Talk:Subdivisions of Russia

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You have new messages (last change).

I happened to notice Image:Rusfedmap.jpg which has the seven federal districts nicely outlined, but I figured it was removed for copyright reasons.

I went on to investigate the original site and found this page: http://www.fccland.ru/map-sub.htm

Unlike the currently linked page, it seems to be properly marked as Cyrillic so my browser shows Cyrillic letters rather than mojibake. It also has less text and more pleasant, pastel colors.

However, I wouldn't want to replace the link because I can't read Russian so I can't figure out which page is more recent and/or authoritative. The same site seems to have even more detailed maps, at http://www.fccland.ru/kart.htm... advice from someone who knows Russian would be appreciated. --Shallot 15:33, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

This is the official site, so I'm putting the link into relevant articles. I noticed they are planning to provide English pages as well. Mikkalai 00:01, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Being totally confused with millions of ways subdivisions of Russia are named, translated, transliterated, and so on, I have devised the following naming system that I am currently trying to implement throughout Russia-related articles. Please try to follow it as well as it adds to consistency of wikipedia. If you have any concerns or suggestions, please contact me on my user page, but remember that any change to the table below will necessitate making of dozens of minor corrections across articles.

Proposed Naming Convention for Russian subdivisions
Subdivision type (in Russian) English Translation (use for clarification only) English (use in the names of articles and links) English Transliteration
Федеральный округ Federal District Federal District Federalny Okrug
Республика Republic Republic Respublika


Край Territory Krai Kray (or Krai)
Область Province Oblast Oblast
Федеральный город (город федерального значения) Federal City Federal City Federalny Gorod
Автономная область Autonomous Region Autonomous Oblast Avtonomnaya Oblast
Автономный округ Autonomous District Autonomous District Avtonomny Okrug
Район District District Rayon
Улус Ulus (a district in Sakha) Ulus Ulus
Сельсовет Rural council (in Nenetsia) Selsovet Selsovet
Волость Rural district (in Karelia) Volost Volost

--Ezhiki 19:36, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

Region for oblast sounds pretty weird and it is sure to blur the distinction when it comes to economic regions. Wouldn't it be correct to refer to oblast as province? --apoivre 11:57, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Good point. I have actually thought of it, but overlooked when compiling the table. This, however, is proposed to be used as clarification only (as in "a Russian oblast means province"), not in the links (e.g. a link to Amur Oblast should look like this - Amur Oblast, and never like this - Amur Province. Redirects would be fine, of course, but since all of the oblasts' articles are currently named with oblast in their names (which I personally dislike, but have no desire to take on a (rather meaningless) project of renaming every single reference), province should be used sparingly to clarify a point when necessary.
Hope this does make sense. --Ezhiki 14:28, Apr 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] oblast vs. province

You say you dislike "oblast". It is not the matter of likes or dislikes, it is a matter of clarity when it comes to subdivisions of various countries of various subdivisions. For example, I live in Santa Clara County, my girlfriend was born in Département Indre-et-Loire, France. Why Russian oblast is to be translated? Mikkalai 20:26, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

As you may have noticed, I am OK with using oblast despite personally disliking it. I also dislike cinnamon rolls and country music, which does not give me rights to go around wikipedia and to replace all references with crappy bakery and rural music-like noises. I do, however, believe, that the terms oblast and krai must be clarified as (but not replaced with!) province and territory when it is feasible to do so. This is, in fact, what my proposition is all about. After all, it is quite easy for a western person to guess what a département or a canton means, while it is not so obvious with Russian words, which, besides being from language quite different from English, occur quite rarely in everyday speech or news broadcasts.
Sure hope that this will clear the misunderstanding.
--Ezhiki 20:37, May 6, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming proposal

A brief discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Russian Subdivisions have led to the proposal of renaming this page to Federal Subjects of Russia. Main reason: "subdivision" is not a specialized term, which leads to confusion about what should be covered by the article and by the Wikipedia:WikiProject Russian Subdivisions. Please cast your votes. Mikkalai 17:05, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

