Postal code (Russia)
Postal codes were introduced in what was then the Soviet Union in 1971. The postcodes consist of six digits, with the first three digits indicating the local authority (e.g. Oblast). Since the distribution of the postal routing regions was based on the administrative structure of the time, later administrative reforms (e.g. 1987 in the Uzbek and Kyrgyz Soviet republics, 2008 in Russia) led to a certain fragmentation of the postal routing regions. If a local authority has several postal code regions (which is almost always the case with the exception of very small local authorities), the postal code regions are further subdivided at the level of the Rajons and cities. The other three digits are distributed within the respective postcode region, whereby the main post office always receives the digits 000 (e.g. 131000 for the headquarters of Potschta Rossii in Moscow). In very large cities like Saint Petersburg, streets can span multiple zip codes.
Russia uses the Soviet system unchanged, limited to those postcodes that fall on Russian territory. The successor states of the Soviet Union Belarus , Kyrgyzstan , Turkmenistan and Tajikistan have not introduced their own postal code system since their independence and also still use the Soviet postal code system. All other Soviet republics have meanwhile introduced their own postcodes and replaced the Soviet system.
With the annexation of Crimea in 2014, however, the former postcode regions for Crimea from the time of the Soviet Union were not reintroduced, but completely new postcode regions were created, some of which overlap with the postcodes formerly used for Ukraine.
On Russian envelopes there is a field in which the postcode is entered in a special machine-readable font to make sorting easier.
List of postal code regions
Web links
- Postcode search of Potschta Rossii