Governorates of the Russian Empire

Governorates of the Russian Empire
Category	Subdivision of an empire
Location	Russian Empire
Created by	"On the establishment of the gubernias and cities assigned to them"
Created	December 18, 1708
Abolished	1917 (inherited by the Soviet regime)
Number	117 (8 initially) (as of 1914)
Subdivisions	provinces, later uyezds (counties)

A governorate, or a guberniya (Russian: губе́рния; IPA: [ɡʊˈbʲɛrnʲɪjə]; also romanized gubernia, guberniia, gubernya), was a major and principal administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire and the early Russian SFSR. The term is usually translated as government, governorate, or province. A governorate was ruled by a governor (губернатор, gubernator), a word borrowed from Latin gubernator, in turn from Greek kybernetes. Sometimes the term guberniya was informally used to refer to the office of a governor.

Selected governorates were united under an assigned governor general such as Grand Duchy of Finland, Tsardom of Poland, Russian Turkestan and others. There also were military governors such as Kronshtadt, Vladivostok, and others. Aside of governorates, other types of divisions were oblasts (region) and okrugs (district).

This subdivision type was created by the edict (ukase) of Peter the Great on December 18, 1708 "On the establishment of the gubernias and cities assigned to them", which divided Russia into eight guberniyas.

In 1719, guberniyas were further subdivided into provinces (провинции, provintsii). Later the number of guberniyas was increased to 23.

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