I vote for this proposal with the following provisions: information in this article should be splitted and moved to the Federal districts of Russia, Economic regions of Russia, and Federal subjects of Russia articles. The Subdivisions of Russia article should be retained, but it should only give overview information on various kinds of subdivisions that exist in modern Russia and provide links to the articles listed above.--Ezhiki 18:15, May 26, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Ezhiki, especially that the article is now too long. --Kpalion 19:53, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
Me too. Mikkalai 15:56, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
Per voting results, I created the Federal districts of Russia (merged info), Economic regions of Russia, and Federal subjects of Russia articles. Mostly copied content from this article and edited/re-formatted it a bit. Please check those articles and make corrections if necessary.
Now, this article (Subdivisions of Russia) needs to be re-written and duplicate information needs to be removed. I will do it myself if no one else wishes to. Please, let know here.--Ezhiki 16:22, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Jao, for re-working this article. You beat me by mere minutes - I was going to work on this today :)
Also, I made some other changes to this edit:
  • removed most of the info on the federal subjects (it duplicates the Federal subjects of Russia article - what's left still needs to be revised and compressed;
  • removed an incorrect statement about federal cities not being subdivided into the districts (they are);
  • removed the link to the List of capitals of subnational entities - it is a circular reference as the list points back to this same article.
--Ezhiki 14:29, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Naming 2005

initially moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Subnational entities/Naming

Hi Tobias. Do you really think it makes sense to do such a massive rename of oblasts to provinces? As for me I strongly against massive renames and especially against of this one. Yes, I'm not a native English speaker, but this rename is against the Wikipedia rule that claims that most common English names must be used for articles, all others should be redirects. Just try to search in google for example "Amur Oblast" - 85,300, "Amur Province" - 695. Did you see how many articles are referenced "... Oblast" articles? Had you thought why we had articles about oblasts for so long period of time and did not rename them to provinces, regions or other? Yes, for sure, we were not so clever as you are. Thank you for your work... MaxiMaxiMax 06:37, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for my rudeness, I'm really upset with your changes. I hope you understood your mistake and will revert you changes by yourself or I will have to do it today or tomorrow later. MaxiMaxiMax 06:40, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Maxim, yeah your post was a little rude, but nice that you came back again. :-) As you can see from Ukrainia-section I was already exposed to much much worse postings. Mmmh that something existed for a long time does not mean it is the best thing. I do not know whether you tried to restrict google to english, e.g. for german "Amur oblast" is the same, province wouldn't. Then subtract wikipedia mirrors, something that can be done for those pages that included the term wikipedia at time of going into Googles index.
Okay, but still probably more pages use oblast. Do the other pages have to care about worldwide subdivision naming or do they write more for a specific purpose? Wikipedia might have to use wikipedia-translation rules. How many people cite Oxford English Dictionary? And I do not think OED uses "most common name" - rule. The latter could lead to strange results. Imagine 60% of -ise/-ize words beeing most common in -ize and 40% most common in -ise.
As someone who writes a book you maybe better stick to one way, especially if it is an encyclopedia. And as editor one has to be bold. E.g. I found in Britannica that they translated "Raion" as "Sector". I can imagine they just run out of words, "district" was allready used to translate okrug and so they took "sector". This seems courages to me (I might be wrong here - and anywhere else of course).
I started a translation table Subdivisions of Russia#Territorial administrative units and User:Ezhiki pointed me to his much more complete and nice table and improved the translation table. For Raion there is no good solution but the rest is not that bad.
Except for Belarus (voblast), Ukraine (oblast') and the special cases Spain (comarca) and Poland (Voivodship) all subnational entities are named by words used in english speaking countries. No japanese, korean, turkish.
And the other way around what are the other wikipedias doing? de:Oblast but for "jewish autonomous oblast/province" they use "Gebiet", nl:Oblast, pl:Obwód eo:Provincio - the eo-people seem to take care about not letting foreign words in that have an eo-counterpart. You know what ia an oblast, and I know (to some existent), because I am interested in geography and linguistics and I grew up in East Germany that had some connections to Soviet Union and made russian obligatory in school. Tobias Conradi 07:48, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(while I did my best to explain my position Maxim just reverted)

