Russia has no states; its first-level divisions are called federal subjects, and there are 83 of them within its internationally recognised borders: 21 republics, 9 krais, 46 oblasts, 2 federal cities (Moscow and Saint Petersburg), 1 autonomous oblast (the Jewish Autonomous Oblast) and 4 autonomous okrugs. Russia has claimed 89 since 30 September 2022, because it also counts six regions of Ukraine that it annexed in 2014 and 2022 (Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson), which almost all other countries still recognise as Ukrainian. The largest is the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) at 3,083,523 km², the world's largest country subdivision, and the capital, Moscow, is itself a federal city of about 2,511 km². The number has never been fixed: it was 89 in 1993, fell to 83 through mergers between 2005 and 2008, and has been redrawn on paper twice since.
Peter the Great’s Eight Governorates of 1708
The habit of carving Russia into large provinces begins with an edict of Peter the Great dated 18 December 1708 (29 December in the modern calendar). Before it, Muscovy was a patchwork of some 166 uyezds and military districts called razryads, each run by an appointed voivode. Peter swept them into eight governorates, or guberniyas: Archangelgorod, Azov, Ingermanland, Kazan, Kiev, Moscow, Siberia and Smolensk.
The units proved too large. Peter split them into provinces in 1719, and Catherine the Great's Decree on the Governorates of 1775, prompted partly by Pugachev's Rebellion, rebuilt the system around smaller guberniyas. By the 1910s the empire had 104 governorate-level units, and Ingermanland, renamed Saint Petersburg Governorate in 1710, covered today's Leningrad Oblast and far more besides. For the wider story of how those imperial borders were won, see our guide to the geography of the Russian Empire.
Soviet Homelands: Autonomous Republics, Krais and Oblasts, 1917–1989
The Bolsheviks kept the idea of big provinces but added an ethnic layer on top. Lenin's Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia of 15 November 1917 promised minorities self-determination, and when the Soviet Union was formed on 30 December 1922 the larger minorities inside the Russian republic received Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSRs). Smaller groups got autonomous oblasts and, in the north and Siberia, national okrugs. Many of today's units date from these years: the Oyrot Autonomous Oblast (now the Altai Republic) on 1 June 1922, the Adyghe autonomous oblast on 27 July 1922, the Komi-Permyak okrug on 26 February 1925, the Chukotka National Okrug in 1930 and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, planned in 1928 and formally established in 1934 with its centre at Birobidzhan.
The Soviet reform of 1923 to 1929 abolished the old uyezds, and the big interwar krais were later broken up into oblasts named after their main cities. Leningrad Oblast was created on 1 August 1927; Kalinin Oblast was cut from three neighbours on 29 January 1935; Krasnodar Krai was established on 13 September 1937. After the Second World War, the northern half of East Prussia was annexed and became Kaliningrad Oblast in 1946.
The ethnic map was also rewritten by force. Stalin abolished the Volga German ASSR on 7 September 1941, and after the deportations of 1943 and 1944 the Kalmyk ASSR (27 December 1943), the Crimean ASSR (23 February 1944) and the Checheno-Ingush ASSR (7 March 1944) were liquidated, while the Kabardino-Balkar ASSR lost the Balkars from its name. Checheno-Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria were restored on 9 January 1957 and Kalmykia on 29 July 1958, but the Volga Germans never regained their republic, and Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR on 19 February 1954. New republics also appeared: the Karelian ASSR on 6 July 1956 and the Tuvan ASSR on 10 October 1961. By 1989 the Russian SFSR held 16 autonomous republics, 5 autonomous oblasts, 10 autonomous okrugs, 6 krais and 49 oblasts.
The Federation Treaty of 31 March 1992 and the 89 Subjects of 1993
As the Soviet Union weakened, the autonomies raised their own status. Throughout 1990 and 1991 most ASSRs issued declarations of sovereignty; only Dagestan and Mordovia did not. Four of the five autonomous oblasts were upgraded to republics. Adygea was elevated on 3 July 1991, and Gorno-Altai, Khakassia and Karachay-Cherkessia followed; Gorno-Altai became an ASSR in 1991 and took the name Altai Republic in 1992. Only the Jewish Autonomous Oblast kept the old rank, which is why the category survives with a single member.
The Checheno-Ingush republic split apart. Under Dzhokhar Dudayev it declared independence on 1 November 1991, and the Ingush side, refusing to join the breakaway state, became the Republic of Ingushetia on 4 June 1992. Its 3,600 km² make it the smallest Russian subject that is not a city. Chukotka declared itself separate from Magadan Oblast in 1991, a move confirmed by the Constitutional Court in 1993, which is why it is the only autonomous okrug not also counted as part of another region.
On 31 March 1992 every region except the Tatar ASSR and the de facto independent Chechnya signed the Federation Treaty, which fixed the internal composition of the new country. Tatarstan signed its own power-sharing agreement with Moscow on 15 February 1994. The constitution adopted by referendum on 12 December 1993 then listed 89 federal subjects: 21 republics, 6 krais, 49 oblasts, 2 federal cities, 1 autonomous oblast and 10 autonomous okrugs.
