Raions in the Soviet Union In the
Soviet Union, raions were administrative divisions created in the 1920s to reduce the number of territorial divisions inherited from the
Russian Empire and to simplify their bureaucracies. The process of conversion to the system of raions was called
raionirovanie ("regionalization"). It was started in 1923 in the
Urals,
North Caucasus, and
Siberia as a part of the Soviet administrative reform and continued through 1929, by which time the majority of the country's territory was divided into raions instead of the old
volosts and
uyezds. The concept of
raionirovanie was met with resistance in some republics, especially in
Ukraine, where local leaders objected to the concept of raions as being too centralized in nature and ignoring the local customs. This point of view was backed by the Soviet Russian
People's Commissariat of Nationalities. Nevertheless, eventually all of the territory of the Soviet Union was regionalized. Soviet raions had self-governance in the form of an elected
district council (
raysovet) and were headed by the local head of administration, who was either elected or appointed.
Raions outside the Soviet Union Following the model of the Soviet Union, raions were introduced in Bulgaria and Romania. In China the term is used in Uyghur in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In February 1968 the 177 raions of Romania were reconstituted into 39 counties (
Romanian:
județe) which was the administrative term used before the communist era. This was done partly for nationalist reasons and partly to centralize the power of
Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Raions after the dissolution of the Soviet Union After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, raions as administrative units continue to be used in
Azerbaijan,
Belarus,
Moldova,
Russia, and
Ukraine. They are also used in breakaway regions: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria. In Georgia they exist as districts in Tbilisi. ==Modern raions==