Kotovo

Kotovo lies on the Kazanka in the southern Volga uplands, where streams flow toward the Don basin. A state sloboda arose here in the early eighteenth century, as settlers from Ukrainian lands entered the region. Its name is traditionally associated with an early settler named Kotenko. Fields and saline patches lay in the surrounding steppe, while the small river gave the settlement a place in the network of villages developing between the Volga and the Medveditsa.