Sovetsk , formerly Kukarka , is a town and the administrative center of Sovetsky District

Sovetsky District, Kirov Oblast

Sovetsky District, Kirov Oblast is an administrative district , one of the 39 in Kirov Oblast, Russia....

 of Kirov Oblast

Kirov Oblast

Kirov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Kirov. Population: -History:In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Vyatka remained a place of exile for opponents of the tsarist regime, including many prominent revolutionary figures.In 1920, a number of...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. Population:

In the 12th century, Kukarka was a capital of the local principality of Chumbylat, a renowned Mari leader and warrior. The town was occupied in 1594 by 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....

 during colonization of Mari land. Later it was a sloboda

Sloboda

Sloboda was a kind of settlement in the history of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The name is derived from the early Slavic word for "freedom" and may be vaguely translated as "free settlement"....

in Vyatka Governorate

Vyatka Governorate

Vyatka Governorate was a governorate of Russian Empire and USSR, with its capital in city Vyatka . Existed since 1796 to 1929...

 of the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

. It was granted urban-type settlement

Urban-type settlement

Urban-type settlement ; , selyshche mis'koho typu ) is an official designation for a type of locality used in some of the countries of the former Soviet Union...

 status in 1918. Town status was granted to it in 1937, at which time its name was changed.

The origins of the name Kukarka are uncertain. It may derive from Mari

Mari language

The Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals...

 words kü (stone) and karman (fortress) or from kugyrak (great). Attempts have been made to trace it to either Udmurt

Udmurt language

Udmurt is an Uralic language, part of the Permic subgroup, spoken by the Udmurt natives of the Russian constituent republic of Udmurtia, where it is coofficial with Russian. It is written in the Cyrillic script with five additional characters. Together with Komi and Komi-Permyak languages, it...

 (kar "town") or Turkic

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...

 (kukar "burned-away forest"). (It is not related to the Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 word kukharka, "female cook.")

Sovetsk is the birthplace of Vyacheslav Molotov

Vyacheslav Molotov

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...

.

External links

• Mojgorod.ru. Entry on Sovetsk