Smolensk Governorate
| Smolensk Governorate Смоленская губерния | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Governorate of Russian Empire | |||||||||
| 1796–1929 | |||||||||
Location within the Russian Empire | |||||||||
| Capital | Smolensk | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1897 | 1,525,279 | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 1796 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 14 January 1929 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Smolensk Governorate (Russian: Смоленская губерния, romanized: Smolenskaya guberniya) was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) of the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire, and the Russian SFSR. It existed, with interruptions, between 1708 and 1929.
Smolensk Governorate, together with seven other governorates, was established on December 29 [O.S. December 18], 1708, by an edict from Tsar Peter the Great. As with the rest of the governorates, neither the borders nor internal subdivisions of Smolensk Governorate were defined; instead, the territory was defined as a set of cities, and section of lands adjacent to those cities.