raion

plural raions · plural raiony · alternative rayon · alternative rajon

1. An administrative unit of some Eastern European and Asian states.

   In 1923 Soviet Ukraine’s 102 povity were replaced by 53 larger okruhy (sing. okruha), and its 1,989 volosti by 706 raions.

   2007, John D. Pihach, “Locating the Ancestral Home” (chapter 7, pages 83–123), in Ukrainian Genealogy: A Beginner’s Guide (paperback), Edmonton · Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, →ISBN, Administrative Divisions (pages 88–96), Soviet Ukraine (pages 95–96), page 95

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   Below the oblasts come cities of oblast subordination and raiony. At the bottom we find rural and settlement soviets. We should note that certain very small cities will be subordinate to the raion level. In larger cities there will also be urban raiony. In the republics of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaidzhan and Moldavia, there are no oblasts and thus the raiony and cities here will be subordinate to the Republic level.

   1987, Cameron Ross, “Introduction”, in Local Government in the Soviet Union: Problems of Implementation and Control, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 8

   Suffice it to mention that several thousand raion papers were replaced by “territorial administrations” organs, and that all transport papers were closed.

   2000, Roman Szporluk, Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, page 119

   In Kirgiziia, which had thirty-four registered mosques in 1957, there were in that same year thirty-one raiony with none, and the ones which did exist did not answer the needs of the believer population either from the purely numerical standpoint or from that of their geographical distribution, and not only in raiony with no mosque.

   2000, Yaacov Ro’i, “The Registered Mosques and Clergy”, in Islam in the Soviet Union: From the Second World War to Gorbachev, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, part II (Establishment Islam), page 182

   On the eve of the twentieth century, Veniamin Semënov-Tian’-Shanskii, Pëtr’s son, popularized the idea of dividing the Russian Empire into agricultural and industrial raiony.

   2025, Stephan Rindlisbacher, “Gosplan: How to Achieve Spatial Homogeneity”, in Borders in Red: Managing Diversity in the Early Soviet Union, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, →ISBN, page 35