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History of Russia (1894–1917)

Under Tsar Nicholas II (reigned 1894–1917), the Russian Empire slowly industrialized while repressing opposition from the center and the far-left. During the 1890s Russia's industrial development led to a large increase in the size of the urban middle class and of the working class, which gave rise to a more dynamic political atmosphere. Because the state and foreigners owned much of Russia's industry, the Russian working class was comparatively stronger and the Russian bourgeoisie comparatively weaker than in the West.

During the 1890s and early 1900s, bad living- and working-conditions, high taxes, and land hunger gave rise to more frequent strikes and agrarian disorders. By 1914, 40% of Russian workers were employed in factories of 1,000 workers or more (32% in 1901). 42% worked in businesses of 100 to 1,000 workers and 18% in businesses of 100 workers or fewer (in 1914, the United States had equivalent figures of 18%, 47% and 35%, respectively).

Politically, anti-establishment forces organized into competing parties, although political parties were not legalized until the October Manifesto was issued in 1905. The liberal elements among the industrial capitalists and nobility, who believed in peaceful social reform and a constitutional monarch, founded the Constitutional Democratic party or Kadets in 1905. The socialist parties included the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs, founded in 1900) and the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDRP, founded in 1898). The workers in major cities revolted in 1905 with widespread strikes and mutinies. The Tsar barely kept control, and was forced to initiate reforms, promising an elective parliament (the Duma) in the October Manifesto. However, the Tsar then dissolved the Duma in 1906. He turned to Peter Stolypin (Prime Minister from 1906 to 1911) to help reform the huge, but sluggish, economy.

Nicholas II's foreign policy centred on an alliance with France and involved increased meddling in Balkan affairs. Russia proclaimed a role for itself as military protector of Orthodox Christians, notably those in Serbia. Efforts to expand Russian power in the Far East led to a short war with Japan in 1904–1905, which ended in humiliating defeat for St Petersburg. The Russians entered into World War I in 1914, but military losses and the pressures of a failing war-time economy led liberal elements to conduct the February Revolution in 1917 as radicals like Vladimir Lenin were funded by Germany to launch a coup, largely working through soviets in the factories and in the army. Deciding that it could not continue the war and hold onto its revolutionary gains, the new Soviet government made a separate peace with Germany, signing away 150,000km2 of Russian land in the Treaty of Breast-Litovsk.

Alliance with France, 1894–1914

The central development in Russian foreign policy was to move away from Germany and toward France. Russia had never been friendly with France, and remembered the wars in the Crimean and the Napoleonic invasion; it saw Paris as a dangerous front of subversion and ridiculed the weak governments there. France, which had been shut out of the entire alliance system by Bismarck, decided to improve relations with Russia. It lent money to the Russians, expanded trade, and began selling warships after 1890. Meanwhile, after Bismarck lost office in 1890, there was no renewal of the Reinsurance treaty between Russia and Germany. The German bankers stopped lending to Russia, which increasingly depended on Paris banks. In 1894 a secret treaty stipulated that Russia would come to the aid of France if France was attacked by Germany. Another stipulation was that in a possible war against Germany, France would immediately mobilize 1.3 million men, while Russia would mobilize 700,000 to 800,000. It provided that if any one or more of the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria, Italy) mobilized their reserves in preparation for war, then both Russia and France would mobilize theirs. "The mobilization is the declaration of war," the French chief of staff told Tsar Alexander III in 1892. "To mobilize is to oblige one's neighbor to do the same." This set up the tripwire for July 1914. George F. Kennan argues that Russia was primarily responsible for the collapse of Bismarck's alliance policy in Europe, and starting the downward slope to the First World War. Kennan blames poor Russian diplomacy centered on its ambitions in the Balkans. Kennan says Bismarck's foreign policy was designed to prevent any major war even in the face of improved Franco-Russian relations. Russia left Bismarck's Three Emperors' League (with Germany and Austria) and instead took up the French proposal for closer relationships and a military alliance.

Imperialism in Asia and the Russo-Japanese War

Russia gained room to maneuver in Asia because of its friendship with France and the growing rivalry between Britain and Germany. By 1895 Germany was competing with France for Russia's favour, and British statesmen hoped to negotiate with the Russians to demarcate spheres of influence in Asia. This situation enabled Russia to intervene in northeastern Asia after Japan's victory over China in 1895. In the negotiations that followed, Japan was forced to make concessions in the Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur in southern Manchuria. The next year, Sergei Witte used French capital to establish the Russo-Chinese Bank. The goal of the bank was to finance the construction of a railroad across northern Manchuria and thus shorten the Trans-Siberian Railway. Within two years, Russia had acquired leases on the Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur and had begun building a trunk line from Harbin in central Manchuria to Port Arthur on the coast. At the same time Great Britain occupied Wei-Hai-Wei, and Germany Kiaochao.

In 1900, China reacted to foreign encroachments on its territory with an armed popular uprising, the Boxer Rebellion. Russian military contingents joined forces from Europe, Japan, and the United States to restore order in northern China. A force of 150,000 Russian troops occupied Manchuria to secure its railroads. After the suppression of the rebellion, Russia did not withdraw its troops from Manchuria. Consequently, friction grew between Russia and Japan, and the latter opened hostilities at Port Arthur in January 1904, without any formal declaration of war.

In counterpoint to the Japanese strategy of gaining rapid victories to control Manchuria, Russian strategy focused on fighting delaying actions to gain time for reinforcements to arrive via the long Trans-Siberian railway. In January 1905, after several unsuccessful attacks which cost them 60,000 troops killed and wounded and an eight-month siege, the Japanese captured Port Arthur. In March, the Japanese forced the Russians to withdraw north of Mukden, but were unable to pursue the Russians because Japanese troops suffered heavy casualties. Because strategically the possession of the city meant little, the final victory was dependent on the navy. In May, at the Tsushima Straits, the Japanese destroyed Russia's last hope in the war, a fleet assembled from the navy's Baltic and Mediterranean squadrons. Theoretically, Russian army reinforcements could have driven the Japanese from the Asian mainland, but revolution at home and diplomatic pressure forced the tsar to seek peace. Russia accepted mediation by United States president Theodore Roosevelt, ceded southern Sakhalin Island to Japan, and acknowledged Japan's ascendancy in Korea and southern Manchuria.

Influence of agriculture
Russia's systems for agricultural production influenced the attitudes of peasants and other social groups to reform against the government and promote social changes. “At the beginning of the twentieth century, agriculture constituted the single largest sector of the Russian economy, producing approximately one-half of the national income and employing two-thirds of Russia’s population”. This illustrates the tremendous role peasants played economically; thus making them detrimental to the revolutionary ideology of the populist and social democrats. At the end of the 19th century, Russian agriculture as a whole was the worst in Europe. The Russian system of agriculture lacked capital investment and technological advancement. Livestock productivity was notoriously backwards and the lack of grazing land such as meadows forced livestock to graze in fallow uncultivated land. Both the crop and livestock system failed to be adequate to withstand the Russian winters. During the Tsarist rule, the agricultural economy diverged from subsistence production to production directly for the market. Along with the agricultural failures, Russia had a rapid population growth, railroads expanded across farmland, and inflation attacked the price of commodities. Restrictions were placed on the distribution of food and ultimately lead to famines. Agricultural difficulties in Russia limited the economy, influencing social reforms and assisting the rise of the Bolshevik party.

Revolution and counterrevolution, 1905–1907

The Russo-Japanese War accelerated the rise of political movements among all classes and the major nationalities, including propertied Russians. By early 1904, Russian liberal activists from the zemstva and from the professions had formed an organization called the Union of Liberation. In the same year, they joined with Finns, Poles, Georgians, Armenians, and Russian members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party to form an alliance against autocratic rule.

The revolution of 1905, an unprecedented empire-wide social and political upheaval, was set in motion by the violent suppression on January 22 (Bloody Sunday) in St. Petersburg of a mass procession of workers, led by the radical priest Georgiy Gapon, with a petition for the tsar. Bloody Sunday was followed, nationwide, by workers’ and students’ strikes, street demonstrations, spates of vandalism and other periodic violence, assassinations of government officials, naval mutinies, nationalist movements in the imperial borderlands, and anti-Jewish pogroms and other reactionary protest and violence. In a number of cities, workers formed Soviets, or councils. At the end of the year, armed uprisings occurred in Moscow, the Urals, Latvia, and parts of Poland. Activists from the zemstva and the broad professional Union of Unions formed the Constitutional Democratic Party, whose initials lent the party its informal name, the Kadets. Some upper-class and propertied activists called for compromise with opposition groups to avoid further disorders.

The outcome of the revolution was contradictory. In late 1905, Nicholas agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to issue the so-called October Manifesto, which promised Russia a reformed political order and basic civil liberties for most citizens. New fundamental laws in 1906 established the legislative State Duma, or parliament, but also restricted its authority in many ways — not least of which was the complete lack of parliamentary control over the appointment or dismissal of cabinet ministers. Trade unions and strikes were legalised, but police retained extensive authority to monitor union activities and to close unions for engaging in illegal political activities. Press freedom was guaranteed.

