The division of the country into controlled regions has always been one of the foundations of the state system of Russia. Borders within the country change regularly even in the 21st century, subject to administrative reforms. And at the stages of the Moscow kingdom and the Russian Empire, this happened much more often due to the accession of new lands, a change in political power or course.
Division of the country in the 15-17th centuries
At the stage of the Moscow state, counties were the main territorial-administrative unit. They were located within the borders of the once independent principalities and were governed by the governors planted by the king. It is noteworthy that in the European part of the state large cities (Tver, Vladimir, Rostov, Nizhny Novgorod, etc.) were administratively independent territories and were not part of the county, although they were their capitals. In the 21st century, Moscow found itself in a similar situation, which is the center of its region de facto, but de jure it is a city of federal significance, that is, a separate region.
Each county, in turn, was divided into volosts - areas whose center was a large village or small town with surrounding lands. Also in the northern lands there was a division into camps, graveyards, villages or villages in a variety of combinations.
Border or newly annexed territories did not have counties. For example, the lands from Lake Onega to the northern part of the Ural Mountains and up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean were called Pomerania. And left-bank Ukraine, which became part of the Moscow kingdom at the end of the 16th century, was divided into shelves - Kiev, Poltava, Chernihiv, etc., because of its status of "troubled lands" and the main population (Cossacks).
In general, the division of the Moscow state was very confusing, but it allowed to develop the basic principles on which the management of territories was built in the following centuries. And the most important of them is one-man management.
Division of the country in the 18th century
According to historians, the formation of the administrative division of the country took place in several stages of reform, of which the main ones fell on the 18th century. The provinces of the Russian Empire appeared after the Decree of Peter I in 1708, and at first there were only 8 of them - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Smolensk, Arkhangelsk, Kiev, Azov, Kazan and Siberian. A few years later the Riga and Astrakhan provinces were added to them . Each of them received not only land and the governor (governor), but also its own coat of arms.
The educated regions were excessively large and therefore poorly managed. Therefore, the following reforms were aimed at reducing them and dividing them into subordinate units. The main milestones of this process:
- The second reform of Peter I of 1719, in which the provinces of the Russian Empire began to be divided into provinces and districts. Subsequently, the latter were replaced by counties.
- The reform of 1727, which continued the process of disaggregation of territories. According to its results, there were 14 provinces and 250 counties in the country.
- Reform of the beginning of the reign of Catherine I. During the years 1764-1766, the formation of border and remote territories in the province took place.
- Catherine reform of 1775. The “Establishment for the Administration of Provinces” signed by the empress marked the largest administrative and territorial changes in the history of the country, lasting 10 years.
At the end of the century, the country was divided into 38 governorates, 3 provinces and a region with a special status (Tauride). Within all regions, 483 counties were allocated, which became a secondary territorial unit.
The vicarities and provinces of the Russian Empire in the 18th century did not last long within the borders approved by Catherine I. The process of administrative division continued into the next century.
Division of the country in the 19th century
The term "provinces of the Russian Empire" was returned during the reforms of Paul I, who made an unsuccessful attempt to reduce the number of regions from 51 to 42. But most of the reforms he carried out were subsequently canceled.
In the 19th century, the process of administrative-territorial division focused on the formation of regions in the Asian part of the country and in the annexed territories. Among the many changes, it is worth highlighting the following:
- Under Alexander I, in 1803 the Tomsk and Yenisei provinces appeared, and the Kamchatka Territory was isolated from the Irkutsk lands. In the same period, the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Kingdom of Poland, Ternopil, Bessarabia and Bialystok Governorates were formed.
- In 1822, the lands of Siberia were divided into 2 governor-generals - the West with the center in Omsk and the East, which had the capital Irkutsk.
- Toward the middle of the 19th century, the Tiflis, Shemakha (later Baku), Dagestan, Erivan, Terskaya, Batumi and Kutaisi provinces were created on the annexed lands of the Caucasus. A special region of the Kuban Cossack army arose in the vicinity of the lands of modern Dagestan.
- The Primorsky Region was formed in 1856 from the landlocked territories of the East Siberian Governor General. Soon, the Amur Region was allocated from it, which received the left bank of the river of the same name, and in 1884 the island of Sakhalin received the status of a special department of Primorye.
- The lands of Central Asia and Kazakhstan were annexed in the 1860-1870s. The resulting territories were organized in the region - Akmola, Semipalatinsk, Ural, Turkestan, Transcaspian, etc.
There were also many changes in the regions of the European part of the country - borders often changed, lands were redistributed, and renaming took place. During the peasant reforms, the counties of the provinces of the Russian Empire in the 19th century were divided into rural volosts for the convenience of land distribution and accounting.
Division of the country in the 20th century
In the last 17 years of the existence of the Russian Empire in the field of administrative-territorial division, only 2 significant changes have occurred:
- The Sakhalin Oblast was formed, which included the island of the same name and adjacent small islands and archipelagos.
- On the adjoining lands of the south of Siberia (the modern Republic of Tuva), the Uryankhai Territory was created.
The provinces of the Russian Empire retained their borders and names for 6 years after the collapse of this country, that is, until 1923, when the first zoning reforms began in the USSR.