Rural settlement (Russia)

A rural settlement is a self-governing political division in Russia. A rural settlement is composed of one or more contiguous rural communities: towns, villages, hamlets, farmsteads, exurbs, resorts, villas, stanitsas (Cossack settlements), kishlaks (settlements of Turkic peoples), auls (Caucasian fortified villages), or any other type. Political authority in rural settlements is exercised by the inhabitants, either directly or through elected (or otherwise constituted) bodies.

A rural settlement is a constituent part of a municipal district, a political entity created as part of municipal reforms in 2004. Prior to 2004, the district (raion), inherited from the Soviet Union, had been the primary division next lowest below oblast (province). (A municipal district may, in addition to or instead of rural settlements, include urban settlements, which are composed of various urban communitiess.)

The term "rural settlement" is also used in its generic sense to denote any rural inhabited place.

Rural settlement as a formal political division was provided for in the 2003 law "On The General Principles of Organization of Local Government in the Russian Federation", which was promulgated as part of municipal reform. A rural settlements often corresponds to a village council of Soviet times, or a parish in the pre-Soviet and post-Soviet periods (for one example among thousands, the Tyamshanskaya Rural Settlement in the Pskovsky District of Pskov Oblast).

In some areas, the term "village council" is still used as a synonym for "rural settlement", and even still used in formal names of entities (for instance, Novinsky Village Council in the Bogorodsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast).

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