Slavyanka, Azerbaijan
| Slavyanka | |
|---|---|
| Municipality | |
 Slavyanka
|
|
| Coordinates: 40°39′27″N 45°48′38″E / 40.65750°N 45.81056°ECoordinates: 40°39′27″N 45°48′38″E / 40.65750°N 45.81056°E | |
| Country |
 Azerbaijan
|
| Rayon | Gadabay |
| Population | |
| • Total | 3,705 |
| Time zone | AZT (UTC+4) |
| • Summer (DST) | AZT (UTC+5) |
Slavyanka (Russian: Славянка) is a village and the most populous municipality, except for the capital Gədəbəy, in the Gadabay Rayon of Azerbaijan. It has a population of 3,705. The municipality consists of the villages of Slavyanka and Maarif.
Along with a number of other villages in northwestern Azerbaijan, Slavyanka was settled in 1844 by the Doukhobors, members of a Pacifist dissenter Christian group resettled to Transcaucasia by Nicholas I from the Molochna River settlements in today's Zaporizhia Oblast of the Ukraine. The village is said to have been named after the town of Slavyansk (in today's Donetsk Oblast), where many of the ancestors of the Molochna Doukhobors had originated.
Slavyanka was the birthplace of the Doukhobor leader Peter Verigin, who was born there on June 29, 1859.
The Russian painter Vasily Vereshchagin visited Slavyanka in 1863. The village at the time had 205 houses with around 600 male residents (and, presumably, a similar number of females). According to Vereshchagin, the Doukhobors "lived an honest, reasonable, and prosperous life", but, under the pressure of the struggle for existence in the borderlands, had become less strict in their practices, many taking up smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol.
During the confrontation with the Czarist government in the mid-1890s over the conscription and oath of allegiance, in June 1895 Slavyanka became the site of the area's Doukhobors destroying their weapons in the well-known "Burning of the Arms" event. The government responded by exiling a large number of the local Doukhobors elsewhere in Russian Empire; some died of starvation, exposure, and diseases in the process. In 1899, many survivors left for Saskatchewan, Canada.
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