Imperial officials who daydreamed about looking out the frosty windows of the Winter Palace onto a relentlessly well-organized and highly standarized state were in for disappointment. Wedged in at the margins of the more-or-less regularized provinces of the empire were a handful of regions with what might be described as temporary, underdeveloped, or relatively autonomous administrative structures. These included the territory of the Don Cossack Host, the former kingdom of Georgia, the territory of the Caucasian mountaineers, the lands claimed by the Russian American Company on the North American continent (with the Aleutian Islands), Chukotka, the okrugs of Kamchatka and Okhotsk, and two chunks of land in remote northern Finland.
The Piadyshev Atlas describes two semi-autonomous, or primary, administrative regions (the atlas does not include mention of namestnichestva or governor-generalships): the Grand Duchy of Finland (acquired in 1809); the Kingdom of Poland (reconstituted from the lands acquired by Russia via the partitioning of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under Catherine II).
Provinces were the building blocks of the imperial administrative structure. Starting in the 18th century, provinces came in two forms: the guberniia and the oblast'. Empress Catherine II determined the shape and structure of the former, dominant form, with her 1775 Statute on Guberniia Administration (law number 14392). At that time there were 40 gubernii; by the 1820s there were 49, the geography of which corresponds - some argue - to the geography of the core of the Russian Empire. Included here are the 7 gubernii of the Grand Duchy of Finland as well, bringing the total number of gubernii shown on the atlas to 56. The guberniia was a secondary administrative unit.
The districts were tertiary administrative units. Each was nested within a secondary unit (guberniia, oblast', or irregular division). The Piadyshev Atlas describes 583 districts, including 24 vladeniia and okruga in Georgia, 7 nachal'stva in the Don Cossack lands, 6 tsinuty in Bessarabia, and 5 ober-hauptmannshafften in Kurliand.
The provincial town (губернский город) was the administrative capital of the province, the seat of the civil governor, and in some cases a military governor or governor-general. Provincial towns ranged from the relatively humble (Vologda) to the grandiose (St. Petersburg). Some boasted long urban histories, such as Moscow or Kiev, while others were essentially conjured out of thin air by imperial decree, such as Kherson and Simferopol. A few qualified as economic centers or trading hubs (think Riga or Novgorod); a handful were cultural centers (think Vilno or Tiflis). Others were frontier towns first and foremost, such as Ufa and Tobol'sk. Provincial Towns (alphabetically, by province) Provincial town Province Arkhangel'sk (Архангельск) Arkhangel'skaia guberniia Astrakhan (Астрахань) Astrakhanskaia guberniia Belostok (Белосток) Belostokskaia oblast' Kishinev (Кишинев) Bessarabskaia oblast' Chernigov (Чернигов) Chernigovskaia guberniia Novocherkask (Новочеркаск) Don Cossack Host Ekaterinoslav (Екатеринослав) Ekaterinoslavskaia guberniia Krasnoiarsk (Красноярск) Eniseiskaia guberniia Revel' (Ревель) Estliandskaia guberniia Grodno (Гродно) Grodnenskaia guberniia Iakutsk (Якутск) Iakutskaia oblast' Iaroslavl' (Ярославль) Iaroslavskaia guberniia Irkutsk (Иркутск) Irkutskaia oblast' Kaluga (Калуга) Kaluzhskaia guberniia Petropavlovskoi Port (Петропавловской Порт) Kamchatka Stavropol' (Ставрополь) Kavkazskaia oblast' Kazan' (Казань) Kazanskaia guberniia Khar'khov (Харьхов) Khar'kovskaia guberniia Kherson (Херсон) Khersonskaia guberniia Kiev (Киев) Kievskaia guberniia Kostroma (Кострома) Kostromskaia guberniia Mitau (Митау) Kurliandskaia guberniia Kursk (Курск) Kurskaia guberniia Riga (Рига) Lifliandskaia guberniia Minsk (Минск) Minskaia guberniia