composed of and dealingwith peasants alone, decided minor civil cases and misdemeanourson the basis of local custom. In addition,the commune dealt, as it always had, with innumerablequestions concerned with the working of the land, redistributionof holdings, and common village needs.All this meant, both in theory and practice, a considerableamount of what may be called peasant selfgovernment,at any rate for the heads of families. Whenthe 1917 Revolution began the peasant communal andcantonal committees were the first means whereby thepeasants took matters into their own hands. This selfgovernmenthad operated within a narrow, but intimateand vitally important, range of subjects mainly on thebasis of local custom; but it was also bound up withwhat was very irksome or unpopular, e.g. taxation,arrears, passports. Further, both the commune andthe canton suffered heavily from the reaction in the138