Alexeyevka

Alexeyevka lies on the Tikhaya Sosna, a river of the Don basin. It began as a sloboda settled by Ukrainian Cossacks from Bohuslav in the late seventeenth century, on lands belonging to the Russian southern frontier. Further settlers followed from Ukrainian lands, and the settlement passed into the possession of the Cherkassky princes and later the Sheremetev family.

In 1829 Daniil Bokarev, a local serf, pressed oil from sunflower seeds with a hand-operated press. The experiment gave a new use to a plant originally brought from America. In 1833 the merchant Papushin, assisted by Bokarev, opened a horse-powered oil mill in the sloboda; Bokarev established his own the following year. Sunflower oil would become closely associated with Alexeyevka and its surrounding fields.