Slavyanka, Azerbaijan
village in the Gadabay District of Azerbaijan
Slavyanka (Russian: Славянка) is a village and the second most populous municipality after 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.
History
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 Zaporizhzhia Oblast of 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 public source identifies “Slavyanka, Azerbaijan” as village in the Gadabay District of Azerbaijan. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Slavyanka, Azerbaijan and village.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Slavyanka, Azerbaijan”, the useful work is to connect “village in the Gadabay District of Azerbaijan” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4423021. Authority coordinates are 40.657, 45.809. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1844, 1859, 1863 and 1895.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Slavyanka, Azerbaijan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.