The article discusses the administrative-territorial division of Central Russia (within the modern Central Federal District) over the past three centuries. Th e purpose of the study was to find out how the composition of regional centers and the territories of the regions associated with them have
changed during this time.
There are two periods of the most active transformations — the provincial reform of Catherine II, 1775–1785, and a series of Soviet reforms of 1917–1970, — between which the borders of the regions in the center of the country were stable. Based on a wide range of cartographic sources (both published and archival), accurate maps of the borders of the regions for 1760 (provinces and governorates) and 1792 (governorates) were compiled; then they were compared with each other and with the borders of modern regions. Based on this comparison, it was shown that the composition of regional centers in Central Russia was signifi cantly stable: 13 of the 17 modern regional even earlier. On the contrary, the borders changed signifi cantly at each of the stages of transformation, which is related to specifi c circumstances: the provincial reform of Catherine II was carried out based primarily on the principle of approximate equality of the population of provinces and counties; Soviet transformations were based on the logic of industrial development. The historical ties of the territories in both cases were little taken into account, and as a result, in most cases the core of the region is surrounded by the periphery, which in the
past changed its administrative registration. The work contains maps of the historical borders of each of the regions, which have independent scientifi c and practical significance.