The exact start date of construction on the Novorossiysk-Sukhumi Highway was February 19, 1892.
Earlier, communication between the scattered settlements of the Black Sea region was carried out either by steamships or on horseback along the coast.
This road is also known as the “Hungry Highway.”
The origin of this name is as follows. In 1891, a severe crop failure struck 17 of the most fertile provinces of European Russia. The government banned newspapers from reporting on the ensuing famine. Only after an article about the disaster, written by Leo Tolstoy, was published abroad did discussions begin on providing aid to the starving population.
General M.N. Annenkov, the head of the highway’s construction, believed that free aid would only lead to moral corruption—the starving population had to “earn” it. As a result, around 90,000 starving peasants were sent to the Black Sea region. The peasants worked in extremely harsh conditions, enduring the southern heat and an unfamiliar disease—malaria. As a result, according to official data alone, 18,000 people died during the road’s construction.
The official opening date of traffic on the Novorossiysk-Sukhumi Highway was May 6, 1893. On that day, the first battery of the Kuban Cossack Army’s horse-artillery brigade arrived in Sukhumi, having successfully traveled the entire route from Novorossiysk.
The battery included 70 horses and several cannons.