Verst

Russian (Imperial)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

500 sazhens or 3,500 feet (1.0668 km). The standard Russian unit of distance before the metric system.

1 verst = 1,066.8 meters (exactly).

About the verst

Travellers in Tsarist Russia read road distances in versts, a word often linked to the idea of a turn, as in the length of a furrow before a plough turns. The unit was long and not fixed: in the 17th century a verst counted 700 sazhens, about 1.49 km, and under Peter the Great it was cut to 500 sazhens.

That later verst is 3,500 English feet, or 1.0668 km, which is the figure used here. A border verst, used in land surveys, was twice as long. One English-language article lists the verst as 1,500 sazhens in a summary table, but its own metric and feet figures only work with 500, so the larger number appears to be a slip.

Finland kept its own virsta, defined in 1827 at 1,068.84 m, until metrication in the 1880s. In Russia, versts stayed on milestones and in novels well into the 20th century, and about 0.94 verst makes a kilometre.

Sources: Wikipedia: Verst; Wikipedia: Obsolete Russian units of measurement

Verst conversion chart

1 verst expressed in every other length unit:

More Russian (Imperial) units

• vershok (length)
• arshin (length)
• sazhen (length)
• zolotnik (weight & mass)
• funt (Russian pound) (weight & mass)
• pood (weight & mass)
• charka (volume)
• shtof (volume)
• vedro (volume)

All Russian (Imperial) units

Browse all length units.