More than 70 people contributed to "Aušra". The writers, or "Aušrininkai", came from families of well-to-do peasants that started to appear after serfdom was abolished in 1863. Most of the authors received education in the Russian universities and were fluent in Polish. Because of frequent changes in editorial staff, the newspaper did not have a clear and well-defined agenda. Basanavičius did not envision "Aušra" as a political publication; in the first issue he declared that the newspaper would deal only with cultural matters. However, "Aušra" soon took on a nationalistic agenda. "Aušra" helped to crystallize many ideas about the Lithuanian nation and the definition of a Lithuanian. It started to reject the ideas of resurrecting the old Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The authors started to think about an independent Lithuanian nation-state.