Navashino — a district-level town in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the administrative center of Navashinskiy District.
Population: 17,100 (2006).
The town is situated on the right bank of the Oka River, 158 km from Nizhny Novgorod. It has a railway station on the Gorky Railway line running Moscow — Kazan (opened in 1912).
History
The town of Navashino was formed in 1957 by merging two settlements, Mordovshchikovo and Lipnya. According to local legend, when the Moscow–Moscow-Kazan railway was being built, industrialists from Vyksa (or, according to other sources, from Kulebaki) generously greased the palms of the surveyors. These sharks of capitalism wanted the railway routed further south, closer to Vyksa (or Kulebaki). Under the original plan, the railway station was to be called "Novoshino," after the nearby village of the same name. As a result of the bribery, the railway line veered south toward Lipnya — and the station was still named "Navashino," so that any inspection commission would not think to ask why the project had been changed. In 1957, when the decision was made to create a town, local Party authorities wanted to name it "Prioksk." This is why the district newspaper is called "Priokskaya (not Navashino) Pravda." However, the authorities in City of Gorky decided that the regional center already had a Prioksky District, and confusion might arise. The town was named Navashino.