Mogilev (Могилев) Mogilevskaia guberniia Moskva (Москва) Moskovskaia guberniia Nizhnii Novgorod (Нижний Новгород) Nizhegorodskaia guberniia Novgorod (Новгород) Novgorodskaia guberniia Okhotsk (Охотск) Okhotskoi okrug Petrozavodsk (Петрозаводск) Olonetskaia guberniia Omsk (Омск) Omskaia guberniia Ufa (Уфа) Orenburgskaia guberniia Orel (Орел) Orlovskaia guberniia Penza (Пенза) Penzenskaia guberniia Perm' (Пермь) Permskaia guberniia Kamenets (Каменец) Podol'skaia guberniia Poltava (Полтава) Poltavskaia guberniia Pskov (Псков) Pskovskaia guberniia Riazan' (Рязань) Riazanskaia guberniia Sankt Peterburg (Санкт Петербург) Sanktpeterburgskaia guberniia Saratov (Саратов) Saratovskaia guberniia Simbirsk (Симбирск) Simbirskaia guberniia Smolensk (Смоленск) Smolenskaia guberniia Tambov (Тамбов) Tambovskaia guberniia Simferopol' (Симферополь) Tavricheskaia guberniia Tobol'sk (Тобольск) Tobol'skaia guberniia Tomsk (Томск) Tomskaia guberniia Tula (Тула) Tul'skaia guberniia Tver' (Тверь) Tverskaia guberniia Viatka (Вятка) Viatskaia guberniia Vil'no (Вильно) Vilenskaia guberniia Vitebsk (Витебск) Vitebskaia guberniia Vladimir (Владимир) Vladimirskaia guberniia Vologda (Вологда) Vologodskaia guberniia Zhitomir (Житомир) Volynskaia guberniia Voronezh' (Воронежь) Voronezhskaia guberniia
Geographical Atlas of the Russian Empire, 1820-1827 [Piadyshev Atlas]
The Piadyshev Atlas contains attestations of 459 district (uezd) towns. This is a bit odd, given the fact that the atlas describes 591 districts. How might we make up - or at least explain the shortfall? To start, the 43 districts in the Grand Duchy of Finland, the 8 voevodstvos in the Kingdom of Poland, the 24 domains (владения) and districts (округа) of the (former) Kingdom of Georgia, and the 7 nachal'stva of the Don Cossack territory lacked district seats per se, as these regions had different administrative structures than the rest of the empire. That brings the target number down to 509, from 592. GIS software makes it incredibly easy to count the number of districts with at least one location designated as a district town: 444. In other words, the dataset is missing 66 district towns? Happily, that is not the case. You see, in most cases, a district that was home to a provincial seat (gubernskij gorod) did not have a separate district town. That means that we can add our provincial towns to the count. 55 districts were home to provincial towns (excluding Okhotsk and Kamchatka, which were not organized as regular provinces), but in 5 cases the atlas shows the presence of both a provincial and a district town. Eliminating those redundancies, and treating provincial towns as district towns, we can now cover 494 districts. What about the remaining 15? Careful scrutiny reveals that according to the atlas, precisely 15 districts lacked district towns altogether (3 in Iakutsk, 1 in Tavrida, 1 in Kavkazskaia oblast', 3 in Kharkov, 4 in Minsk, 3 in Vilensk). The math is a dizzying and the explanations myriad, but the result is that the dataset in fact contains what it ought to, given the parameters of the source from which it is drawn.
Provinces came in two forms. While the guberniia was the more standardized and more prolific form, the oblast' played an important role in the administrative geography of the empire as well. The oblast' was a secondary administrative unit. A quick glance at the map reveals that one of the hallmarks of the oblast' was location. If gubernii constituted the "core", the oblast' helped define the periphery of state administration. From west to east, the 5 oblasts are: Belostok, Bessarabia, Kavkaz (Caucasus), Irkustk, Iakutsk.
Large towns (большие города) are found only in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland.
Mid-size towns are found only in the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Finland. They are rough equivalents of the uezd towns.