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Soviet Union [USSR] TERRITORIAL ADMINISTRATION
The central government in Moscow and the governments of the
fifteen republics--consisting of fourteen soviet socialist
republics
(
SSR--see Glossary) and the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic--were joined in a theoretically voluntary union.
The republic constitutions and the Soviet Constitution established
the rules of the federal system.
The Constitution specified the relationship of the central
government to the republics. Article 73 of the Constitution limited
the central government to the administration of matters requiring
central leadership of the country as a whole: national and internal
security and the economy. In entering the union, the republics
ceded these responsibilities to the central government bodies.
The governmental system below the central level appeared
complicated because it was organized according to the two often
contradictory principles of geography and nationality. The
administrative subdivisions of a republic, oblast (roughly
equivalent to a province), and district (raion) were based
primarily on geography. The larger republics, such as the Russian
and Ukrainian republics, were divided into oblasts. But smaller
republics (the Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Armenian, and
Moldavian republics) did not have an oblast administration between
the republic and the district levels. In addition, six large,
thinly populated regions in the Russian Republic have been
designated by the term krai. A krai could contain an
autonomous oblast or an autonomous okrug inhabited by a
national minority. About 300 large cities and approximately 3,000
rural and urban districts (raiony) made up the next lowest
government level. In turn, the large cities were divided into urban
districts, or gorodskie raiony. Approximately 40,000 village
centers made up the rural districts.
The Russian Republic and some of the other republics also
contained administrative subdivisions with boundaries drawn
according to nationality or language. The three kinds of such
subdivisions included twenty autonomous republics, eight autonomous
oblasts, and ten autonomous okruga.
Data as of May 1989
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