What large and complex nation contains varying geographical/ethnic/political regions called 'krais', 'oblasts', 'okrugs' and 'republics'?
Krais of Russia Republics (SSRs), the constituent political entities of the Soviet Union, with the only difference being autonomous oblasts could be subordinated to krais but not to oblasts. The krais were unique to the Russian SFSR and held very little autonomy or power, but when the Soviet Union dissolved into sovereign states along the lines of the SSRs, they became first-level administrative divisions of the Russian Federation and received much greater devolved power. Krais of Russia A krai () is a type of federal subject of Russia. The country is divided into 85 federal subjects, of which nine are krais. Oblasts, another
Oblasts of Russia and the least populous is Magadan Oblast at 156,996. Krais, another type of federal subject, are legally identical to oblasts and the difference between a political entity with the name "oblast" or "krai" is purely traditional. In the Russian Empire, oblasts were a third-level administrative division, organized in 1849 and few in number, dividing the larger "guberniyas" (governorates) within the first-level krais. Following the numerous administration reforms during the Soviet era, the number of oblasts gradually increased as they became the primary top-level administrative division of the Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs), the constituent political entities of the Soviet Union. These