Zubova Polyana

Zubova Polyana lies amid the woods of the western Mordvin country, between the Moksha and its tributaries. Its name recalls a clearing granted in 1679 to Fyodor Zubov, on land described as overgrown near the Lundana and Partsa rivers. The grant belongs to a period when service families and landowners were establishing settlements in the districts south of Shatsk. Forest and open fields met here on the edge of the expanding Russian agricultural frontier.