History of Lazarevskoye

The history of Lazarevskoye unfolds in two languages. The first is the thousand-year history of the Circassian tribes, whose settlements — five thousand years old — testify to the transition from hunting to agriculture as early as the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC. The second language is the history of Russian sailors and soldiers. In 1839 they founded a wooden fort at the mouth of the Psezuapse River and named it after Admiral Lazarev. These two layers of history did not erase each other but wove together: the dolmens in the surrounding gorges, the Shapsug legends, and the stone gates of the old fortification — all of it sits side by side here today.

The Shapsug Coast before 1839

The northeastern shore of the Black Sea between Tuapse and Sochi long remained the domain of Circassian communities. The lands in the Psezuapse valley belonged to the Shapsugs — one of the largest Circassian groups. They combined farming in the river valleys with livestock breeding on the mountain slopes and trade with the Turkish and Genoese merchants who visited these shores.

The dolmens scattered through the gorges of Kuapse, Ashe, and Psezuapse belong to an earlier layer — the 3rd–2nd millennia BC — but it is the Shapsugs who remain the key figures of the local past. It was they whom the Russian Empire encountered when, after the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, the eastern shore of the Black Sea formally passed to it.

“Formally,” because the empire had no actual control over this strip. Between the Turkish fortresses handed over by the peace treaty and the mountain auls lay a stretch of coast where Russian ships could not put in, and where the overland roads were blocked by Circassian detachments. To seal off the coastline, in the 1830s work began on the Black Sea Coastal Line — a chain of fortifications from Anapa to the mouths of the Abkhazian rivers, supplied by naval landings.

1839: Admiral Lazarev’s Landing

On July 7, 1839, a squadron of the Black Sea Fleet approached the mouth of the Psezuapse — thirteen ships under the overall command of Admiral Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev, with the participation of Major General Nikolai Nikolayevich Rayevsky, commander of the coastal line. By that time Lazarev was a figure of the first rank. He had taken part in the round-the-world expedition of 1819–1821, discovered Antarctica together with Bellingshausen, commanded the Russian squadron at the Battle of Navarino in 1827, and from 1833 had commanded the Black Sea Fleet.

On July 12 the landing force began building the fortification, and by November of the same year the fort was ready. It was a quadrangle with half-bastions facing the mountains and barracks inside. A new name appeared on the maps — Fort Lazarev. The garrison was to hold a piece of coastline cut off from the nearest Russian positions by sea passages and mountain trails.

The summer of 1839 was remembered for another name. Among that same landing force was Private Alexander Ivanovich Odoyevsky of the Tenginsky Infantry Regiment — a poet, a prince, condemned in the Decembrist case and transferred from Siberian exile to the Caucasus. Malaria, common at the marshy mouths of the Black Sea rivers, cut him down quickly. On August 15 (27 New Style), 1839, Odoyevsky died of fever and was buried on the grounds of the fort. Today a memorial marker in his honor stands in the settlement.

War, Siege, and the Abandonment of the Fort

Life for the garrison on the coast proved harder than the construction. Malaria, meager supplies, and constant skirmishes with the highlanders wore the soldiers down. In early 1840, the combined detachments of the Ubykhs, Shapsugs, Natukhais, and Abadzekhs, led by Haji-Dogomuko Berzek, his nephew Biarslan-Askhasoko Berzek, and the Dzhubga uzden Zigi-Ogly-Mehmed-Ali, took several fortifications on the coastal line. Fort Lazarev was captured in a sudden night attack. The prisoners were driven off into the mountains, and the fortifications were partly destroyed. The Russians had to return, rebuild the walls, and reinstate the garrison.

A new trial came with the Crimean War. In 1854, when the empire no longer had the strength to hold the line against the Anglo-French allied fleet, the garrisons of the Black Sea Coastal Line were evacuated. Fort Lazarev was abandoned, its buildings blown up, and the withdrawing units taken by sea to Novorossiysk. All that remained of the fortification were earthen ramparts and fragments of stonework, which today lie within the settlement as an archaeological monument.

