Oblasts

Man has invented enough names for the spaces he lives in to turn even the most structured brain to mush. You've got your villages, towns, states, counties, territories, principalities, sovereign whatnots, kingdoms, emirates, atolls, and on and on.

I just learned a new one at the august age of 60...plus: Oblast. An alert reader, being inspired by my musings about the Repor's hot up-and-coming market of Latvia, pointed out the next-door state permits an entirely different nation to exist within its borders. 

Wikipedia is quite specific on this stuff and this thing is NOT an enclave, nor even an exclave. It is an Oblast. 

The two simple sentences above introduced 2 new concepts to me in a mere 22 words: Oblast and exclave. To sum up, Slavs are weird. There are enough somethingstans to choke a horse. Small wonder why the good old USA stuck with simpler words, like "state" and "county." Even mother England stuck with words that the average 2-year old could understand: hamlets, shires and the like. 

Oblasts? Must be a one-of-a-kind thing, no?  Hah. NOT no. Every country whose name ends in "stan" appears to have these things. And, to repeat, also have a country name that ends in "stan."

I'm giving up.