regiments, five plastun battalions and one battery to the distant region of Russia. The Cossacks also carried out the second strategical objective, the colonisation of the Kuban land. In total, the host owned more than six million tithes, of which 5.7 million belonged to the stanitsas, with the remaining in the reserve or in private hands of Cossack officers and officials. Upon reaching the age of 17, a Cossack would be given between 16 and 30 tithes for cultivation and personal use. With the natural growth of the population, the average land that a Cossack owned decreased from 23 tithes in the 1860s to 7.6 in 1917. Such arrangements, however ensured that the colonisation and the cultivation would be very rational. The military purpose of the Kuban was echoed in its administration pattern. Rather than a traditional Imperial Guberniya (governorate) with uyezds (districts), the territory was administered by the Kuban Oblast which was split into (regions, which in 1888 counted seven). Each would have its own which in turn would be split into and . The (commander) for each region was not only responsible for the military preparation of the Cossacks, but for the local administration duties. Local Stanitsa and Khutor atamans were elected, but approved by the of the . These, in turn, were appointed by the supreme of the host, who was in turn appointed directly by the Russian Emperor. Prior to 1870, this system of legislature in the Oblast remained a robust military one and all legal decisions were carried out by the and two elected judges. Afterwards, however, the system was bureaucratised and the judicial functions became independent of the . The more liberal policy of the Kuban was directly mirrored in the living standards of the people. One of the central features of this was education. Indeed, the first schools were known to have existed since the migration of the Black Sea Cossacks, and by 1860, the host had one male high school and 30 elementary schools. In 1863, the first periodical Кубанские войсковые ведомсти (Kubanskiye voiskovye vedomsti) began printing, and two years later the host's library was opened in Yekaterinodar. In all, by 1870, the number of schools in rural stanitsas increased to 170. Compared with the rest of the Russian Empire, by the start of the 20th century the Oblast had a very high literacy rate of 50% and each year up to