I reverted your changes, because I found that they were really messy - some oblasts were renamed, some not, some articles were edited, some were not, so it was the worst case I could ever see in Wikipedia. I was very disappointed and upset. I also cannot understand why User:Ezhiki did not stop you from doing such nasty piece of work. MaxiMaxiMax 07:20, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

it seems talking is over Tobias Conradi 08:01, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
calling my changes vandalism (see:Wikipedia:Vandalism) is defamation. While reverting you reinserted some errors. Tobias Conradi 08:16, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I already said my sorry, I was really shocked at that moment. Excuse me again, for "vandalism" especially (it was absolutely wrong), I need to be more calm. About the changes itself - let's discuss them with more people involved, I'm sure we will find a good solution. At the moment I don't think that your explanation is good enough to change my mind. I tried to search just for English. 60,500 "Amur Oblast", 733 "Amur Province" (loks a little strange) - so anyway oblasts are dominated almost in 100 times. "Sector" for raions looks terrible - i think they were drunk when writing it. MaxiMaxiMax 08:27, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"Amur Province" looks strange to me too, maybe because I have already seen so many oblasts. I reverted Template:Subdivisions of Russia to a middle position. Because Economic regions and federal districts use this as well. As well now again lowercased are things like "Autonomous District" -> "Autonomous district". I go to bed now. lets talk later. Tobias Conradi 08:37, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The following comment is copied from User talk:Ezhiki#Subdivisions of Russia:

Well, Tobias, one—you've got your first feedback, and two—whoa! It looks like a little war was fought this night, and the smoke is just settling down. Guys, please, don't fight like that. The last thing we need is editors reverting each other on sight. From other comments I see there is a truce in effect now, so well, let's talk.

To clarify, when I suggested to do some moves to see what the response is going to be, I did not mean half of the oblast articles. Just one or two would probably have been sufficient. I would have interfered, of course, if I had noticed it right away, but unfortunately Tobias started moving articles after I logged off from Wikipedia for the day (which, considering the fact that he lives in Europe and I—in North America, is not surprising).

Speaking of the actual change itself (from "oblasts" to "provinces"), I am myself divided. I never liked the articles being named "XXX Oblast" and "XXX Krai" in the first place, and indeed I was thinking of renaming them to "provinces"/"territories" when I just joined Wikipedia over a year ago. Also, it did not look like there was a consunsus at that time—someone merely created the articles under "oblasts"/"krais" without probably giving much thought to it. It was a workable first-time solution, especially because most of the articles didn't even exist. Later, due to the later lack of general interest to the articles on Russian federal subjects (I hate to admit that until fairly recently I was pretty much the only one doing any significant work on them, but that's the truth), the original naming convention stayed there. Two things stopped me from moving the articles to "provinces"/"territories" a year ago—first (the silly one) being new, I did not even know that non-admins could move articles at all (as you may remember, of the skins did not have a "Move this article" link; incidentally, that was the skin I used), and second, by the time I learned otherwise, I became unsure if such a move was at all possible without introducing numerous inconsistencies and ambiguities ("districts" case being the best example of that). So, I left the article titles alone in hopes that may be one day a clear non-conflictious system would emerge, that would allow for use of English terms. I am yet to see such a system to come out of Tobias' project, but at least he's working on it. So far, the results only reassure me that we either have to stick with "oblasts", or resort to awkward solutions (such as Britannica's "sectors"). A mix of terms, of course, is also possible (such as using "provinces" for oblasts, and native terms like "krai" and "okrug" for the rest), but the benefits of this are questionnable, and they do not live up to my consistency-keeping efforts. Thus, I prefer to remain neutral pending the community's solution. Perhaps a poll could be conducted on the Russian wikipedians' notice board to agree upon terminology once and for all.

