Kraj

Not to be confused with Krai.
For the radio station in Johannesburg, California, see KRAJ.

A kraj (plural: kraje) is the highest-level administrative unit in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. For lack of other English expressions, the Slavic term is often translated as "province", "region", or "territory", although it actually approximately means "(part of) country", or "(part of) countryside". A kraj is subdivided into okresy ("counties").

The first kraje were created in the Kingdom of Bohemia during the reign of Charles IV in the 14th century and they lasted till 1862/68. Kraje were reintroduced in 1949 in Czechoslovakia and still exist today (except for the early 1990s) in its successor states despite many rearrangements.

In Russia nine of the 83 federal subjects are called krais (края, kraya), coequal to oblasts. The toponym Krajina refers to several historical regions in Slavic countries.

See also

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 30, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.