Those who accepted the new arrangements formed a center-right political party, the Octobrists. Meanwhile, the Kadets held out for a truly responsible ministerial government and equal, universal suffrage. Because of their political principles and continued armed uprisings, Russia's leftist parties were undecided whether to participate in the Duma elections, which had been called for early 1906. At the same time, rightist factions actively opposed the reforms. Several new monarchist and protofascist groups also arose to subvert the new order. Nevertheless, the regime continued to function through the chaotic year of 1905, eventually restoring order in the cities, the countryside, and the army. In the process, terrorists murdered hundreds of officials, and the government executed much greater number of terrorists. Because the government had been able to restore order and to secure a loan from France before the first Duma met, Nicholas was in a strong position that enabled him to replace Witte with the much more conservative Pyotr Stolypin.

The First Duma was elected in March 1906. The Kadets and their allies dominated it, with the mainly nonparty radical leftists slightly weaker than the Octobrists and the nonparty center-rightists combined. The socialists had boycotted the election, but several socialist delegates were elected. Relations between the Duma and the Stolypin government were hostile from the beginning. A deadlock of the Kadets and the government over the adoption of a constitution and peasant reform led to the dissolution of the Duma and the scheduling of new elections. In spite of an upsurge of leftist terror, radical leftist parties participated in the election, and, together with the nonparty left, they gained a plurality of seats, followed by a loose coalition of Kadets with Poles and other nationalities in the political center. The impasse continued, however, when the Second Duma met in 1907.

Stolypin and Kokovtsov governments

In June 1907, The Tsar dissolved the Second Duma and promulgated a new electoral law, which vastly reduced the electoral weight of lower-class and non-Russian voters and increased the weight of the nobility. This political coup (Coup of June 1907) had the desired short-term result of restoring order. New elections in the autumn returned a more conservative Third Duma, which Octobrists dominated. Even this Duma quarreled with the government over a variety of issues, however, including the composition of the naval staff, the autonomous status of Finland, the introduction of zemstva in the western provinces, the reform of the peasant court system, and the establishment of workers' insurance organizations under police supervision. In these disputes, the Duma, with its appointed aristocratic-bureaucratic upper house, was sometimes more conservative than the government, and at other times it was more constitutionally minded. The Fourth Duma, elected in 1912, was similar in composition to the third, but a progressive faction of Octobrists split from the right and joined the political center.

Stolypin's boldest measure was his peasant reform program. It allowed, and sometimes forced, the breakup of communes as well as the establishment of full private property. Stolypin hoped that the reform program would create a class of conservative landowning farmers loyal to the Tsar. Most peasants did not want to lose the safety of the commune or to permit outsiders to buy village land, however. By 1914 only about 10 percent of all peasant communes had been dissolved. Nevertheless, the economy recovered and grew impressively from 1907 to 1914, both quantitatively and through the formation of rural cooperatives and banks and the generation of domestic capital. By 1914 Russian steel production equaled that of France and Austria-Hungary, and Russia's economic growth rate was one of the highest in the world. Although external debt was very high, it was declining as a percentage of the gross national product, and the empire's overall trade balance was favorable.

In 1911 Stolypin was assassinated by Dmitry Bogrov whilst watching an opera. Finance Minister Vladimir Kokovtsov replaced him. The cautious Kokovtsov was very able and a supporter of the tsar, but he could not compete with the powerful court factions that dominated the government.

Historians have debated whether Russia had the potential to develop a constitutional government between 1905 and 1914. The failure to do so was partly because the tsar was not willing to give up autocratic rule or share power. By manipulating the franchise, the government obtained progressively more conservative, but less representative, Dumas. Moreover, the regime sometimes bypassed the conservative Dumas and ruled by decree.

Active Balkan policy, 1906–1913
Russia's earlier Far Eastern policy required holding Balkan issues in abeyance, a strategy Austria-Hungary also followed between 1897 and 1906. Japan's victory in 1905 had forced Russia to make deals with the British and the Japanese. In 1907 Russia's new foreign minister, Aleksandr Izvol'skiy, concluded agreements with both nations. To maintain its sphere of influence in northern Manchuria and northern Persia, Russia agreed to Japanese ascendancy in southern Manchuria and Korea, and to British ascendancy in southern Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. The logic of this policy demanded that Russia and Japan unite to prevent the United States from establishing a base in China by organizing a consortium to develop Chinese railroads. After China's republican revolution of 1911, Russia and Japan recognized each other's spheres of influence in Inner Mongolia. In an extension of this reasoning, Russia traded recognition of German economic interests in the Ottoman Empire and Persia for German recognition of various Russian security interests in the region. Russia also protected its strategic and financial position by entering the informal Triple Entente with Britain and France, without antagonizing Germany.

In spite of these careful measures, after the Russo-Japanese War Russia and Austria-Hungary resumed their Balkan rivalry, focusing on the Kingdom of Serbia and the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which Austria-Hungary had occupied since 1878. In 1881 Russia secretly had agreed in principle to Austria's future annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But in 1908, Izvol'skiy consented to support formal annexation in return for Austria's support for revision of the agreement on the neutrality of the Bosporus and Dardanelles—a change that would give Russia special navigational rights of passage. Britain stymied the Russian gambit by blocking the revision, but Austria proceeded with the annexation. Then, backed by German threats of war, Austria-Hungary exposed Russia's weakness by forcing Russia to disavow support for Serbia.

After Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia became a major part of the increased tension and conflict in the Balkans. In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro defeated the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War, but the putative allies continued to quarrel among themselves. Then in 1913, the alliance split, and the Serbs, Greeks, and Romanians defeated Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War. Austria-Hungary became the patron of Bulgaria, which now was Serbia's territorial rival in the region, and Germany remained the Ottoman Empire's protector. Russia tied itself more closely to Serbia than it had previously. The complex system of alliances and Great Power support was extremely unstable; among the Balkan parties harboring resentments over past defeats, the Serbs maintained particular animosity toward the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In June 1914, a Serbian terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, which then held the Serbian government responsible. Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia submitted to the first 2 of 3 cases of the ultimatum; the last one, which was rejected, demanded Serbia allow 100,000 Austrio-Hungarian troops to occupy their country. After Serbian rejection of the third clause of the ultimatum, Austria-Hungary responded forcefully. Russia supported Serbia. Once the Serbian response was rejected, the system of alliances began to operate automatically, with Germany supporting Austria-Hungary and France backing Russia. When Germany invaded France through Belgium as dictated by the Schliffen Plan, the conflict escalated into a world war and they were not prepared.

Russia at war, 1914–1916
At the outbreak of the war, Tsar Nicholas yielded to pressure and appointed Grand Duke Nicholas as commander in chief of the Russian armies. The Grand Duke, a cousin of the tsar, was competent but had no part in formulating the strategy or appointing commanders.

In the initial phase of the war, Russia's offensives into East Prussia drew enough German troops from the western front to allow the French, Belgians, and British to stop the German advance. One of Russia's two invading armies was almost totally destroyed, however, at the disastrous Battle of Tannenberg—the same site at which Lithuanian, Polish, and Moldovan troops had defeated the German Teutonic Knights in 1410. Meanwhile, the Russians turned back an Austrian offensive and pushed into eastern Galicia, the northeastern region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Russians halted a combined German-Austrian winter counteroffensive into Russian Poland, and in early 1915 they pushed more deeply into Galicia. Then in the spring and summer of that year, a German-Austrian offensive drove the Russians out of Galicia and Poland and destroyed several Russian army corps. In 1916 the Germans planned to drive France out of the war with a large-scale attack in the Verdun area, but a new Russian offensive against Austria-Hungary once again drew German troops from the west. These actions left both major fronts stable and both Russia and Germany despairing of victory—Russia because of exhaustion, Germany because of its opponents' superior resources. Toward the end of 1916, Russia came to the rescue of Romania, which had just entered the war, and extended the eastern front south to the Black Sea.

Wartime agreements among the Allies reflected the Triple Entente's imperialist aims and the Russian Empire's relative weakness outside Eastern Europe. Russia nonetheless expected impressive gains from a victory: territorial acquisitions in eastern Galicia from Austria, in East Prussia from Germany, and northeastern Anatolia from the Ottoman Empire, which joined the war on the German side; control of Constantinople and the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits; and territorial and political alteration of Austria-Hungary in the interests of Romania and the Slavic peoples of the region. Britain was to acquire the middle zone of Persia and share much of the Arab Middle East with France; Italy—not Russia's ally Serbia—was to acquire Dalmatia along the Adriatic coast; Japan, another ally of the Entente, was to control more territory in China; and France was to regain Alsace-Lorraine, which it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, and to have increased influence in western Germany.