To answer Max's questions. Even if all oblasts are renamed to provinces, there is no way further renaming (e.g., to "regions") could be substantiated. "Province"/"oblast" are clearly the best names for oblasts—"region" sounds too generic, and other terms are probably even less accurate. Plus, while at least some benefits can be seen from changing "oblasts" to "provinces" (even if one disagrees with the whole concept of such a renaming), none such benefits exist when "provinces" are renamed into "regions" or anything else. So, if I were to support this renaming, it would be one-time deal only.

As for the "BTW" question (which English-speaking countries have provinces)—the answer is Canada. Not that I think it matters in this case, though.

Finally, to make my point of view even more clear, I would like to say that I strongly dislike Wikipedia's policy of "the most common English name". I would prefer to see the articles to be placed under the "official long names" (i.e., "Russian Federation" instead of "Russia", "United States of America" instead of "United States", or (*gasp*) "Kyiv" instead of "Kiev"). To me, in the vast majority of cases there is only one "official" name, while there can be a slew of more or less "common English names" (for which the redirects could be the best solution). While there are some merits to the "most common name" policy in some cases (mostly when political POVs are involved), I strongly believe that placing an article under the "full official" name is of more educational value. The community, however, does not seem to agree with my opinion, so I am sticking with consensus and am enforcing it when necessary. For this case, the problem is also that there is no "official English name" for Russian oblasts—a quick scan of official oblasts' websites confirms that (they can call themselves "oblasts", "provinces", "regions", "territories", or sometimes a mix of these terms on the same page). This is where a community consensus (reinforced by the poll results) would come most handy.

Well, I hope this leads to a more productive discussion and actions. Please let me know what you think. Please leave the articles alone for now until more people can voice their opinions. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 16:02, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

