Stan (Russian: стан; plural: ста́ны) was a historical administrative unit in Russia, except for Veliky Novgorod.
However, Russian historians believe that unlike volost, which is thought to have evolved from tribal communities, stans were purely administrative structures, whose main function was to organize tribute collection, thus, a stan was the actual place where royal officials called tiuns and dovodchiks stayed in order to perform sovereign's will or collect taxes.
It is believed that unlike volostels who ran the volosts for a long period under appointment, stans didn't have permanent administrators.
By the times of Ivan the Terrible (second half of the 16th century), stans had started to replace volosts in most Russian provinces (then called 'uyezdy'), which is linked with the rise of centralization and suppression of local self-governance.
[4] It reflects stan's historical connection to towns, which were primarily military strongholds, where local gentry gathered for service or actually served, while volosts remained communities of mostly free peasants, who had later become royal serfs.