The same years brought a wave of renaming as Soviet-era names were dropped. Kalinin Oblast became Tver Oblast on 17 July 1990, Gorky Oblast became Nizhny Novgorod Oblast on 22 October 1990, and Kuybyshev Oblast became Samara Oblast on 25 January 1991; the Congress of People's Deputies approved all three on 21 April 1992. Not every region followed its capital: Leningrad became Saint Petersburg again in 1991, but Leningrad Oblast kept its name.
Six Okrugs Absorbed Between 2005 and 2008
The only time Russia's map shrank by agreement was a run of five mergers under Vladimir Putin, absorbing six okrugs, each approved by referendum in both regions. The six autonomous okrugs that disappeared held about 0.3% of Russia's population, and the stated aim was to let poor, sparsely populated districts share a richer neighbour's budget.
- 1 December 2005: Perm Oblast and the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug became Perm Krai, after a referendum in October 2004.
- 1 January 2007: the Taymyr and Evenk autonomous okrugs were absorbed into Krasnoyarsk Krai.
- 1 July 2007: Kamchatka Oblast and the Koryak Autonomous Okrug became Kamchatka Krai, following a referendum on 23 October 2005.
- 1 January 2008: the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Okrug joined Irkutsk Oblast. In the referendum of 16 April 2006, 97.79% of votes cast in Ust-Orda and 89.77% in Irkutsk Oblast were in favour.
- 1 March 2008: Chita Oblast and the Agin-Buryat Autonomous Okrug became Zabaykalsky Krai, after a referendum on 11 March 2007.
The mergers explain why the oblasts fell from 49 to 46 and the krais rose from 6 to 9: Perm, Kamchatka and Chita were oblasts that re-emerged as krais. The vanished okrugs became “administrative-territorial units with special status”, a category the constitution does not mention, and four still keep a second official language: Buryat in two, Komi-Permyak and Koryak. Three surviving okrugs remain subjects while also lying inside a larger one: Nenets inside Arkhangelsk Oblast, and Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets inside Tyumen Oblast. A 2020 plan to merge Nenets with Arkhangelsk Oblast was dropped after local opposition, and no merger has gone through since March 2008.
Crimea in 2014 and Four Ukrainian Regions in 2022
The two later changes were annexations, and they are not recognised by most of the world. On 18 March 2014, Moscow signed a treaty incorporating the Republic of Crimea as a republic and Sevastopol as a third federal city, raising its own count to 85. A separate Crimean Federal District was set up on 21 March 2014 and folded into the Southern Federal District on 28 July 2016. Most governments treat the peninsula as part of Ukraine; the background to the dispute is covered in our Crimean Peninsula guide.
On 30 September 2022, seven months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia declared the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions after referendums organised by occupation authorities. Russia claims Donetsk and Luhansk as republics in their full Ukrainian borders and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as oblasts whose boundaries it left undefined, though its forces control only part of them. That is how Russia arrives at 89: 24 republics, 9 krais, 48 oblasts, 3 federal cities, 1 autonomous oblast and 4 autonomous okrugs. Ukraine and almost all other states count none of the six annexed regions as Russian, leaving the figure at 83.
| Type | 1993 | March 2008 | Russia’s claim since 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Republics | 21 | 21 | 24 |
| Krais | 6 | 9 | 9 |
| Oblasts | 49 | 46 | 48 |
| Federal cities | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Autonomous oblast | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Autonomous okrugs | 10 | 4 | 4 |
| Total | 89 | 83 | 89 |
Eight Federal Districts Laid Over the Map Since 13 May 2000
Above the subjects sits a layer that is not in the constitution at all. On 13 May 2000 Putin grouped the regions into seven federal districts, each headed by a presidential envoy whose job is to keep regional law in line with federal law and to oversee federal agencies in the regions. The North Caucasian Federal District was split from the Southern on 19 January 2010, giving the current eight, and in November 2018 Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai were moved from the Siberian to the Far Eastern Federal District.
After the Beslan school siege in 2004 Putin also ended the direct election of governors, and the bilateral power-sharing treaties of the 1990s lapsed one by one; Tatarstan's, renewed on 11 July 2007, was the last to end, in 2017. Republics still have their own constitutions, official languages and anthems, which other subjects lack, but in practice power rests in Moscow; how that works is explained in our guide to the government of Russia.
From Sakha to Ingushetia: the Lopsided Map of 83 Subjects
Because the borders were drawn for ethnic homelands and Soviet planning rather than equal size, the subjects differ enormously. Sakha alone covers 3,083,523 km², about half of the Far Eastern Federal District, with roughly one million people. Krasnoyarsk Krai, enlarged by the 2007 mergers, is second at 2,366,797 km², about 13% of Russia. At the other end, Adygea (7,600 km²) sits entirely inside Krasnodar Krai. Population is just as uneven: Moscow has more than 13 million residents, while Chukotka had an estimated 49,348 in 2018, the fewest of any subject that is not part of a larger one.
Every one of these units, from Sakha to tiny Ingushetia, still sends exactly two members to the Federation Council, the same as Moscow. To see how those 83 pieces add up to the world's largest country, read our explainer on how big Russia really is.