So, Ëzhiki, I hope that now I can see clear the difference in our positions - you want to use the "most correct" names and I want to use "most used" names. I'm sure that my position is better because it is unbiassed and simple checked - we can just search by google and find what name is used more for this or that object. Your method is not so good because it is just your opinion how articles should be named and there are a lot of people who also think that they know it and their and your opinions are different. As for me using of name that is in 100 times less popular than another name is nonsense. Can you also tell me what is common between provinces in Canada (thanx, I forgot about it) and oblasts in Russia? I thought that provinces in Canada are similar to states in USA and oblasts in Russia have much less own rights than these provinces, I think they are more similar to departments in France (may be I'm wrong, so just tell me). Anyway, my strongest point is the popularity of the name - 100 times less popular name is 100 times less possible candidate. Just as example - if we name articles about cities using coordinates of they borders (or centers if it is too long) we will get totally correct system and avoid any ambiguation. But actually we always use names of cities because we are people and for people "names" are something that may be not so precise but understandable. If oblasts in Russia are popular between English speakers using this name - it is not a task for Wikipedia to change the situation. Here we do not change our imperfect world, we just describe it with all of its lacks. MaxiMaxiMax 16:44, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Max, let me reassure you that my point of view (to use official names) is strictly my point of view. I have no intentions to circumvent the established policy of using the most common English names or to persuade anyone that it is better (chances of success here would be pretty slim, as you very rightfully noted). You are right, there are downsides to using the official names as opposed to the most common names, but it works the other way, too. "Amur Oblast" outnumbers "Amur Province" ~10:1, so we stick with "oblast". But what if a different oblast for some reason googles up more hits the other way? What if, for example, "Amur Oblast" is more common than "Amur Province", but "Kaliningrad Province" is more common than "Kaliningrad Oblast" (this is just a theoretical example)? What if there is an act of terrorism performed in Amur Oblast tomorrow, and the press starts to refer to it as "Amur Region", boosting the google count overnight (again, just a theoretical example)? How do you decide which name is "more common" when the very parameter defining "most common" may be inconsistent or change altogether? "Official name", on the other hand, is usually just one name. It would be logical to use it as a primary title.
Anyway, the point is moot. This is not about "official" vs. "most common" names.
To answer your question—yes, Canadian provinces are more like the US states (or, even closer, like Russian republics). Oblasts are much less autonomous. On the historical side, however, in the 18th century Russia used to call its subdivisions "provinces" (провинции), into which the guberniyas were subdivided. They were eventually replaced with oblasts. Historical Russian provinces and modern Russian oblasts have a lot in common, unlike Canadian provinces and Russian oblasts.
On other points (re: names) I agree with you and understand your point of view wholeheartedly. We are not computers to use binary assignemnts to refer to the real-world entities. I, however, also understand what Tobias wants to do, and agree to some of his points as well. Which is exactly why I prefer to remain neutral and let the community consensus sort it out. Both sides have merits, but only one can serve as a final solution if cosistency is to be maintained. So, let's figure out which one it is going to be, and have as many people involved as possible. I'll try to draft a poll myself if I have time, but anyone can feel free to do it, if I don't get to it soon enough.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:49, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
Hi Ëzhiki. Thank you for your explanation, it was pretty clear and especially thank you that you don't insist that you are right (unfortunately it is my problem very often, sometimes I too stubborn). One small note - "Amur Oblast" outnumbers "Amur Province" not ~10:1 but almost 83:1 (and it is a big difference). Additionally, I suggest another reason not to translate names of russian federal subjects: there is no difference between oblasts and krais except of name (yes, it's stupid but it's true). So if you translate names, you have to translate both names to one. The system will look simpler for foreign readers, but it will become less correspondent with real world and if they ever read in news for example that this or that event we happened there they will be confused about names. I'm sure that Russian system of federal subjects is too complicated due to historical reasons and for me it would be better if it is changed in future, but at the moment is is so. I'm sure that anybody who wants to know something about Russia (just people for whom we write our articles) should be clearly notified about real structure of Russian subnational entities and their history, using examples how to compare these entities with subnational entities in other countries, but not about our own ideas how this structure should look in ideal world. Translation of names will not help our readers, but will make their task harder. So for my opinion we should not translate entity types and we should leave them as is and provide really good explanation of system in article Federal subjects of Russia and in all 6 articles about particular types of subjects, like Oblasts of Russia. The last one at the moment is less than as stub - just a list without any explanations what is the difference between oblasts and other types and how this difference was established. I think we should concentrate our forces to make the system more clear but not to hide its complexity by replacing real names with names like "Province" which have another meaning in English. Unfortunately my English is not good enough to write these articles by myself so if you tell me that I'm just lurking and criticize all your ideas instead of doing real work I have no other chouice but agree with you. I really like both of you intention to improve articles about Russian subentities but I think that names of them are not a point we should improve, names are good (for me even perfect), but articles themself are not good enough. Thank you for your cooperation, hope we will not fight and revert each others changes anymore, excuse me for my lack of self-control yesterday. MaxiMaxiMax 05:23, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Chinese entities are less complex? Japan and Korea have less history? Is this the reason why the articles there are named with english words? - Do you think Wikipedia should be a mirror of Google's content? Did you read what I wrote about your Google analysis? - Why should Krai and Oblast be translated the same way? Are all provinces in the world the same? Would it harm to call oblasts provinces? Would it harm a lot? Would it benefit? Are the slavic CIS countries something special, so they can be the only one to use local names for article titles? Shall we use selsoviet? Shall we use sumon? Why did people switch from selsoviet to sumon? Tobias Conradi 06:12, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Hi Tobias, nice to see you online. You have so many questions... Are they just to ask them or you are really interested? If it is your sincer interest I can prepare my answers later, but these questions have no connection to our problem. Rules of English part of Wikipedia claim that we must use the most common English names for articles, so we must use them or change our rules. So at first change these rules and then we will rename all erticles to whatever you want. Note: after this next guy will come and rename them to whatever he wants. If it is your intention you may insist on it. MaxiMaxiMax 07:08, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
BTW "oblast" is recognized as English word by Merriam-Webster: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=oblast&x=0&y=0 . It has no "selsoviet", so I don't insist on using of it, for me "rural administration" is perfect, it does not know the word "sumon" (and me as well). Let's go further, Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9072844 "Tomsk - city and administrative centre of Tomsk oblast, ...", etc, so I'm sure that the term "oblast" is known for English speakers and it is the best choice for naming of oblast articles MaxiMaxiMax 09:34, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
ok m-w is something, but also WP has an entry for Oblast ... and one for sumon. It is not possible to derive from an entry that people in general actually know the word. I asked the questions because in the previous statement you said somethings that where (in my opinion) not correct. Regarding the naming uppper vs. lower case english vs. local, what would you do with subdivisions of Ukraine, subdivisions of Belarus, provinces of Kazakhstan, provinces of Kyrgyzstan? What with those that now are called viloyat (Provinces of Tajikistan, Provinces of Turkmenistan) viloyat (Provinces of Uzbekistan. The most common name rule is less important than the aim of wikipedia: provide an encyclopedia. Tobias Conradi 19:08, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I used a cite from Britannica's article about my home city to show you that word "oblast" is actively used in other encyclopedias, and not only in article's titles but also everywhere through the text, what else do you need to believe that the word "oblast" was absorbed by English? I have no idea about subdivisions of other countries, may be in English their names are traditionally translated, but names of Russian subdivisions traditionally used untranslated. The language itself is the result of history and is often not so logical as we want it to have. But it is not Wikipedia aim to change English language or the world itself. Wikipedia should reflect the real state of things. If in future in English Russian subdivisions become translated we will change article names, but not before this fact happened. I absolutely agree with you that aim of wikipedia is to provide the real knowledge to people, so I do as well. And for this purpose using the most common names is better than inventing of names that nobody actually knows and use. MaxiMaxiMax 04:12, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So, anyone was up to compiling a poll yet? I, while I was online a lot, could not devote a chunk of time necessary to develop one.

