Ninotsminda is a town and a rayon

Raion

A raion is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet countries. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is commonly translated in English as "district"...

 located in Georgia's

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 southern district of Samtskhe-Javakheti. The rayon has a population of 34,305 according to 2002 Census. The Armenians

Armenians

Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....

 number 32,856, Georgians

Georgians

The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....

 476 and Russians

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 943. It is near the border with Armenia.
During the Ottoman rule

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

, this was a sanjak

Sanjak

Sanjaks were administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. Sanjak, and the variant spellings sandjak, sanjaq, and sinjaq, are English transliterations of the Turkish word sancak, meaning district, banner, or flag...

 of Çıldır Eyaleti

Samtskhe Province, Ottoman Empire

The Eyalet of Childir was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire in the Southwestern Caucasus. The area of the former Çıldır Eyalet is now divided between Samtskhe-Javakheti and the Autonomous Republic of Adjara in Georgia and provinces of Artvin, Ardahan and Erzurum in Turkey...

, called Altunkale, which means "Golden Castle" in Turkish.

Before 1991, the town of Ninotsminda was called Bogdanovka - a name going back to the history of the Doukhobor

Doukhobor

The Doukhobors or Dukhobors , earlierDukhobortsy are a group of Russian origin.The Doukhobors were one of the sects - later defined as a religious philosophy, ethnic group, social movement, or simply a "way of life" - known generically as Spiritual Christianity. The origin of the Doukhobors is...

 settlement in the region in the 1840s. After the conquest of Kars

Kars

Kars is a city in northeast Turkey and the capital of Kars Province. The population of the city is 73,826 as of 2010.-Etymology:As Chorzene, the town appears in Roman historiography as part of ancient Armenia...

 in 1878, some Doukhobors from Bogdanovka moved to the newly created Kars Oblast

Kars Oblast

Kars Oblast was one of Transcaucasian governorates of Russian Empire between 1878 and 1917. Its capital was in the city of Kars, presently in the Republic of Turkey. The governorate bordered with the Ottoman Empire, Batum Oblast, Tiflis Governorate, Erivan Governorate, and from 1883 to 1903 with...

. Twenty years later, some of them (or their descendants) emigrated from Kars Oblast to Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, where they established a short-lived village named Bogdanovka in Langham

Langham, Saskatchewan

-Neighboring Communities:Rural Saskatchewan is known for the support that communities give each other in the form of attending community activities, sharing sport teams, and building friendships among children and adults from neighboring towns and cities. Communities that surround Langham include...

 district of Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

. Another group of emigrants, coming straight from Georgian Bogdanovka, established another Bogdanovka near Pelly, Saskatchewan

Pelly, Saskatchewan

-External links:********...

.
In Soviet Union, Doukhobor population of the region was in comparatively favorable conditions, isolated from attention of civil officials as population of ethnically mixed borderline region. In the 1990s, following the collapse of Soviet Union and rise of nationalist pressure (both local Armenian and state-imposed Georgian), a significant part of remaining Russian settlers abandoned their homes to settle in Russia.

External links

• Ninotsminda District
• Kalmakoff, Jonathan J. The Doukhobor Gazetteer