[2] The whole area of the district belongs to the drainage basin of the Sozh River, a left tributary of the Dnieper.

Historically, the area belonged intermittently to the Principality of Smolensk and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, subsequently to Poland.

On 12 July 1929, governorates and uyezds were abolished, and Yershichsky District with the administrative center in the selo of Yershich was established.

[8] The main agricultural specializations are cattle and pig breeding with meat and milk production as well as growing of crops and potatoes.

There is a private ethnographic museum in a ghost village of Novaya Matsilevka, which is unattended.