In ancient times, until the 13th century, Russian lands, as state territories, were divided into lands, volosts, regions, and then into volosts, counties, and provinces.
Volost
The land was organized under the leadership of the trading cities of Russia. History knows Kiev, Chernihiv, Pereyaslav and many other lands. Volosts are principalities that are constantly divided and redistributed in ancient times. During the time of Kievan Rus, efforts were made to unite these principalities into one power.
What is a parish? This is the smallest administrative-territorial unit in the section that existed in the old days. It had the same meaning as the region. The parish or region sometimes coincided with the borders of the land, if this land was the property of one prince. And usually the parish was part of the earth. For example, the land of Kiev had different volosts, which were called, like small towns.
Church Slavonic volosts were sometimes called authorities. The name "power" had a political concept, which meant the right of ownership. And the notion volost denoted territory. The area comes from the word "oblast" and means the land to which this power extends. These terms had the following meanings: power denoted the space of ownership, and the region - the right of ownership. As, for example, it was said in the Gospel of John - “to give them the area with the divine being of God”. Volosts since 1861 were formed for all types of peasants, if I may say so.
Allotment
In ancient Russia, all lands were divided into counties, camps, and those in turn - into roads, volosts, hundreds, and so on. Parts were called parts of the land that were shared between children. Fragment - from the word to give (share). The father shared his possessions and endowed them with his children. This is the share that went to every heir.
Departments, in turn, were divided into counties. The county was called the administrative-judicial district. Counties were not only in cities, but also in villages, if the judicial administration was in these villages. Other, more understandable, according to the county, judicial-administrative authority in the village was called. Later, districts in a city or village began to be called a county. Simply put, a county is a district. In this district, the administrator collected alms three times a year. This was also done in the volost, too (meaning tax collection).
King
All Russian land was divided into Little Russia and Big Russia. These names were the result of coups that occurred in the XII-XIII centuries regarding the Russian population. The entire right side of the Dnieper became known as Little Russia, and the left to the Volga - Big Russia. The supreme power had such titles - prince, grand duke, grand duke of all Russia, sovereign king. The prince comes from the German words konung, kuning, this word was called the representative of the supreme authority in the Slavic lands.
Prince of Kiev was called the
Grand Duke. After all, there were princes of different regional cities. Moscow sovereigns took the title of tsar in their name. This word comes from the abbreviated form of the word "Caesar." It came from writing "Caesar" in Old Slavonic.
Under the king was understood the highest power from the power of local sovereigns. During the time of the possession of Russia by the Tatar Horde, the kings were called the Tatar rulers, and then, after the fall of the Byzantine and Roman empires, the rulers of Russia took a common name for themselves - the king.
The title king was then understood as the Roman emperor. Under the king understood the independent owner of the land, who did not pay tribute to anyone, did not give anything report. In other words, an autocrat who does not depend on someone else’s power.
Titles
If we summarize the scheme for the development of power in Russia, then we can consider such titles of this very power. The prince was called the leader of an armed detachment that guarded Russia and received a reward for it - feed. This was essentially a hired position. But the Grand Duke of Kiev, this is no longer a hired person, but a representative of the clan who owns this land. And finally, the Tsar Tsar is the master of the Russian land and the senior representative of all the sovereigns of Russia, and the supreme ruler.
Need
In ancient times, it so happened that the union in the administrative districts of peasants, the main tax payers, was based on state taxes. This is the essence of the concept of what a parish is.
The country's population was united in camps and volosts. Such associations were governed by governors and volostel, which represented the central government on the ground. But, in addition, in each volost they were their own bodies of worldly government. Worldly leadership was carried out through gatherings and councils. Each council of the volost had a headman or Sotsky with payers who monitored the regular payments of taxes and duties. Such a department of secular self-government was engaged in the affairs of the land economy of each volost or camp. The duties of the local elder included monitoring the regular payment of taxes and taxes, assigning free land to new settlers, petitioning the central authorities for the needs of their volost, rewarding the privileges of the peasants, distributing tax among all for those who could not pay or left the volost. And I had to pay right up to the new census.
Hard times
Such a thing as a volost, gradually, with the development of land ownership, began to perish. Some classes of the population began to beg the sovereign for various benefits. They could not be judged, except for difficult criminal cases, and they themselves could judge their peasants. The possession of such a landowner with all its villages came out of the volost. Such counties and volosts were considered a special judicial administrative district. But nevertheless, regardless of what settlements were called volosts, it remained important that the unification in the volosts and camps still occurred on the basis of the collection of different taxes and taxes. The elders or other officials came to the elected or appointed posts, and they were mainly engaged in the registration of all tax payers, and already along the way they did the court and other cases in the territory entrusted to them.
Times of Peter I
Already at the time of Peter the Great, the lands were divided into provinces, provinces into districts, and already districts into districts, the most unified administrative division. For the first time in Russia, a unified volost-county-province system was formed. And in the case of peasants who belonged to the landlords, the place of the volosts was occupied by landowner estates. The volost consisted of nearby rural communities. In length, it was not more than 20 versts. Rural communities also had their own self-government. The village headman, the tax collector, who also dealt with the court in these territories, were elected.
Famous volost
One of the most famous, according to the movie "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes the Profession", was Kemsky Volost. The film said that the Swedish king wanted to get this parish from Ivan the Terrible. It is located in the basin of the Kem River, on the shores of the White Sea. The center of the volost was the town of Kem. Once the Kemsky volost was the possession of Martha Boretskaya, who was considered the wife of the posadnik Veliky Novgorod. Later, she presented this volost to the Solovetsky Monastery. At different times, Finns and Swedes made devastating raids on the parish. But nevertheless, the Solovetsky monastery, having taken possession of it, managed to build a prison, which was then very large at that time, and at the same time made it a fortress that covered the population before enemy raids.
If we summarize everything that we examined in this article, namely, the meaning of the word “volost”, we can say with good conscience that the division of the country into administrative territories was caused, firstly, by the ownership of these lands, and secondly, by the fact that taxes and levies had to be collected on these lands. Therefore, in order to facilitate this matter, and divided the land into different volosts. In them, as in the smallest administrative associations, taxation was also taken from the peasants. Volosts are, in fact, forced associations of the population into communities according to local distinction.