Arjuna is a programming system which provides a set of tools for constructing fault-tolerant distributed applications. It supports an object-oriented model of computation in which atomic actions (atomic transactions) control sequences of operations invoked upon persistent objects. Persistent objects outlive the applications that create them and this paper concentrates on the mechanisms within Arjuna that are concerned with their management. The paper describes how these mechanisms are related to the other Arjuna mechanisms required by atomic actions for the distribution, concurrency control, recovery and commitment of persistent objects.