Administrative Divisions
The imperial archives are filled with documents that describe Russia as a series of neatly bounded spaces. Administrative divisions, or units, came in an astonishingly diverse array of sizes and shapes, boasted various chronologies of formation and dissolution, and belonged to a complex set of political, military, and cultural jurisdictions. All, however, imposed a comforting semblance of order on an otherwise overwhelmingly vast terrain.
The administrative divisions shown on the atlas can are divided into three categories:
- primary units (2)
- secondary units (56)
- tertiary units (583)