Fatal weakening of tsarism
The onset of World War I exposed the weakness of Nicholas II's government. A show of national unity had accompanied Russia's entrance into the war, with defense of the Slavic Serbs the main battle cry. In the summer of 1914, the Duma and the zemstva expressed full support for the government's war effort. The initial conscription was well organized and peaceful, and the early phase of Russia's military buildup showed that the empire had learned lessons from the Russo-Japanese War. But military reversals and the government's incompetence soon soured much of the population. German control of the Baltic Sea and German-Ottoman control of the Black Sea severed Russia from most of its foreign supplies and potential markets. In addition, inept Russian preparations for war and ineffective economic policies hurt the country financially, logistically, and militarily. Inflation became a serious problem. Because of inadequate material support for military operations, the War Industry Committees were formed to ensure that necessary supplies reached the front. But army officers quarreled with civilian leaders, seized administrative control of front areas, and refused to cooperate with the committee. The central government distrusted the independent war support activities that were organized by zemstva and cities. The Duma quarreled with the war bureaucracy of the government, and center and center-left deputies eventually formed the Progressive Bloc to create a genuinely constitutional government.

After Russian military reversals in 1915, Nicholas II went to the front to assume nominal leadership of the army, leaving behind his German-born wife, Alexandra, government and Duma.

While the central government was hampered by court intrigue, the strain of the war began to cause popular unrest. Since 1915 high food prices and fuel shortages caused strikes in some cities. Workers, who had won the right to representation in sections of the War Industries Committee, used those sections as organs of political opposition. The countryside also was becoming restive. Soldiers were increasingly insubordinate, particularly the newly recruited peasants who faced the prospect of being used as cannon fodder in the inept conduct of the war.

The situation continued to deteriorate. Increasing conflict between the tsar and the Duma weakened both parts of the government and increased the impression of incompetence. In early 1917, deteriorating rail transport caused acute food and fuel shortages, which resulted in riots and strikes. Authorities summoned troops to quell the disorders in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg had been called since September 1914, to Russianize the Germanic name). In 1905 troops had fired on demonstrators and saved the monarchy, but in 1917 the troops turned their guns over to the angry crowds. Public support for the tsarist regime simply evaporated in 1917, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.

Foreign policy

 * Fuller, William C. Strategy and Power in Russia 1600–1914 (1998)
 * Jelavich, Barbara. St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet foreign policy, 1814–1974 (Indiana University Press, 1974)
 * LeDonne, John P. The Russian Empire and the World, 1700–1917: The Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment (Oxford University Press, 1997)
 * McMeekin, Sean. The Russian Origins of the First World War (2011) excerpt and text search
 * Nish, Ian Hill. The origins of the Russo-Japanese war (1985)
 * Ragsdale, Hugh, and Valeri Nikolaevich Ponomarev eds. Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993) excerpt and text search
 * Rawlinson, Henry, et al. Great Power Rivalry in Central Asia: 1842–1880. England and Russia in the East (Routledge, 2006)
 * Reynolds, Michael. Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918
 * Seton-Watson, Hugh. The Decline Of Imperial Russia, 1855–1914 (1958)

title: History of Russia (1894–1917)


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Sentence (law)

In criminal law, a sentence is the punishment for a crime ordered by a trial court after conviction in a criminal procedure, normally at the conclusion of a trial. A sentence may consist of imprisonment, a fine, or other sanctions. Sentences for multiple crimes may be a concurrent sentence, where sentences of imprisonment are all served together at the same time, or a consecutive sentence, in which the period of imprisonment is the sum of all sentences served one after the other. Additional sentences include intermediate, which allows an inmate to be free for about 8 hours a day for work purposes; determinate, which is fixed on a number of days, months, or years; and indeterminate or bifurcated, which mandates the minimum period be served in an institutional setting such as a prison followed by street time period of parole, supervised release or probation until the total sentence is completed.

If a sentence is reduced to a less harsh punishment, then the sentence is said to have been mitigated or commuted. Rarely, depending on circumstances, murder charges are mitigated and reduced to manslaughter charges. However, in certain legal systems, a defendant may be punished beyond the terms of the sentence, through phenomena including social stigma, loss of governmental benefits, or collectively, the collateral consequences of criminal charges.

Statutes generally specify the highest penalties that may be imposed for certain offenses, and sentencing guidelines often mandate the minimum and maximum imprisonment terms to imposed upon an offender, which is then left to the discretion of the trial court. However, in some jurisdictions, prosecutors have great influence over the punishments actually handed down, by virtue of their discretion to decide what offenses to charge the offender with and what facts they will seek to prove or to ask the defendant to stipulate to in a plea agreement. It has been argued that legislators have an incentive to enact tougher sentences than even they would like to see applied to the typical defendant since they recognize that the blame for an inadequate sentencing range to handle a particularly egregious crime would fall upon legislators, but the blame for excessive punishments would fall upon prosecutors.

Sentencing law sometimes includes cliffs that result in much stiffer penalties when certain facts apply. For instance, an armed career criminal or habitual offender law may subject a defendant to a significant increase in their sentence if they commit a third offence of a certain kind. This makes it difficult for fine gradations in punishments to be achieved.

History

The earliest use of the term with this meaning was in Roman law, where it indicated the opinion of a jurist on a given question, expressed in written or in oral responsa. It might also refer to the opinion of senators that was translated into the senatus consultus. Finally, it might also refer to the decision of the bench in both civil and penal trials, as well as the decision of the arbiters in arbitration.

In modern Latin systems, the sentence is mainly the final act of any procedure in which a judge or body of judges is called upon to express their evaluation. It can therefore be issued in practically any field of law requiring a function of evaluation of something by a judge or judging body.

Classification
Sentences are variously classified depending on
 * the legal field, or kind of action, or system it refers to:
 * civil, penal, administrative, canon, sentence.
 * sentences of mere clearance, of condemnation, of constitution.
 * the issuing body, typically a monocratic judge or a court, or other figures that receive a legitimation by the system.
 * the jurisdiction and the legal competence single judges, courts, tribunals, appeals, supreme courts, constitutional courts, meant as the various degrees of judgement and appeal.
 * the content:
 * partial, cautelar, interlocutory, preliminar sententia instructoria, definitive sentences.
 * sentence of absolutio discharge or condemnatio briefly damnatio, also for other meanings condemnation. The sentences of condemnation are also classified by the penalty they determine:
 * sentence of reclusion,
 * sentence of fee,
 * sententia agendi, sentence that impose a determined action or a series of action as a penalty for the illegal act. This kind of sentence became better developed and remained in wider use in common law systems.

Philosophies
The sentence meted out depends on the philosophical principle used by the court and what the legal system regards as the purpose of punishment. The most common purposes of sentencing are:
 * Retribution
 * Deterrence of the individual or of others
 * Denunciation
 * Incapacitation
 * Rehabilitation
 * Reparation

In England and Wales, section 142 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 has specified that in cases involving those over 18, courts should have regard to punishment of the offenders retribution, deterrence, reform and rehabilitation, protection of the public, and reparation to persons affected by their offences.

Process
Usually, the sentence comes at the end of a process in which the presiding judge or judges have been enabled to evaluate whether the conduct in question complies or does not comply with the law, and which aspects might be breaches of which specific legislation. Depending on jurisdiction, the stages leading up to the sentence may vary, and the sentence may be challenged by both parties up to a given degree of appeal. If appealed against, the sentence issued by the highest appellate court to which the case is admitted becomes the definitive sentence. The sentence usually has to be publicly announced; and, in most jurisdictions, has to be justified through an explanation of the juridical reflections and evaluations that lie behind it.

Even a definitive sentence can be annulled in exceptional circumstances, usually predetermined within the jurisdiction in question. Most such cases arise from irregularities found in the judicial process after sentence has been passed. The most extreme examples arise in criminal cases, when conclusive proof of innocence comes to light after sentence has been passed, leading to the sentence's annulment.

In most jurisdictions, under double jeopardy legislation, the definitive sentence is unique, in the sense that (except for appeal hearings) no individual can be judged or sentenced more than once for the same actions.

In many jurisdictions, sentences are a source of law, in that they represent an authoritative interpretation of the law in concrete cases.

The sentence is typically determined by a judge and/or jury, and is issued in the name or on behalf of the superior authority of the state.

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title: Sentence (law)


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Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar, it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, or as a unit consisting of a subject and predicate. In non-functional linguistics it is typically defined as a maximal unit of syntactic structure such as a constituent. In functional linguistics, it is defined as a unit of written texts delimited by graphological features such as upper-case letters and markers such as periods, question marks, and exclamation marks. This notion contrasts with a curve, which is delimited by phonologic features such as pitch and loudness and markers such as pauses; and with a clause, which is a sequence of words that represents some process going on throughout time. A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request, command, or suggestion.

Clauses
A sentence is typically associated with a clause. A clause can either be a clause simplex or a clause complex. A clause simplex represents a single process going on through time. A clause complex represents a logical relation between two or more processes and is thus composed of two or more clause simplexes.

