Largely unchanged since Soviet times, the raion is a secondlevel administrative division, used within federal subjects or large cities. Usually translated as “district,” the raion is roughly equivalent to a county in the United States. Sakha and Tuva use indigenous terminology—ulus and kozhun, respectively—to denote similar divisions.
Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation. Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov. 2010.