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Soviet Union [USSR] Administrative-Political-Territorial Divisions
Since 1956 the enormous territory of the Soviet Union has
consisted of fifteen union republics--the largest administrative
and political units--officially known as Soviet republics or
union republics (see Glossary).
Nationality (see Glossary), size of the
population, and location are the determinants for republic status.
By far the largest and most important of the union republics is the
Russian Republic, containing about 51 percent of the population
(see
table 6, Appendix A). Largely because it encompasses Siberia,
the Russian Republic alone accounts for 75 percent of Soviet
territory and forms the heartland of both the European and the
Asian portions of the Soviet Union. Although in 1989 Russians made
up over 51 percent of the Soviet population and were in many ways
the dominant nationality, they are just one of more than 100
nationality groups that make up Soviet society. Fourteen other
major nationalities also have their own republics: in the European
part are the Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Belorussian, Ukrainian,
and Moldavian republics; the Georgian, Azerbaydzhan, and Armenian
republics occupy the Caucasus; and Soviet Central Asia is home to
the Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kirgiz, and Tadzhik republics
(see Soviet Union USSR - Nationalities of the Soviet Union
, ch. 4;
table 13, Appendix A).
The Soviet system also provides for territorial and administrative
subdivisions called autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts,
autonomous okruga, kraia, or most often
oblasts (see Glossary). These subdivisions make the country
easier to manage and
at times serve to recognize additional nationalities. In terms of
political and administrative authority, the more than 130 oblasts
and autonomous oblasts resemble to a limited degree counties in the
United States. Many oblasts, however, are about the size of states.
For example, Tyumenskaya Oblast, the storehouse of Soviet fuels, is
only slightly smaller than Alaska
(see Soviet Union USSR - Fuels
, ch. 12). A more
appropriate comparison with counties, in terms of numbers and area,
can be made with the more than 3,200
raion (see Glossary),
the Soviet Union's smallest administrative and political
subdivision.
Data as of May 1989
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