The decade between the garrison’s departure and the return of the Russians proved decisive for the entire coast. The Caucasian War ended in 1864, and most of the Shapsug population faced a choice: to resettle in mountain auls or to leave across the Black Sea for the Ottoman Empire. The majority chose the latter. After 1864 the strip of coast from Tuapse to Sochi effectively emptied out.

The Return: The Outpost and the Greek Settlers

In May 1864 the Dakhov detachment of Major General Vasily Alexandrovich Geiman passed through the Psezuapse valley. On the site of the former fort a Russian military outpost was set up, keeping the earlier name — Lazarevsky. For several years only soldiers and Cossacks guarding this stretch of coast lived around the outpost.

A civilian population appeared here in 1869. Forty-three Greek families, fleeing the Ottoman Empire after yet another wave of unrest, received land in the valley. They founded a settlement that appeared in the documents of the time under various names: Lazarevka, Lazarevskoye, Lazarevsky Posad. The Greeks grew corn, tobacco, and grapes, kept livestock, and repaired the roads. By the late 1880s Russians from the southern provinces began to settle alongside them. In the early 20th century the settlement counted about sixty households and was administratively subordinate to the Sochi District of the Black Sea Governorate.

By 1916 the site of the former fort already had a post office, a hospital, a school, a pharmacy, and shops in operation. This basic civilian infrastructure survived both the Revolution and the Civil War. The 1926 census recorded 1,647 inhabitants: 38% Russians, 34% Greeks, 18% Ukrainians. The coast was gradually being integrated into the new administrative system.

The 20th Century: The Resort and Greater Sochi

The main role in turning the coast into a resort belt was played by the railway. The Tuapse — Sochi — Adler line was built slowly and with difficulty, starting in 1914. Passenger service between Tuapse and Sochi opened in 1923, and it was then that Lazarevskoye ceased to be a remote stretch of coast. The carriages brought vacationers, settlers, and freight for the expanding local economy.

In 1924, as part of the Black Sea District of the North Caucasus Krai, the Shapsug National District was created. It was an attempt to give the remaining Shapsugs their own administrative unit. Initially the center was Tuapse, but in January 1934 Lazarevskoye was included in the district and became its administrative center. The district existed until 1945, after which it was renamed Lazarevsky and its national status was abolished.

On July 12, 1949, Lazarevskoye was officially granted the status of a resort urban-type settlement. By this time sanatoriums, rest houses, and Young Pioneer camps were already operating along the shore. The postwar decade brought new health resorts, parks, and the first seafront promenade.

In 1961 Greater Sochi expanded its borders: by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of February 10, 1961, the Lazarevsky District was abolished as an independent unit, and its territory, together with the settlement, was incorporated into the city of Sochi. Thus Lazarevskoye ceased to be a separate resort and became the longest and northwesternmost district of Greater Sochi.

The resort infrastructure continued to be built out as part of Sochi. In 1975, in the center of the settlement, on Pavlova Street, the Park of Culture and Leisure named after the 30th Anniversary of Victory was opened — more than five hectares with alleys, rides, and green space. It was here, decades later, that an 83.5-meter Ferris wheel was installed, visible today from the sea and from the highway.

In 1985 the Lazarevsky Ethnographic Museum was established in the settlement, housed in a merchant’s mansion from the early 20th century. The permanent exhibition opened to visitors in May 1990. Three halls display the history and daily life of the Shapsug Circassians from antiquity to the mid-19th century. It is an attempt to bring back into collective memory the layer that departed with the resettlement of 1864.

The 2014 Olympic projects touched Lazarevskoye only in passing. The main construction went on in Adler and Krasnaya Polyana, but the upgraded railway line ran through the settlement, and the high-speed “Lastochka” trains that were launched connected it with Sochi International Airport.

Today Lazarevskoye is a major resort with more than a hundred hotels, a kilometer-long seafront promenade, and an unending stream of vacationers from June through September. Beneath this bright resort surface lie the Shapsug dolmens in the surrounding gorges, the ramparts of the 1839 fort, the Greek estates of the 1870s, and the Young Pioneer camps of the 1950s. The chronology is visible right in the geography of the settlement: the remains of the fortification’s stone wall, the monument to Odoyevsky, the ethnographic museum, and the park on Pavlova Street — all of it is within walking distance.