A clause (simplex) typically contains a predication structure with a subject noun phrase and a finite verb. Although the subject is usually a noun phrase, other kinds of phrases (such as gerund phrases) work as well, and some languages allow subjects to be omitted. In the examples below, the subject of the outmost clause simplex is in italics and the subject of boiling is in square brackets. There is clause embedding in the second and third examples.
 * [Water] boils at 100 degrees Celsius.
 * It is quite interesting that [water] boils at 100 degrees Celsius.
 * The fact that [water] boils at 100 degrees Celsius is quite interesting.

There are two types of clauses: independent and non-independent/interdependent. An independent clause realises a speech act such as a statement, a question, a command or an offer. A non-independent clause does not realise any act. A non-independent clause (simplex or complex) is usually logically related to other non-independent clauses. Together, they usually constitute a single independent clause (complex). For that reason, non-independent clauses are also called interdependent. For instance, the non-independent clause because I have no friends is related to the non-independent clause I don't go out in I don't go out, because I have no friends. The whole clause complex is independent because it realises a statement. What is stated is the causal nexus between having no friend and not going out. When such a statement is acted out, the fact that the speaker doesn't go out is already established, therefore it cannot be stated. What is still open and under negotiation is the reason for that fact. The causal nexus is represented by the independent clause complex and not by the two interdependent clause simplexes.

See also copula for the consequences of the verb to be on the theory of sentence structure.

By structure
One traditional scheme for classifying English sentences is by clause structure, the number and types of clauses in the sentence with finite verbs.
 * A simple sentence consists of a single independent clause with no dependent clauses.
 * A compound sentence consists of multiple independent clauses with no dependent clauses. These clauses are joined together using conjunctions, punctuation, or both.
 * A complex sentence consists of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
 * A compound–complex sentence (or complex–compound sentence) consists of multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent clause.

By function or speech act
Sentences can also be classified based on the speech act which they perform. For instance, English sentence types can be described as follows:
 * A declarative sentence makes a statement or assertion:
 * "You are my friend."
 * An interrogative sentence raises a question:
 * "Are you my friend?"
 * An imperative sentence makes a command:
 * "Be my friend!"
 * An exclamative or exclamatory sentence raises an exclamation:
 * "What a good friend you are!"

The form (declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamative) and meaning (statement, question, command, or exclamation) of a sentence usually match, but not always. For instance, the interrogative sentence "Can you pass me the salt?" is not intended to express a question but rather to express a command. Likewise, the interrogative sentence "Can't you do anything right?" is not intended to express a question on the listener's ability, but rather to make an exclamation about the listener's lack of ability, also called a rhetorical question.

Major and minor sentences
A major sentence is a regular sentence; it has a subject and a predicate, e.g. "I have a ball." In this sentence, one can change the persons, e.g. "We have a ball." However, a minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence that does not contain a main clause, e.g. "Mary!", "Precisely so.", "Next Tuesday evening after it gets dark." Other examples of minor sentences are headings, stereotyped expressions ("Hello!"), emotional expressions ("Wow!"), proverbs, etc. These can also include nominal sentences like "The more, the merrier." These mostly omit a main verb for the sake of conciseness but may also do so in order to intensify the meaning around the nouns.

Sentences that comprise a single word are called word sentences, and the words themselves sentence words.

Length
The 1980s saw a renewed surge in interest in sentence length, primarily in relation to "other syntactic phenomena".

One definition of the average sentence length of a prose passage is the ratio of the number of words to the number of sentences. The textbook Mathematical Linguistics, by András Kornai, suggests that in "journalistic prose the median sentence length is above 15 words". The average length of a sentence generally serves as a measure of sentence difficulty or complexity. In general, as the average sentence length increases, the complexity of the sentences also increases.

Another definition of "sentence length" is the number of clauses in the sentence, whereas the "clause length" is the number of phones in the clause.

Research by Erik Schils and Pieter de Haan by sampling five texts showed that two adjacent sentences are more likely to have similar lengths than two non-adjacent sentences, and almost certainly have a similar length when in a work of fiction. This countered the theory that "authors may aim at an alternation of long and short sentences". Sentence length, as well as word difficulty, are both factors in the readability of a sentence; however, other factors, such as the presence of conjunctions, have been said to "facilitate comprehension considerably".

title: Sentence (linguistics)


text:
USS Wickes (DD-75)

The first USS Wickes (DD-75) was the lead ship of her class of destroyers in the United States Navy during World War I, later transferred to the Royal Navy as HMS Montgomery. She has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Montgomery.

United States Navy service
Wickes was laid down on 26 June 1917 at Bath, Maine, by the Bath Iron Works. The ship was launched on 25 June 1918; sponsored by Miss Ann Elizabeth Young Wickes, the daughter of Dr. Walter Wickes, a descendant of Lambert Wickes. The destroyer was commissioned on 31 July 1918.

World War I
After an abbreviated shakedown, Wickes departed Boston on 5 August and arrived at New York City on 8 August. Later that day, she sailed for the British Isles, escorting a convoy of a dozen merchantmen. After shepherding her charges across the Atlantic, Wickes was detached from the convoy to make a brief stop at Queenstown, Ireland, on 19 August. Underway again the following day, the warship sailed for the Azores to pick up passengers and United States-bound mail at Ponta Delgada before continuing on to New York.

Wickes subsequently escorted convoys off the northeast coast of the United States. She departed New York on 7 October, bound for Nova Scotia; but, during the voyage north, her crew was hit by influenza. Soon after the ship's arrival at Halifax, 30 men—including the commanding officer—were hospitalized ashore.

Soon the outbreak of flu in Wickes abated, but bad luck seemed to dog the destroyer. She departed New York at 1748 on 23 October, screening ahead of the armored cruiser Pueblo and escorting a convoy of merchant vessels. At 2104, Wickes sighted an unidentified ship to port on a collision course. She immediately changed her course and switched on her lights. When the oncoming ship failed to give way, the destroyer ordered full speed astern and went to general quarters. At 2110, only six minutes after the initial sighting, the unidentified ship's bow smashed into Wickes port billboard. The stem of the stranger cut through the destroyer's keel and caused extensive damage forward. There were no personnel casualties; and the flood was contained by a key bulkhead which held fast. In this case of "hit and run" on the high seas, the assailant remained unknown, since she scraped the destroyer's port side and steamed off into the night. Stopping engines at 2112, Wickes crew took stock of the damage and put about for the New York Navy Yard, where she arrived at 0453 on 24 October.

While the ship was undergoing repairs there, the signing of the armistice on 11 November 1918 stilled the guns of World War I. President Woodrow Wilson sailed for Europe in the transport USS George Washington (1908); and Wickes served as part of the escort screen for the President's ship, departing from New York on 4 December 1918, bound for Brest, France.

1918–22
Wickes subsequently cruised to northern European ports in late 1918-—calling at Hamburg and Stettin, Germany; and Harwich, England. During this European cruise, while mooring at Hamburg on 3 March 1919, the destroyer collided with the German merchantman Ljusne Elf. After repairs, the destroyer shifted to Brest in June and from there escorted George Washington as that transport carried President Wilson back home to the United States.

After celebrating the 4 July 1919 off the Atlantic coast, Wickes and her sisters sailed for the Pacific, transiting the Panama Canal on 24 July 1919 with the mass movement of the ships from Atlantic to Pacific. Later in that year, Commander William F. Halsey took command of the ship, after an overhaul at the Mare Island Navy Yard. Halsey, who would win fame in World War II, later stated in his memoirs that Wickes was "the best ship I ever commanded; she was also the smartest and the cleanest." As flagship for Destroyer Division 10, Wickes operated off the west coast into 1922, conducting the usual target practices and exercises. As a wave of peacetime austerity swept over the United States, the Navy felt the "pinch" of decreased expenditures and the widespread antimilitary sentiment which cropped up in the aftermath of World War I. Accordingly, Wickes was decommissioned and placed in reserve at San Diego, California, on 15 May 1922.

1923–40
The destroyer lay out of commission for eight years. Recommissioned on 26 April 1930, Wickes shifted to the Atlantic and was based at New York. She operated off the eastern seaboard, making training cruises with Naval Reserve detachments from the 3d Naval District embarked. From 3 to 18 February 1931, the ship visited Tampa, Florida, for the Florida State Fair and Gasparilla Pirate Festival, before she shifted to Mobile, Alabama, to take part in Mardi Gras observances. In November, the busy destroyer visited Bridgeport, Connecticut, to participate in the Armistice Day observances on the 11th. During January and February 1932, the destroyer was attached to the Special Service Squadron operating in Central American waters and qualified for the Second Nicaraguan Campaign Medal. In April 1932, two years after being recommissioned, Wickes reported for duty with Rotating Reserve Squadron 20 and subsequently shifted back to the Pacific.

