Oblasts of Ukraine - General Characteristics

General Characteristics

An uncommon term in the English language is oblast, where in Ukraine the term is can imply a specific portion of the country, in addition to its use to describe Crimea, which stems mostly from the fact that Crimea was an administrative oblast of Ukraine since it was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 up until Ukrainian independence in 1991. The term oblast itself was first introduced in 1932 when the Ukrainian SSR was divided into seven oblasts replacing the previous subdivision system based on okrugs and encompassing 406 raions (districts). The first oblasts were Vinnytsia Oblast, Kiev Oblast, Odessa Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Soon after that in the summer of 1932 there was formed Donetsk Oblast out of eastern parts of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts and in the fall of 1932 there was formed Chernihiv Oblast on the border of Kiev and Kharkiv oblasts. Between 1935 - 1938 there existed several newly created and self-governed okrugs. Upon liquidation of the okrugs in 1937-38 Kiev, Vinnytsia, Odessa, and Kharkiv oblasts were each split into four additional oblasts (Zhytomyr Oblast, Kamianets-Podilsky Oblast (later - Khmelnytsky), Mykolaiv Oblast, Poltava Oblast). Just before the World War II, the Donetsk Oblast was split into Stalin Oblast and Voroshylovhrad Oblast and the Kirovohrad Oblast was created out of portions of Kiev, Mykolaiv and Odessa oblasts.

During World War II Ukraine added eight additional oblasts of the West Ukraine and Bessarabia. Upon the occupation of Ukraine by the Nazi Germany the territory was split between General Government, Kingdom of Romania and Reichskommissariat Ukraine and carried out a completely different administrative division, see Reichskommissariat Ukraine. With the re-establishing of the Soviet power in the state after the war, the administrative division by oblast was resumed adding one more oblast—Zakarpattia. In 1954, the Crimean Oblast was transferred from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian SSR; parts of the surrounding oblasts were incorporated into the Cherkasy Oblast, while Izmail Oblast was absorbed by Odessa Oblast. In 1959, Drohobych Oblast was merged with Lviv Oblast.

Most of Ukraine's oblasts are named after their respective administrative centers, which are also the largest and most developed city in a given region. Each province generally consists of about one to two million of people, ranging anywhere from as low as 904,000 in Chernivtsi Oblast to 4.4 million in the eastern oblast of Donetsk. Each oblast is generally subdivided into about 20 raions (mean average, can range anywhere from 11 in Chernivtsi to 27 in Kharkiv and Vinnytsia Oblasts).