Administrative-territorial division of Russia: features, history and interesting facts

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

All objects of the administrative-territorial division of Russia are multicomponent, throughout history they have undergone numerous transformations. Let's follow the course of state work in the field of territorial administration, as well as the transformation in the structure of the Russian Federation.

Term definition

Administrative-territorial division - representation of the territory of the state in the form of a set of administratively controlled units, or subjects of our state. The administrative-territorial division of Russia is legally fixed. It is fully reflected in the fundamental law of the Russian Federation - the Constitution. Russia as a complex consists of such conditional components - subjects: regions, republics, autonomous regions, territories, autonomous regions, cities of federal significance. All subjects of the Russian Federation have some degree of sovereignty and are completely equal.

Transformation of territorial administration

Selectthe main processes in changing the scheme of the administrative-territorial division of Russia:

• changes in the total number of administrative units;
• attachment or separation from the subjects of their territories;
• enlargement and reduction of the territory of subjects.

Features of the subject division of any state, including Russia, are primarily due to physical and geographical spatial characteristics, historical and cultural and traditional prerequisites, established policy models and a certain range of economic factors.

State Tasks

The main tasks of the state regarding the objects of the administrative-territorial division of Russia:

• affirmation of the unity of the subject territory and the dynamics of the progressive development of the sovereign unit of the state;
• determining the number of management levels in each entity;
• delimitation of responsibilities for managing life in each administrative-territorial unit between the state authorities and the administrations of the subjects.

Reforms in the field of territorial administration

The policy aimed at defining and establishing a rigid power vertical and developing the institution of local self-government, throughout the state history, required a set of reforms in Russia in the field of administration and territorial organization. Here are some examples:

• an initiative from the public or government to unify or create new regions;
• creation of federal districts;
• development of regional association projects;
• reorientation from the three models of territorial division that existed at the beginning of the century to a two-level system of organizing local self-government on the territory of the state.

Relevance of analysis

The design and implementation of any reforms insistently requires a very careful and rigorous analysis of the possibility of positive or negative consequences. The same situation occurs in the sphere of territorial administration. This determines the relentless relevance of work in this area.

An active study of evolutionary processes in the administrative-territorial division of Russia continues over the past three hundred years. It also analyzes the implementation of each individual reform in detail. The main goal of such work is to identify and understand problems, to approve the prospects for the transformation of the country's administrative-territorial division.

The history of the administrative-territorial division of the subjects of Russia. 18th century

In its evolutionary development, the history of the administrative-territorial division of Russia has thirteen stages, leading from the very first reform of the Petrovsky days to the present. Until the era of the reign of Peter the Great, that is, until the seventeenth century, the territory of the then Russian kingdom (later it was renamed the empire) was divided into one hundred and sixty-six districts. According to Peter's reform in the field of territorial administration, Russia was divided on 1708-18-12into eight provinces, which, in turn, consisted of orders, ranks and cities. In 1710–1713, shares were recognized as units of the administrative-territorial division of Russia (then they were called administrative-fiscal units).

The development of evolutionary processes led to the introduction of a poll tax by Tsar Peter. The second Petrine reform in territorial administration was put into effect on May 29, 1719. By that time, the total number of Russian provinces had already increased to eleven. The shares approved in accordance with the first reform were canceled, and nine of the eleven provinces were divided into forty-seven provinces, and the provinces, in turn, into districts.

Everything new is well forgotten old

The new administrative-territorial division, like everything else, is a well-forgotten old one. This is exactly what the Supreme Privy Council decided, proclaiming on behalf of Empress Catherine I in 1727 the liquidation of districts and the division of provinces into provinces and counties (even the number of counties was reproduced - one hundred and sixty-five). The number of provinces themselves was also increased to fourteen: Novgorod province was separated from the seriously reduced St. Petersburg province, and Belgorod province from Kyiv province.

By 1745, there were sixteen provinces in the Russian Empire. Now the provinces of the B altic direction were divided into districts. Four new provinces were added to those existing in 1764-1766, and by 1775 the number of provinces in the country was twenty-three, along with them there were sixty-five provinces and two hundred and seventy-six counties. However, the changes in the administrative-territorial division of Russia could not end, since the subjects remained too vast, very different in population, as a result of which they were extremely inconvenient in terms of tax collection and administration.

Actions opposing the further enlargement of the provinces were already made by Catherine II in the course of her reform of 1775-1785. In the autumn of 1775, the empress signed a law, according to which, the size of all provinces was reduced, and the number of subjects doubled. The liquidation of the provinces was also established (in some provinces, regions were introduced as replacements), the system of counties in the Russian Empire also changed.

