Volost
Volost(Belarusian:во́ласць,romanized:volasts;Russian:во́лость[ˈvoləsʲtʲ];Ukrainian:во́лость) was a traditional administrative subdivision inKievan Rus',theGrand Duchy of Moscow,and theRussian Empire.
History[edit]
TheBrockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary(1890–1907) states that the origins of the concept is unclear: whether it originally referred to an administrative subdivision or to a peasantobshchina,the term referring to a territory under a single rule.[1]
In earlierEast Slavichistory, in the lands ofRuthenia,volostwas a name for the territory ruled by theknyaz,a principality; either as an absolute ruler or with varying degree of autonomy from theVelikiy Knyaz(Grand Prince). Starting from the end of the 14th century,volostwas a unit of administrative division inGrand Duchy of Lithuania,[citation needed]Poland,[citation needed]Muscovy,[1]lands of modern Latvia[citation needed]and Ukraine. Since about the 16th century it was a part of provincialdistrictsthat were called "uezd"in Muscovy and the laterRussian Empire.Each uezd had several volosts that were subordinated to the uezd city.
After the abolition ofRussian serfdomin 1861,volostbecame a unit ofpeasant's localself-rule.A number ofmirsare united into a volost, which has an assembly consisting of elected delegates from the mirs. These elect an elder (starshina) and, hitherto, a court of justice (volostnoy sud). Theself-governmentof the mirs and volosts was, however, tempered by the authority of the police commissaries (stanovoi) and by the power of general oversight given to the nominated "district committees for the affairs of the peasants".[2]
Volosts were abolished by theSovietadministrative reform of 1923–1929.Raionsmay be roughly called a modern equivalent of both volosts and uezds.
Administration[edit]
Volosts were governed byvolost administration(волостное правление,volostnoye pravleniye), which consisted of the electablechief of volost(volostnoystarshina), chiefs of villages (villagestarostas) and other officials electable by the Volost Assembly (волостной сход,volostnoy skhod).[3]
Volost Courtwas thecourtelectable by the Volost Assembly, which could handle smaller civil and criminal cases. It could sentence people tocorporal punishment,fineor short-termincarceration.[3]
Russian Federation[edit]
In modern Russia, the term has a different meaning. The subdivision into volosts was used in theRepublic of Karelia,where volosts had the same status asraions,[citation needed]and inLeningrad,Pskov,Samara,andTula Oblasts,where volosts are considered subdivisions of raions and have the same status asselsovetsin otherRussian federal subjects.[citation needed]
See also[edit]
- Veps National Volostwithin the Russian Republic of Karelia
Notes[edit]
- ^ab.Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary(in Russian). 1906.
- ^One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Phillips, Walter Alison(1911). "Russia".InChisholm, Hugh(ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 874–878.
- ^abLarge Encyclopedic Dictionary,vol. 1, Moscow, 1991
| Authority control databases:National |
|---|