Also, to answer Tobias' question about sumons. According to the Russian Constitution, Russian federal subjects themselves decide on their administrative structure. While most of them kept Soviet selsovets, some of them went with the more ethnic names, like sumon, somon, or nasleg. Basically, they are the same old selsovets, only called differently. Russian administrative classificator (OKATO) clearly distinguishes them, though.

Buryatia has both somons and selsovets.

Speaking of using "rural administration" for "selsovet"—it would not be entirely accurate. The Republic of Karelia already has rural administrations (сельские администрации). Again, these are the same selsovets, but the official name for them is different.

If I missed anything, let me know, please.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 22:04, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that we need a poll about renaming. As for me the problem looks closed. If not - notify me, please and I will take a part in the poll. MaxiMaxiMax 06:14, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
what about Ukraine (..._oblast') and Belarus (..._voblast)? For me the problem does not look that closed, but at first we should try to solve it here. Somewhere above it was said we could ask Russian Wikipedian, I think this might be a little biased. ;-) sorry for my short answers but I am short of time right now. best regards + Happy Easter (christian bias- sorry)Tobias Conradi 19:57, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As I've considered naming issues over the last few months, I've come to think that the English word oblast should be used in the text of most of the Ukrainian articles, but proper names in each article's intro should still be formally transliterated with oblast’. This is something to discuss at WikiProject Ukrainian subdivisions before making any changes. —Michael Z. 2005-03-26 22:47 Z
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