In the context of the new administrative-territorial division of Russia, an approximate mandatory number was established for all administrative-territorial units. For the province, it was equal to an indicator of three hundred to four hundred thousand people per subject, for the county the bar was set in the region of twenty to thirty thousand. Most of the provinces were renamed into governorships.

Following the results of the reform, by 1785 in Russia there were forty governorships and provinces, two regions existed as a province, all these units were divided into four hundred and eighty-three counties. The size and boundaries of the governorships were chosen so well that most of the values did not change until the 1920s and were extremely close to the size of modern subjects of the Russian Federation. In the following years, 1793-1796, quite a lot oflands, eight new governorships were formed on them. Accordingly, their total number throughout the country reached fifty, there was also one region.

The son of Catherine the Great, Paul I, as you know, did not support his mother's undertakings. During his counter-reform on December 12, 1796, thirteen provinces were removed. The emperor also introduced an updated division into counties, while the number of counties themselves decreased. Viceroy alties again began to be called provinces. At the end of the Pavlovian reign, the number of provinces was reduced from fifty-one to forty-two.

19th century

Alexander I was entirely for my grandmother's undertakings. With his reforms, he restored the former administrative-territorial division of Russia. Nevertheless, some changes were made: Siberia was divided into two governor-generals, this action was carried out in accordance with the Speransky project. In 1825, there were forty-nine provinces and six regions in Russia.

In 1847, the number of provinces and regions increased to fifty-five and three respectively. In 1856, the Primorsky Region was established. The Black Sea Host was renamed Kuban in 1860, and the territory of its operation became the Kuban Region. New elements of territorial administration appeared in 1861, when the counties were divided into volosts. In the second half of the 19th century, the beginnings of local self-government in the form of zemstvos were introduced in the predominant number of provinces.

It can be concluded that, despite the varioustransformation, the administrative-territorial division of Russia in the 19th century had a fairly stable structure. The empire included regions, governor-generals and provinces. Their total number was eighty-one. Uluses, gminas, villages and, of course, volosts were the lower level of territorial administration. Large port and capital cities were in some way the prototype of the current cities of federal significance and were governed separately from the provinces.

20th century

The civil war in Russia in the twentieth century led to the emergence of autonomies among the regions of the country with predominantly their own indigenous population (on the banks of the Volga and in the Urals). This process continued until 1923.

USSR

The first reform of territorial administration in the USSR took place in 1923-1929. It focused on the creation of economically self-sufficient, large entities independently managed by economic councils, which were adjusted to the economic regions of the state plan. In the USSR, there were forty administrative-territorial units instead of the previously existing eighty-two. Seven hundred and sixty-six counties were replaced by one hundred and seventy-six districts, and volosts were replaced by districts. The village councils have become the lowest level.

As a result, all units were disaggregated due to poor management of large areas and edges.

The reduction in the size of units did not stop in 1943-1954. Some autonomies of the deported peoples were abolished. In the Bashkir and Tatar Republics, regions were created in1952-1953, and in the winter of 1954, five regions were formed in the central region of the country. The regions in Bashkiria and Tatarstan were abolished after the death of Joseph Stalin, and in 1957 the number of five regions formed in the central part of the country was reduced to three, all autonomies, except for the Volga Germans, were restored.

In 1957, the economic councils were created, and already in 1965 they were liquidated. They detailed the areas of the state planning, could consist of one or several administrative-territorial units, but did not change them. An interesting fact is that special interregional book publishing houses were designed within the economic councils (for example, Priokskoe, Verkhne-Volzhskoe). This unusual division has been used in statistics, science, planning documents, and even for weather forecasts and the media in general. In accordance with the Constitution of 1977, the Autonomous National Regions were renamed.

Russian Federation

Full-scale administrative-territorial changes began in the last decade of the 20th century. From 1990 to 1991, some regions returned their former names, almost all autonomous SSRs lost the letter "A" and became simply Soviet socialist republics, most autonomous districts became ASSRs. Soon these districts were returned to the regions and territories.

The real revolution took place in 1990-1994, when the words "autonomous", "socialist","Soviet" (only the districts retained the first status), in addition, names appeared on a national basis: Tatarstan, Altai, Sakha, Mari El, and so on. In the summer of 1992, the border between Chechnya and the Ingush Republic appeared, although it had not yet been officially fixed. Chechnya, together with Tatarstan, went further and declared themselves independent states.

21st century

Today, the territorial administration of our country has become more sustainable and stable. In the modern administrative-territorial division of Russia, federal districts are the largest units, at the moment there are seven of them. In chapter number three of the Constitution of the Russian Federation "Federal structure" all subjects of Russia are designated today. The total number of territorial units is eighty-five.