Russia's shattering defeat in the Crimean war in 1856 brought about the political decision to eliminate serfdom as the first step towards the selective modernization of the Empire. The goal was the reassertion of traditional Russian military might and international power in an era when shear weight of population was no longer sufficient. But the autocracy was absolutely committed to the preservation of the traditional political order and social structure. Given this inflexibility the process was probably condemned to failure from the outset. The land distribution that accompanied the emancipation of the serfs was inadequate for most peasants. Redemption payments for the land received deprived them of a decent standard of living and precluded the development of a rural market for consumer goods that would be necessary for a broad-based modernization. Furthermore, land was not given to individual peasant households, but rather to the traditional village-commune (mir), which dampened any sense of individual initiative. In short, the serf and land reforms failed to create a healthy and prosperous peasant sector that could have been a conservative bulwark of a regime experiencing the stresses of modernization.