Sochi Club

In 1896, Dakhovsky was renamed Sochi and retained settlement status till the revolution of 1917. Shortly after 1900 rich Muscovite, Khudlov, bought about 2700 acres of land near Sochi. Soon other commercial men followed suit. The government sought a rapid land reclamation and set up a commission to "populate and enliven" the coast. Its chairman, a member of the State Council, sold the best plots of land to reach people. Before this the tsar had given part of the land as gifts upon veterans of the war of the Caucasus. So the small peasant population who had just begun farming in the area were forced to retire into the mountains. "The whole of the Sochi seashore populated by consumers. The few producers it has live far away, beyond hill and deal, with no roads to reach them," wrote one journalist in 1903.

The Adrieanople Treaty of 1829 returned the Black Sea coast to Russia. But the Caucasus actually reunited with Russia much later - after the drawn out war of the Caucasus which began in 30th of  the 19th century. Between 1830 - 1842 Russian detachments erected a line of 17 fortifications on the coast of the Black Sea.

In June 1837, Russian seaborne troops landed at the Adler Cape to build what was initially called the Ford of the Holy Spirit close to where the Mzymta River empties into the sea. In July and August of the subsequent year Russian troops carried out new landing operations, and founded the forts of Lazarevskoe andGolovinskoe. Some month earlier, in April 1838, Russian troops disembarked to erect a fort at the mouth of the River Sochi. It was built on the elevation of the present seaport. Near it later emerged a church and a lighthouse, which have survived to this day.

Sochi has a long history that dates back to Ancient Greek and Roman times when the area was inhabited by the Zygii people. After the 15th century, the region making up Sochi was known as Ubykhia and was controlled by local mountaineer clans.

The word "Sochi" appears to have come from the Circassian "Sshetche". That was the name of an Ubykhi tribe, who lived in the early 19th century were Sochi now stands.

Ubykhi had a developed culture and language. The Western Caucasus had once been populated by numerous tribes of mountaineers. Between the 10th and 12th centuries many other tribes merged to form the Adyghe nationality with common language, which, however, had several delegates. South of them lived the Abkhazians.