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Types of inhabited localities in Russia, Soviet Union, and some other post-Soviet states have certain peculiarities compared to systems in other countries.

During the Soviet times, each of the republics of the Soviet Union, including the Russian SFSR, had its own legislative documents dealing with classification of inhabited localities. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the task of developing and maintaning such classification in Russia was delegated to the federal subjects. While currently there are certain peculiarities to classifications used in all federal subjects, they are all still largely based on the system used in the RSFSR. In all federal subjects, the inhabited localities are classified into two major categories: urban and rural. Further divisions of these categories vary slightly from one federal subject to another, but they all follow common trends described below.

• Город (gorod), translated as either town or city. The Russian language has no separate words for "town" and "city". Officially, towns are classified by their population count (see below). Additionally, towns are classified by their level of jurisdiction (raion/oblast/krai/republican/federal). In translation, the word "city" is traditionally applied to the towns with a population of at least 100,000.
  • Superlarge (сверхкрупные города): over 3,000,000.
  • Larger (крупнейшие города): 1,000,000–3,000,000,
  • Large (крупные города): 250,000–1,000,000.
  • Big (большие города): 100,000–250,000.
  • Medium (средние города): 50,000–100,000.
  • Small (малые города, городки): less than 50,000.
• Посёлок городского типа (posyolok gorodskogo tipa), translated as "urban-type settlement", is a type of smaller urban locality. There are several subtypes of urban-type settlements:
  • Urban-type settlement proper—mostly urban population of 3,000–12,000.
    • Work settlement (рабочий посёлок)—mostly urban population occupied in industrial manufacture.
    • Builders' settlement (посёлок строителей)—mostly urban population occupied in construction.
    • Suburban (dacha) settlement (дачный посёлок)—typically, a suburban settlement with summer dachas.
    • Beach settlement (курортный посёлок)—mostly urban population occupied in beach services.
    • Station (станция)—mostly urban population occupied in transportation industry.

• Посёлок сельского типа (posyolok selskogo tipa), or simply "посёлок", translated as "rural-type settlement". The "rural-type" (сельского типа) designation is added to the settlements the population of which is mostly occupied in agriculture, while posyolok (посёлок) proper indicates a mix of population working in agriculture and industry.

There are also several other types of rural localities:

• Larger rural-type localities, with population of 500–3,000:
  • Село (selo)—translated as "village".
  • Станица (stanitsa)—historically, a Cossack rural settlement. The name is still currently in use, with the basic meaning of "village".
  • Слобода (sloboda)—historically, a settlement freed from taxes and levies for various reasons. The name is still currently in use with the basic meaning of "village".
• Smaller rural localities, with population fewer than 500:
  • Деревня (derevnya)—translated as "village". (See a satellite image of a typical Russian village of Maslovo, near Tver.)
  • Хутор (khutor)—translated as "hamlet" or "farmstead", a rural settlement of one or several families.
  • Рыбацкий посёлок (rybatsky posyolok) —translated as "fishermen's settlement", a shore settlement of the rural type with the population occupied in the fishing industry.
  • Починок (pochinok)—a newly formed rural settlement of one or several families. Pochinoks are established as new settlements and usually grow into larger villages as they develop.
• In automonous republics of Russia, national terminology is used in the Russian language. Such settlement types include аул (aul), аал (aal), and кишлак (kishlak).

• Krepost (крепость, a fort), a fortified settlement. A Kremlin, Russian citadel, is a major krepost usually including a castle and surrounded by posad. Ostrog, on the other hand, was a more primitive kind of krepost which could be put up quickly within rough walls of debarked pointed timber.
• Posad (посад), a medieval suburban settlement.
• Mestechko (местечко, from Polish: miasteczko; Yiddish: shtetl), a small town in Western Krai annexed during the Partitions of Poland; typically with Jewish majority.

• Subdivisions of Russia
• List of terms for country subdivisions