The village of Kavkaz

Kavkaz Settlement

In the mid-nineteenth century, on the bank of the Oka, on the "sands" between Molitovka and Kunavinsky Sloboda, the settlement of "Kavkaz" appeared. The settlement's residents worked at the Kanavino factories, at the timber plant of the joint-stock company "Sosna" (founded in 1897), and at the Molitovsky linen-spinning mill.

There are no fewer than two explanations for why the settlement was named "Kavkaz." The first is based on a legend. According to it, in days of old, bandits used to hide here and rob passing merchant convoys. In the bandits' parlance, to rob meant to grab (khatat'), while the word for loot was kaza or khaza. In memory of the bandits, residents named the new settlement by combining the words for "grabbing the treasury" — Khapkaz, or Kavkaz. The other explanation is more prosaic. Since the settlement lay on the remote outskirts of Kanavino, the then-center of Zarechka, and consisted of dugouts and wretched hovels cobbled together from construction waste, it earned from the people, on account of its wretchedness and remoteness, the ironic name Kavkaz — that is, exile (a punishment).