From 1933 to 1937, Wickes operated out of San Diego, commanded by Lt. Comdr. Ralph U. Hyde, ('17), with Lt. Milton E. Miles as Exec. Decommissioned on 6 April 1937, the destroyer remained in reserve only a short time because of the increase of tension in Europe and the Far East. Fighting broke out in Poland on 1 September 1939 as German forces invaded that country and thus triggered British and French assistance to Poland. World War II was on.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt promptly directed that the Navy establish a "Neutrality Patrol" off the eastern seaboard, in the approaches to the Panama Canal and Guantánamo Bay, and at the two entrances to the Gulf of Mexico. To help patrol these stretches of sea, the Navy quickly reactivated 77 destroyers and light minelayers.

Wickes was recommissioned on 30 September 1939. Over the ensuing month, the destroyer was fitted out while moored at the destroyer base alongside USS Whitney (AD-4). Early in November, she shifted to the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California, for drydocking. After returning to San Diego on 21 November, Wickes departed the west coast on 27 November, bound for Panama in company with her division, Destroyer Division (DesDiv) 64. En route, she fueled from the oiler USS Neches (AO-5) and arrived at Balboa, Panama, on 6 December. Transiting the canal the next day, the destroyer arrived at the Naval Operating Base (NOB), Key West, Florida, on 11 December and commenced neutrality patrol duty.

Wickes and her sister ships patrolled alternately in the Yucatán Channel between the east coast of Cuba and the Yucatán Peninsula and in the passage between Florida and the west coast of Cuba. They shadowed belligerent merchantmen and warships of the British and Commonwealth navies searching for German freighters or passenger ships caught in or near American coastal waters by the outbreak of war.

On her first patrol, Wickes spotted a cruiser—possibly HMAS Perth (D29) or HMS Orion (85) (her log is not specific here)—at 1058 on 14 December. The destroyer shadowed the cruiser, changing courses and speeds to conform to the other ship's movements, until well after nightfall. Anchored off Port Everglades, Florida, just before Christmas of 1939, Wickes noted the British destroyer HMS Hereward (H93) maintaining a diligent patrol 12 mi off the Florida coast between 23 and 25 December.

Wickes returned to Key West on 30 December but enjoyed barely enough time to refuel and provision before she got underway again on 2 January 1940. She maintained a patrol off the Yucatán Peninsula for a week before returning to Key West on 9 January. Shifting to Guantánamo Bay soon thereafter, Wickes exercised with larger units of the Atlantic Squadron from 24 to 26 January before proceeding with DesDiv 64 for Puerto Cabello, Venezuela on 26 January. Arriving the following day, the ships commenced a three-day port visit.

After leaving Puerto Cabello, Wickes and her division mates visited St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, before joining DesDiv 65 at St. Eustatius, Dutch West Indies, on 6 February. The next day, these two divisions rendezvoused with the cruiser USS Wichita (CA-45) and DesDiv 82; together with DesDivs 61 and 83 and the heavy cruiser USS Vincennes (CA-44), these ships formed the "Antilles Detachment" of the Atlantic Squadron. After formation steaming and exercises, Wickes arrived back at Guantánamo Bay on 9 February before shifting to NOB Key West on the 14th.

In late February, Wickes again patrolled the Florida Straits, visiting the Dry Tortugas in the course of her operations. At the end of March, she sailed on the Yucatán Patrol. Returning to Key West on 8 April, Wickes maneuvered alongside the destroyer USS Twiggs (DD-127) at the fuel pier there. The two ships touched and broke off the propeller guard from Twiggs which punctured a small hole above Wickes waterline. The damage was minor, and the destroyer returned to sea shortly thereafter to conduct short range battle practice off Key West before undertaking another stint on the Yucatán Patrol in mid-April.

From late April through mid-June, Wickes visited San Juan, Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas. She departed from the latter port on 1 July to join the battleships USS Texas (BB-35), USS Arkansas (BB-33), and USS New York (BB-34) that afternoon and conducted simulated torpedo attacks upon them at night. Wickes then operated out of San Juan for the remainder of the month.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the situation facing the British had materially worsened. The devastating German blitzkrieg had carried the Low Countries before it and knocked France out of the war. British destroyer forces had suffered terribly in the ill-fated Norwegian campaign and in the evacuation from Dunkirk. Moreover, German U-boats had taken their toll in their operations against British convoys. With Italy's entry into the war in the summer of 1940, the British were faced with another long lifeline to defend in the Mediterranean.

Transfer to Britain
Prime Minister Winston Churchill appealed to President Roosevelt for assistance; and, during the summer of 1940, an agreement was worked out between the United States and Great Britain. In return for 50 "overage" American destroyers transferred to the Royal Navy, the United States received leases, for a duration of 99 years, on strategic base sites stretching from Newfoundland to British Guiana.

Accordingly, 50 ships were picked for transfer— Wickes among them. After her last Caribbean tour, the destroyer returned to Key West on 24 July. She shifted to Galveston, Texas, on 27 July for an overhaul at Todd's Drydock Company and remained there through August.

Wickes departed Galveston in company with the destroyer USS Evans (DD-78), on 22 September, touched briefly at Key West, and arrived at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, on 26 September. On 9 October, Wickes departed Hampton Roads with DesDiv 64 and stopped at the Naval Torpedo Station, Newport, Rhode Island, soon thereafter. The ships transited the Cape Cod Canal, en route to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and after stopping there briefly, pushed on for Halifax Nova Scotia, where they arrived on 16 October.

As part of the fifth group of destroyers transferred to the British and Canadians, Wickes was visited by Prime Minister Mackenzie King of Canada and Rear Admiral Ferdinand L. Reichmuth, USN, the Commander, Destroyers, Atlantic Fleet, on 19 October, during the indoctrination period for the prospective British crew. On 23 October 1940, Wickes was turned over to the Royal Navy. Her name was struck from the Navy List on 8 January 1941.

As HMS Montgomery
She was commissioned simultaneously on 23 January under the White Ensign as HMS Montgomery (G95).

The destroyer underwent further fitting out and familiarisation before departing Canadian waters on 1 November, bound for the British Isles. En route, Montgomery and the other of her sister ships in company swept through the scene of the one-sided naval engagement between the armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay (F40) and the German "pocket battleship" GERMAN CRUISER Admiral Scheer. This action had occurred on 5 November when the German warship attacked a convoy escorted by the erstwhile merchant steamship. Jervis Bay had interposed herself between the raider and the convoy, allowing the latter to escape while being herself sunk. Montgomery found nothing, however, and after searching briefly for the German "pocket battleship"—with orders to shadow by day and attack by night—arrived at Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 11 November.

Shifting to Plymouth, England, a week later, Montgomery was allocated to the Western Approaches command and based at Liverpool. During the course of one of her early patrols, Montgomery rescued 39 survivors from the motor tanker Scottish Standard which had been torpedoed and sunk by the GERMAN SUBMARINE U-96 on 21 February 1941. Disembarking the rescued mariners on 24 February, Montgomery resumed her Western Approaches patrols soon thereafter. The flush-decker underwent repairs at Barrow-in-Furness from April to September and was later assigned to the 4th Escort Group. Montgomery was modified for trade convoy escort service by removal of three of the original 4-inch/50-caliber guns and one of the triple torpedo tube mounts to reduce topside weight for additional depth charge stowage and installation of hedgehog. Based now at Greenock, the destroyer operated between the British Isles and Canadian ports through the end of 1941. On 13 January 1942, the Panamanian-registered steamer SS Friar Rock was torpedoed and sunk by GS U-130 (1941) 100 mi southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland. Four days later, Montgomery picked up seven survivors from that ship.

In February 1942, Montgomery came under the aegis of the Western Local Escort Force at Halifax. Later in 1942, the destroyer was loaned to the Royal Canadian Navy before she sailed south and underwent repairs at the Charleston Navy Yard which lasted into the following year 1943. Resuming her coastwise convoy escort operations in February 1943, Montgomery rescued survivors of the torpedoed Manchester Merchant— sunk by GS U-628 on 25 February 1943, 390 mi off Cape Race.

The destroyer remained with the Western Local Escort Force into late 1943, operating out of Halifax. On 12 December 1943, she assisted the Bowater-Lloyd Paper Co. barge Spruce Lake and, on 27 December, departed Halifax for the British Isles, carrying the surviving crew members from the torpedoed British destroyer HMS Hurricane (H06) which had been sunk by GS U-415 on 24 December.

Arriving in England soon thereafter, Montgomery was placed in reserve in the River Tyne on 23 February 1944. Removed from the "effective list"—the British equivalent of the United States Navy's "Navy List" – the veteran flush-decker was subsequently broken up for scrap in the spring of 1945 shortly before the end of the war in Europe.

title: USS Wickes (DD-75)


text:
History of Russia (1855–1894)

In 1855, Alexander II began his reign as Tsar of Russia and presided over a period of political and social reform, notably the emancipation of serfs in 1861 and the lifting of censorship. His successor Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) pursued a policy of repression and restricted public expenditure, but continued land and labour reforms. This was a period of population growth and significant industrialization, though Russia remained a largely rural country.

