Kirsanov

Kirsanov first appears in records in 1702 as a settlement attached to the Krasinsky ironworks. Its name is associated with an early settler, Khrisanf, or Kirsan, Zubakin. This industrial beginning gives the town a more specific origin than the agricultural character of its wider Tambov surroundings might suggest.

In 1779 Kirsanov became a county town within Tambov Viceroyalty. It retained its county-seat role when the viceroyalty became Tambov Governorate in 1796. Its early history thus joins a settlement serving an ironworks with the administrative town created during Catherine II’s provincial reorganisation.