Selsoviets were the lowest level of administrative division in rural areas in the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they were preserved as a third tier of administrative-territorial division throughout Ukraine, Belarus, and many of the federal subjects of Russia.
A selsoviet is a rural administrative division of a raion that includes one or several smaller rural localities and is in a subordination to its respective raion administration.
The name refers to the local rural self-administration, the rural soviet (council), a part of the Soviet system of administration. A selsoviet was headed by a chairman, who had to be appointed by higher administration.
For a considerable period of Soviet history, passports of rural residents were stored in selsoviet offices, and people could not move outside their area of residence without the permission of selsoviet.
Prior to the adoption of the 1993 Constitution of Russia, this type of administrative division had a uniform definition on the whole territory of the Russian SFSR. After the adoption of the 1993 Constitution, the administrative-territorial structure of the federal subjects is no longer identified as the responsibility of the federal government or as the joint responsibility of the federal government and the federal subjects.[1] This state of the matters is traditionally interpreted by the governments of the federal subjects as a sign that the matters of the administrative-territorial divisions are the sole responsibility of the federal subjects themselves.[1] As a result, the modern administrative-territorial structures of the federal subjects vary significantly from one federal subject to another; that includes the manner in which the selsoviets are organized and the choice of a term to refer to such entities.
As of 2013, the following types of such entities are recognized:
Inhabited locality (населённый пункт): in Krasnoyarsk Krai (together with selsoviets)
Rural administration (сельская администрация): in the Republic of Kalmykia and in Tula Oblast (together with rural okrugs, rural territories, and volosts)
Rural administrative okrug (сельский административный округ): in Bryansk Oblast
Rural territory (сельская территория): in Kemerovo Oblast and Tula Oblast (together with rural administrations, rural okrugs, and volosts)
Rural-type settlement administrative territory (административная территория – посёлок сельского типа): in the Komi Republic (together with selo administrative territories)
Selo administrative territory (административная территория – село): in the Komi Republic (together with rural-type settlement administrative territories)