Political movements of the time included the Populists (Narodniki), anarchists and Marxists. A revolutionary organization called People's Will (Narodnaya Volya) assassinated Alexander II. Another current of thought was embodied in the Slavophiles, who opposed modernization and Westernization.

Russia continued to expand its empire, occupying the Caucasus, Tashkent and Samarkand. In foreign affairs, the period began with the conclusion of the Crimean War. Russian policy brought it into conflict with other European powers, in particular Austria-Hungary, as it sought to extend influence over the European portions of the receding Ottoman Empire and regain naval access to the Black Sea. This culminated in a successful war with the Ottoman Empire in 1877–1878, followed by the Treaty of San Stefano and Congress of Berlin in 1878 by which an independent Bulgaria came into being and by acquisition of former Ottoman territories in the South Caucasus. Russia joined Germany and Austria-Hungary in the League of the Three Emperors, but friction continued with both partners over Bulgaria. The alliance with Germany came to an end in 1890.

Economic development
Russia's population growth rate from 1850 to 1910 was the fastest of all the major powers except for the United States. Between 1850 and 1900, Russia's population doubled, but it remained chiefly rural well into the twentieth century.

The proclamation law of 1861 freed the peasants from dependence on the landowners and granted them all the land, previously worked by the peasants for their own use. Agriculture remained in the hands of peasants, who together constituted about four-fifths of the rural population, and former landowners. By the end of 19th century, Russia was the largest producer and exporter of cereals in the world. Owing to the development of agriculture, Russia gradually assumed a more important position in the world trade.

Industrial growth was significant, although unsteady, and in absolute terms it was not extensive. Russia's industrial regions included Moscow, the central regions of European Russia, Saint Petersburg, the Baltic cities, Russian Poland, some areas along the lower Don and Dnepr rivers, and the southern Ural Mountains. By 1890 Russia had about 32,000 kilometers of railroads and 1.4 million factory workers, most of whom worked in the textile industry. Between 1860 and 1890, annual coal production had grown about 1,200 percent to over 6.8 million tons, and iron and steel production had more than doubled to 2 million tons per year. The state budget had more than doubled, however, and debt expenditures had quadrupled, constituting 28 percent of official expenditures in 1891.

Reforms and their limits
Tsar Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a man of a liberal disposition, who saw no alternative but to implement change in the aftermath of the Disastrous performance of the Army, the economy and the government during Crimean War. Alexander initiated substantial reforms in education, the government, the judiciary, and the military.

In 1861 he proclaimed the emancipation of 20 million privately held serfs. Local commissions effected emancipation by giving land and freedom to the serfs. The land allotted to the peasants was bought from the owners with the State's assistance. The government issued bonds to the landowners for this purpose and collected redemption payments from the peasants at the rate of 5% of the total cost yearly. The government had envisioned that the 50,000 former landlords who possessed estates of more than 1.1 km would thrive without serfs and would continue to provide loyal political and administrative leadership in the countryside. The government also had expected that peasants would produce sufficient crops for their own consumption and for export sales, thereby helping to finance most of the government's expenses, imports, and foreign debt.

Reforms of local government closely followed emancipation. In 1864 most local government in the European part of Russia was organized into provincial and district elected self-government (zemstvos), which were made up of representatives of all classes and were responsible for local schools, public health, roads, prisons, food supply, and other concerns. In 1870 elected city councils, or duma, were formed. Dominated by property owners and constrained by provincial governors and the police, the zemstva and duma raised taxes and levied labor to support their activities.

In 1864 Alexander II implemented the great judicial reform. In major towns, it established courts with juries. In general, the judicial system functioned effectively, but the government lacked the finances and cultural influence to extend the court system to the villages, where traditional peasant justice continued to operate with minimal interference from provincial officials. The Russian judicial system was modelled after contemporary French and German law. Each case had to be decided on its merits and not on precedents. This approach remained in place ever since.

Other major reforms took place in the educational and cultural spheres. Censorship, which had stifled opinion under Nicholas, was greatly relaxed, and public opinion found a voice. This greatly facilitated the government's effort to eradicate corruption, red tape and inefficiency. Universities had gained autonomy. The Government encouraged education: it was during Alexander's reign that the education of the peasant masses started on a vast scale. The central government attempted to act through the zemstva to establish uniform curricula for elementary schools.

In the financial sphere, Russia established the State Bank in 1866, which put the national currency on a firmer footing. The Ministry of Finance supported railroad development, which facilitated vital export activity, but it was cautious and moderate in its foreign ventures. The ministry also founded the Peasant Land Bank in 1882 to enable enterprising farmers to acquire more land. The Ministry of Internal Affairs countered this policy, however, by establishing the Nobles' Land Bank in 1885 to forestall foreclosures of mortgages.

The reform of the military service (1874) was the last of the principal reforms in Alexander's II reign. The Franco-Prussian War demonstrated the necessity of building a modern army. The old system of long term service (25 years) for a limited number of recruits was abandoned, as being too heavy a burden for the people and as providing practically no reserves. The new conscription system, which provided for a short term of active service followed by several years in the reserve, was introduced by Dmitry Milyutin in 1874. It was drawn on democratic lines, calling to the colours all young men of 21 without distinction of class. Exemption was only granted to young men who were the sole breadwinners of their families. It also gave the army a role in teaching many peasants to read and in pioneering medical education for women.

Alexander's far reaching policy, however, did not bring political peace to Russia. In 1881 revolutionaries assassinated Alexander II.

His son Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) initiated a period of political counterreform. He strengthened the security police, reorganizing it into an agency known as the Okhrana, gave it extraordinary powers, and placed it under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Dmitriy Tolstoy, Alexander's minister of internal affairs, instituted the use of land captains, who were noble overseers of districts, and he restricted the power of the zemstvos and the dumas. Alexander III assigned his former tutor, conservative Konstantin Pobedonostsev, to be the procurator of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church and Ivan Delyanov to be the minister of education. In their attempts to "save" Russia from "modernism," they revived religious censorship, persecuted non-Orthodox and non-Russian populations, fostered anti- Semitism, and suppressed the autonomy of the universities. Their attacks on liberal and non-Russian elements alienated large segments of the population. The nationalities, particu- larly Poles, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, reacted to the regime's efforts to Russify them by intensifying their own nationalism. Many Jews emigrated or joined radical movements. Secret organizations and political movements con- tinued to develop despite the regime's efforts to quell them.

Alexander III put strict economizing into practice; the civil list of the Imperial family was reduced, and estimates for the army, navy and civil service were cut down considerably. This allowed the introduction of a series of financial reforms which tended to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry: the poll tax was abolished in 1886, a law was passed to accelerate legal transfer of the land allotted to the peasants in 1861, the payments due from them for this land were greatly reduced, Crown lands were made available for leasing or purchase to the peasants on advantageous terms, and great stretches of Crown lands in Eastern Russia and Siberia were opened for peasant emigration and resettlement.

Labour legislation was first introduced in 1882 with the creation of the inspectorate of factories (in charge of health and life saving regulations), the regulation of working hours and the limitation of female and juvenile labor.

Alexander's financial reforms prepared the way for the introduction of gold standard, which was carried out in the first years of his successor's reign (1897). He also continued a policy of intensive railway building. Here the greatest event was the laying down of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1891.

During the second half of the 19th century, a faction of so-called "Slavophiles" emerged in intellectual circles. They were convinced that Peter the Great had made a mistake in trying to modernize and Westernize the country and that Russia's salvation lay in the rejection of Western ideas. Slavophiles believed that while the West polluted itself with science, atheism, materialism, and wealth, they should return to a simple peasant-based society centered on the Orthodox faith. The government rejected these ideas since it felt the need for rapid modernization.

It followed that Russia, despite being a polyglot empire with dozens of nationalities and languages, was anything but friendly to the nationalistic aspirations of minorities. Poles fared especially badly since they had been enemies for centuries and because they had revolted in 1830 and 1863. As Russian industrialization progressed, Poland fared quite well, but other areas like the Ukraine remained backward, a problem worsened by the clumsy land reforms of Alexander II. Jews in Russia proper and the Ukraine were subject to bad (and worsening) discrimination, especially since they were associated with either Poles or with revolutionary movements. Most of the latter were also highly nationalistic and oblivious to the minority problem. Even the Bolsheviks were clueless until after they had taken power in 1917.

Despite industrialization, Russia was still overwhelmingly rural and backward at the start of World War I. Moscow and Saint Petersburg were the only cities with any significant industry. Since most workers were fresh off the farm and totally uneducated, the main impetus of revolution came from middle-class college graduates frustrated at the inefficiency of Russian society.

