Although the vicinity is rich in prehistoric
dolmens and contains ruins of about twenty medieval forts, the settlement first appears in recorded history in 1835, when a Russian spy, Baron
Fyodor Tornau, visited the
Sadz Abkhazian village of
Artquaj in the guise of a
Circassian mountaineer. Having spent several days in the village, he recorded his observations in a journal. By the 1860s, the village was known as
Kbaade and became populated with the
Akhchipsou branch of the
Sadz. In 1864, the area was the scene, significant in
Circassian history, of the last battles of the
Russian–Circassian War. The village was the site of a massacre, where Russian forces
slaughtered the disarmed Circassians, and their families, as they attempted to retreat. The hill the village was located on has since been known as
Krasnaya Polyana or
Red Hill, due to the blood split there. The proximity to Sochi, the "summer capital" of Russia, eventually revived its fortunes in the last quarter of the 20th century, when it achieved a modicum of popularity across the former
Soviet Union, despite limited hotel capabilities and installations, and difficulty of access through narrow mountain passes. == Climate ==