Anna

Anna stands on the Bityug in the Don basin, amid the forest-steppe east of Voronezh. In 1698 the voivode Ivan Tevyashov travelled along the Bityug and Osered and reported a settlement called Anninskaya sloboda among the villages he found. A decade later the region was caught up in Kondraty Bulavin's Cossack revolt. In April 1708, a rebel force advancing toward Voronezh was defeated near the Kurlak, a river southeast of Anna. The Bityug settlements lay close to the routes followed by both rebels and government troops.