Thus (with heavy foreign investment and technical assistance), Russia managed to achieve at least a veneer of industrialization by 1914. Along with this came all of the abuses already encountered in the West such as child labor and unsafe working conditions. But while Britain, the US, Germany, and others were eventually able to rid themselves of those problems, Russia found it much more difficult due to inadequate infrastructure and (especially) the lack of an honest, educated bureaucracy. During the latter years of the 19th century, revolutionary groups of all flavors proliferated, some of which sought to reject modernity altogether and turn the clock back to the Middle Ages.

Foreign affairs after the Crimean War
After the Crimean War, Russia pursued cautious and well-calculated foreign policies. Russia was hurt by the Treaty of Paris (1856), which had demilitarized the Black Sea and deprived Russia of the southern strip of Bessarabia, which controlled access to the Danube River. The treaty gave the West European powers, not Russia, the duty of protecting Christians living in the Ottoman Empire. The first phase of Alexander II's foreign policy had the primary goal of regaining Russian naval access to the Black Sea. Russian statesmen viewed Britain and Austria (redesignated as Austria-Hungary in 1867) as opposed to that goal, so foreign policy concentrated on good relations with France, Prussia, and the United States.

Following the Crimean War, Russia revived its expansionist policies. Russian troops first moved to gain control of the Caucasus region, where the revolts of Muslim tribesmen—Chechens, Circassians, and Dagestanis—had continued despite numerous Russian campaigns in the nineteenth century. Once the forces of Aleksandr Baryatinsky had captured the legendary Chechen rebel leader Shamil in 1859, the army resumed the expansion into Central Asia that had begun under Nicholas I. The capture of Tashkent was a significant victory over the Kokand Khanate, part of which was annexed in 1866. By 1867 Russian forces had captured enough territory to form the Guberniya (Governorate General) of Turkestan, the capital of which was Tashkent. The Bukhara Khanate then lost the crucial Samarkand area to Russian forces in 1868. To avoid alarming Britain, which had strong interests in protecting nearby India, Russia left the Bukhoran territories directly bordering Afghanistan and Persia nominally independent. The Central Asian khanates retained a degree of autonomy until 1917.

Russia followed the United States, Britain, and France in establishing relations with Japan, and, together with Britain and France, Russia obtained concessions from China consequent to the Second Opium War (1856–1860). Under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Treaty of Beijing in 1860, China ceded to Russia extensive trading rights and regions adjacent to the Amur and Ussuri rivers and allowed Russia to begin building a port and naval base at Vladivostok. As part of the foreign policy goals in Europe, Russia initially gave guarded support to France's anti-Austrian diplomacy. A weak Franco-Russian entente soured, however, when France backed a Polish uprising against Russian rule in 1863. Russia then aligned itself more closely with Prussia by approving the unification of Germany in exchange for a revision of the Treaty of Paris and the remilitarization of the Black Sea. These diplomatic achievements came at a London conference in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. After 1871 Germany, united under Prussian leadership, was the strongest continental power in Europe. In 1873 Germany formed the loosely knit League of the Three Emperors with Russia and Austria-Hungary to prevent them from forming an alliance with France. Nevertheless, Austro-Hungarian and Russian ambitions clashed in the Balkans, where rivalries among Slavic nationalities and anti-Ottoman sentiments seethed.

In the 1870s, Russian nationalist opinion became a serious domestic factor in its support for liberating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule and making Bulgaria and Serbia quasi-protectorates of Russia. From 1875 to 1877, the Balkan crisis escalated with the rebellion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and insurrection in Bulgaria, which the Ottoman Turks suppressed with such great cruelty that Serbia, but none of the West European powers, declared war. In early 1877, Russia came to the rescue of beleaguered Serbia when it went to war with the Ottoman Empire of 1877–1878. Within one year, Russian troops were nearing Constantinople, and the Ottomans surrendered. Russia's nationalist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II to force the Ottomans to sign the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating an enlarged, independent Bulgaria that stretched into the southwestern Balkans. Another significant result of the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War in Russia's favour was the acquisition from the Ottomans of the provinces of Batum, Ardahan, and Kars in the South Caucasus, which were transformed into the militarily administered regions of Batum Oblast and Kars Oblast. To replace Muslim refugees who had fled across the new frontier into Ottoman territory the Russian authorities settled large numbers of Christians from an ethnically diverse range of communities in Kars Oblast, particularly the Greek Orthodox Georgians and Caucasus Greeks, and Christian but mainly non-Orthodox Armenians, all of whom hoped to achieve their own regional ambitions on the back of the Russian Empire. When Britain threatened to declare war over the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, an exhausted Russia backed down. At the Congress of Berlin in July 1878, Russia agreed to the creation of a smaller Bulgaria. Russian nationalists were furious with Austria-Hungary and Germany for failing to back Russia, but the Tsar accepted a revived and strengthened League of the Three Emperors as well as Austro-Hungarian hegemony in the western Balkans.

Russian diplomatic and military interests subsequently re-focussed on Central Asia, where Russia had quelled a series of uprisings in the 1870s, and Russia incorporated hitherto independent emirates into the empire. Britain renewed its concerns in 1881 when Russian troops occupied Turkmen lands on the Persian and Afghan borders, but Germany lent diplomatic support to Russian advances, and an Anglo-Russian war was averted. Meanwhile, Russia's sponsorship of Bulgarian independence brought negative results as the Bulgarians, angry at Russia's continuing interference in domestic affairs, sought the support of Austria-Hungary. In the dispute that arose between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Germany took a firm position toward Russia while mollifying the tsar with a bilateral defensive alliance, the Reinsurance Treaty of 1887 between Germany and Russia. Within a year, Russo-German acrimony led to Otto von Bismarck's forbidding further loans to Russia, and France replaced Germany as Russia's financier. When Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck in 1890, the loose Russo-Prussian entente collapsed after having lasted for more than twenty-five years. Three years later, Russia allied itself with France by entering into a joint military convention, which matched the dual alliance formed in 1879 by Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Russia rejects the Anglo-French Intrigues for interference
The clouds of world war gathered densely over the planet. Russell and Gladstone, now joined by Napoleon III, continued to demand aggressive meddling in US affairs. This outcome was avoided because of British and French fears of what Russia might do if they continued to launch bellicose gestures against the Union. On 29 October 1862 there occurred in St. Petersburg an extremely cordial meeting of Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov with US chargé d'affaires Bayard Taylor, which was marked by a formal Russian pledge never to move against the US, and to oppose any attempt by other powers to do so. Taylor reported these comments by Gortchakov to the State Department: "You know the sentiments of Russia. We desire above all things the maintenance of the American Union as one indivisible nation. We cannot take any part, more than we have done. We have no hostility to the Southern people. Russia has declared her position and will maintain it. There will be proposals of intervention [by Britain and France]. We believe that intervention could do no good at present. Proposals will be made to Russia to join some plan of interference. She will refuse any intervention of the kind. Russia will occupy the same ground as at the beginning of the struggle. You may rely upon it, she will not change. But we entreat you to settle the difficulty. I cannot express to you how profound an anxiety we feel – how serious are our fears."

The Journal de St.-Pétersbourg, the official gazette of the Tsarist government, denounced the Anglo-French intervention plan against the US, which had been inspired by Russell. This article helped prevent a wider war: the British cabinet, informed of the Russian attitude by telegraph, voted down Russell's aggressive project. Russell made his last bid to swing the British cabinet in favor of a policy of interference together with Napoleon III against the Union on 12 November 1862, but he was unable to carry the day, and this turned out to be his last chance for the year.

US Secretary of State William H. Seward thought that if the Anglo-French were to assail the Union, they would soon find themselves at war with Russia as well. He wrote to John Bigelow early in the war: "I have a belief that the European State, whichever one it may be, that commits itself to intervention anywhere in North America, will sooner or later fetch up in the arms of a native of an oriental country not especially distinguished for amiability of manners or temper."

Adams to Russell: "superfluous to point out this means war
The summer of 1863, despite the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, was marked by another close brush with US-UK war. It was on 5 September 1863 that US Ambassador Charles Francis Adams Sr. told British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell that if the Scorpion-class ironclads – powerful warships capable of breaking the Union blockade which were then under construction in England – were allowed to leave port, "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war." Lord Russell had to pause, and then backed off entirely. The Scorpion-class ships were put under surveillance by the British government on 9 September, and finally seized by the British government in mid-October, 1863. They never fought for the Confederacy.

A revolt against Russian domination of Poland, incited by the British, started in 1863 and lasted into late 1864. Crook points out that it was Lord Russell who told British Ambassador to the US Lord Lyons in March 1863 that the Polish issue had the potential to create a Russo-American common front and thus revolutionize world power relations, evidently to the detriment of London. Such a prophecy was coherent with the then-fashionable ideas of Alexis de Tocqueville about Russia and America as the two great powers of the future.

