Subdivisions of Kiev

Subdivisions of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, include the formal administrative subdivision into raions and the more detailed informal subdivision into historical neighborhoods.

History of subdivision

The first known formal subdivision of Kiev dates to 1810 when the city was subdivided into 4 parts: Pechersk, Starokyiv, and the first and the second parts of Podil. In 1833-1834 according to Tsar Nicholas I's decree, Kiev was subdivided into 6 police raions; later being increased to 10. As of 1917, there were 8 Raion Councils (Duma), which were reorganized by Pavlo Skoropadskyi into 17 raions. In 1924 bolsheviks reorganized them into the bigger six party-administrated Raions with various sub-raions under Hryhoriy Hrynko administration. All the city modern raions that start with a letter D are located on the left bank of Dnieper and until 1927 were part of Chernigov Governorate with Darnytsia being the first to be incorporated within the city limits that year.

Over the Soviet time, as city was expanding, the number of raions was gradually increasing. The raions has been also commonly named after Soviet party leaders, and as political situation was changing and some leaders were overturned by the other, so raion names were also changing.