Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century. The reform saw introduction of the office of viceroy (gosudarev namestnik) which later were transformed into a general governor. Gosudarev namestnik literally means an imperial representative to the land. During the reform several already existing governments (guberniya) were combined under the office of the Russian viceroy and were called namestnichestvo. Those namestnichestvo were introduced onto the expanded territory as well, the only exclusion were the governments of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1796 all namestnichetvo were officially renamed into general governments. General governments exercised a small degree of autonomy as certain laws varied from general government to another. Reforms in the 19th century After the abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861, volosts became a unit of peasant's local self-rule. A number of mirs were united into a typical volost, which had an assembly consisting of elected delegates from the mirs. The self-government of the mirs and volosts was tempered by the authority of the police commissaries (stanovoy) and by the power of general oversight given to the nominated "district committees for the affairs of the peasants". Reforms in the 20th century By the 1910s, 104 administrative governorate units existed. Soviet Russia The Russian SFSR comprised 16 autonomous republics, 5 autonomous oblasts, 10 autonomous okrugs, 6 krais, and 40 oblasts. Uyezds and volosts were abolished by the Soviet administrative reform of 1923–1929. Raions may be roughly called a modern equivalent of the uyezds, and selsoviets may be considered a modern equivalent of the volosts. Russian Federation The subdivision type of Federal District was created in May 2000 by Vladimir Putin as a part of a wider program designed to reassert federal authority. The original division was into seven federal districts, but in 2010 the North Caucasian Federal District was split off from the Southern Federal District, bringing the number to eight. In 2014, the annexation of Crimea resulted in the creation of a new Crimean Federal District, bringing the number to nine, but it was later merged into the Southern Federal District. Amidst the invasion of Ukraine, four southern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia would later be annexed into Russia in 2022 but were not integrated into the Southern Federal District. All of the six regions that are under Russian occupation are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. References Notes Sources Сергей Тархов. "Изменение административно-территориального деления России в XIII-XX вв.". "Логос",