Volost (Belarusian:во́ласць,romanized: volasts;Russian:во́лость[ˈvoɫəsʲtʲ];Ukrainian:во́лость) was a traditional administrative subdivision inKievan Rus', theGrand Duchy of Moscow, and theRussian Empire.
TheBrockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1890–1907) states that the origins of the concept is unclear: whether it originally referred to an administrative subdivision or to a peasantobshchina, the term referring to a territory under a single rule.[1]
In earlierEast Slavic history, in the lands ofRuthenia,volost was a name for the territory ruled by theknyaz, a principality; either as an absolute ruler or with varying degree of autonomy from theVelikiy Knyaz (Grand Prince). Starting from the end of the 14th century,volost was a unit of administrative division inGrand Duchy of Lithuania,[citation needed]Poland,[citation needed]Muscovy,[1] lands of modern Latvia[citation needed] and Ukraine. Since about the 16th century it was a part of provincialdistricts that were called "uezd" in Muscovy and the laterRussian Empire. Each uezd had several volosts that were subordinated to the uezd city.
After the abolition ofRussian serfdom in 1861,volost became a unit ofpeasant's localself-rule. A number ofmirs are united into a volost, which has an assembly consisting of elected delegates from the mirs. These elect an elder (starshina) and, hitherto, a court of justice (volostnoy sud). Theself-government of the mirs and volosts was, however, tempered by the authority of the police commissaries (stanovoi) and by the power of general oversight given to the nominated "district committees for the affairs of the peasants".[2]
Volosts were abolished by theSoviet administrative reform of 1923–1929.Raions may be roughly called a modern equivalent of both volosts and uezds.
Volosts were governed byvolost administration (волостное правление,volostnoye pravleniye), which consisted of the electablechief of volost (volostnoystarshina), chiefs of villages (villagestarostas) and other officials electable by the Volost Assembly (волостной сход,volostnoy skhod).[3]
Volost Court was thecourt electable by the Volost Assembly, which could handle smaller civil and criminal cases. It could sentence people tocorporal punishment,fine or short-termincarceration.[3]
In modern Russia,Veps National Volost existed in theRepublic of Karelia during 1996-2004. There were also volosts inOlonets Raion of Karelia during 1993-2004, e.g., NurmolskyselsovietНурмольский сельсовет based onNurmolitsy [ru] was renamed into Nurmolskaya volost in 1992.[4][5] There were alsoru:Коткозерская волость,ru:Видлицкая волость.
"Волость" .Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (in Russian). 1906. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Phillips, Walter Alison (1911). "Russia". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 874–878.Authority control databases: National |
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