Russian fleets in New York and San Francisco
The most dramatic gestures of cooperation between the Russian Empire and the United States came in the autumn of 1863, as the Laird rams crisis hung in the balance. On 24 September, the Russian Baltic fleet began to arrive in New York harbor. On 12 October, the Russian Far East fleet began to arrive in San Francisco. The Russians, judging that they were on the verge of war with Britain and France over the British-fomented Polish insurrection of 1863, had taken this measure to prevent their ships from being bottled up in their home ports by the superior British fleet. These ships were also the tokens of the vast Russian land armies that could be thrown in the scales on a number of fronts, including the northwest frontier of India; the British had long been worried about such an eventuality. In mid-July 1863, French Foreign Minister Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys was offering London the joint occupation of Poland by means of invasion. But the experience of the Confederate commerce raiders had graphically illustrated just how effective even a limited number of warships could be when they turned to commerce raiding, which is what the Russian naval commanders had been ordered to do in case of hostilities. The Russian admirals had also been told that, if the US and Russia were to find themselves at war with Britain and France, the Russian ships should place themselves under Lincoln's command and operate in synergy with the US Navy against the common enemies. It is thus highly significant that the Russian ships were sent to the United States.

Navy Secretary Gideon Welles: "God Bless the Russians"
Coming on the heels of the bloody Union reverse at Chickamauga, the news of the Russian fleet unleashed an immense wave of euphoria in the North. It was this moment that inspired the later verses of Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most popular writers in America, for the 1871 friendship visit of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis:

''Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December, / Fettered and chill is the rivulet's flow; / Thrilling and warm are the hearts that remember / Who was our friend when the world was our foe. ... Fires of the North in eternal communion, / Blend your broad flashes with evening's bright star; / God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union; / Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar!''

The Russians, as Clay reported to Seward and Lincoln, were delighted in turn by the celebration of their fleets, which stayed in American waters for over six months as the Polish revolt was quelled. The Russian officers were lionized and feted, and had their pictures taken by the famous New York photographer Matthew Brady. When an attack on San Francisco by the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah seemed to be imminent, the Russian admiral there gave orders to his ships to defend the city if necessary. There were no major Union warships on the scene, so Russia was about to fight for the United States. In the event, the Confederate raider did not attack. Soon after the war, Russia sold Alaska to the United States, in part because they felt that an influx of Americans searching for gold was inevitable, and in part to keep the British from seizing control of this vast region. Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary, "The Russian fleet has come out of the Baltic and is now in New York, or a large number of the vessels have arrived…. In sending them to this country at this time there is something significant." Welles was fully justified in his famous concluding words, "God bless the Russians!". This exceedingly cordial Russo-American friendship set the tone of much nineteenth-century historiography

Revolutionary movements
Alexander II's reforms, particularly the lifting of state censorship, fostered the expression of political and social thought. The regime relied on journals and newspapers to gain support for its domestic and foreign policies. But liberal, nationalist, and radical writers also helped to mold public opinion in opposition to tsarism, to private property, and to the imperial state. Because many intellectuals, professionals, peasants, and workers shared these opposition sentiments, the regime regarded the publications and the radical organizations as dangerous. From the 1860s through the 1880s, Russian radicals, collectively known as "Populists" (Narodniki), focused chiefly on the peasantry, whom they identified as "the people" (narod).

The leaders of the Populist movement included radical writers, idealists, and advocates of terrorism. In the 1860s, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, the most important radical writer of the period, posited that Russia could bypass capitalism and move directly to socialism. His most influential work, Что делать? (What Is to Be Done?, 1863), describes the role of an individual of a superior nature who guides a new, revolutionary generation. Other radicals such as the incendiary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) and his terrorist collaborator, Sergey Nechayev (1847–1882), urged direct action. The calmer Petr Tkachev (1844–1886) argued against the advocates of Marxism, maintaining that a centralized revolutionary band had to seize power before capitalism could fully develop. Disputing his views, the moralist and individualist Petr Lavrov (1823–1900) made a call "to the people", which hundreds of idealists heeded in 1873 and 1874 by leaving their schools for the countryside to try to generate a mass movement among the narod. However, The Populist campaign failed when the peasants showed hostility to the urban idealists and the government began to consider nationalist opinion more seriously.

The radicals reconsidered their approach, and in 1876 they formed a propagandist organization called Land and Liberty (Zemlya i volya), which leaned toward terrorism. This orientation became stronger three years later, when the group renamed itself the People's Will (Narodnaya Volya), the name under which the radicals carried out the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. In 1879 Georgi Plekhanov formed a propagandist faction of Land and Liberty called Black Repartition (Черный передел, Chernyi Peredel), which advocated redistributing all land to the peasantry. This group studied Marxism, which, paradoxically, was principally concerned with urban industrial workers. The People's Will remained underground.

title: History of Russia (1855–1894)


text:
Mile high club

The mile high club is slang for people who have had sexual intercourse on board an aircraft during flight.

An alleged explanation for wanting to perform the act is the supposed vibration of the plane. Some also theorize that people who engage in the act have had personal fantasies about pilots, flight attendants, or other aircraft crew, or a fetish about planes themselves, a type of mechanophilia. For others, the appeal of joining the mile-high club is the thrill of doing something taboo and the thrill of the risk of being discovered, as well as the thrill of simply engaging in sexual intercourse thousands of feet above the earth.

History
An early reference to the concept is found in the betting book for Brooks's, a London gentlemen's club. The 1785 entry (only two years after the first successful balloon ascent by Étienne Montgolfier) reads: "Ld. Cholmondeley has given two guineas to Ld. Derby, to receive 500 Gs whenever his lordship fucks a woman in a Balloon one thousand yards from the Earth." There is no further indication whether the bet was paid, or how any claim would be validated.

During the First World War, German ace Oswald Boelcke was disciplined by superiors for taking a nurse up in the cockpit of his fighter, allegedly becoming the first person to qualify as a member of the club (although the claim is dubious, considering the cramped cockpit space and the pilot requirement to constantly keep hands and feet on the control stick and rudder pedals; others maintain it was a simple joyride).

Pilot/engineer Lawrence Sperry and socialite Dorothy Rice Sims have been described as the first persons to engage in sex while flying in an airplane; the two flew in an autopilot-equipped Curtiss Flying Boat near New York in November 1916.

The American National Transportation Safety Board reported on a 1991 incident in which sexual activity was at least partly responsible for the fatal crash of a Piper PA-34.

In November 2007, the BBC reported a story headlined "Airline Bans A380 Mile-High Club". The Airbus A380 allows double beds to be installed in the first-class cabin, but Singapore Airlines' cabins are not soundproof; shortly after installing the new seats/beds, the airline requested that first-class travelers respect other passengers.

Reported instances
Some incidents of people attempting sexual activity on planes have been reported in the media:
 * Richard Branson, the British billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Virgin Group, including Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia, claimed that he joined the mile-high club at age 19 (c. 1969) in the plane's lavatory. Afterwards, he found out that his partner in the act was married, and the two had no relationship beyond the encounter in the plane.
 * In October 1999, two passengers of an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Manchester were arrested after engaging in "sex acts" in front of other passengers in the business class section of the aircraft. Both lost their jobs after the press storm following the incident.
 * A 2005 British Airways flight from London to Jamaica diverted to Bermuda when a couple on board, who had possibly been intoxicated even before consuming more beer and wine on the plane, threatened flight attendants after they told them to return to their seats when the attendants found Fitzgerald giving a lap dance to Blake in a crew jump seat; ultimately, the two were physically confined to their seats. The two claimed later they had already had sex twice in the aircraft lavatory before their return to the UK. Blake was sentenced to prison and Fitzgerald was sentenced to community service.
 * In late 2006, a couple was arrested in part for refusing to stop overt sexual activity on a flight in a case that received widespread media attention. The couple's lawyer claimed that the couple were not engaging in sexual activity, but that the man was sick and resting his head on the woman's lap.
 * In 2007, British actor Ralph Fiennes was embroiled in scandal after having sex with a Qantas flight attendant on a flight from Sydney to Mumbai. After initial denials, it was established that they had had sex in the plane's lavatory, after which the flight attendant was suspended and later terminated.
 * On a Virgin flight in February 2007, Danish co-founder of the Skype application, Janus Friis, openly had sex with Christina Knudsen, Roger Moore's stepdaughter, when travelling to the Academy Awards show.

Legality
The BBC ran an article investigating whether sex on a plane was legal. Their conclusion was that it would depend on many factors, such as whether or not the act occurred in sight of others. If British law applied, for example, it may constitute sex in a lavatory to which the public has access, contrary to Sexual Offences Act 2003 s.71, with a maximum 6-month term of imprisonment.

Also, for international flights, the law could vary depending on departure and destination cities and the nation of the carrier airline, as well as the country of registration of the aircraft, and possibly the citizenship of the people involved.

In January 2011, the United Kingdom's aviation regulator body, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), refused to recertify Mile-High Flights, an air charter company located in Gloucestershire, for allowing its passengers to have sex while in-flight.

Charter flights
Some commercial enterprises cash in on people's interest in joining the "club" by offering special charter flights designed for the purpose.

title: Mile high club