The Xandinov family is among the Greek families that founded Krasnaya Polyana. These are Pontic Greeks — descendants of the Greek population of historical Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea (the Trebizond region, today northern Turkey). The family's path is typical of the Pontic Greeks who resettled in the Caucasus after the Russo-Turkish wars: Pontus (Trebizond) → the Stavropol Governorate → Krasnaya Polyana, 1878.
One of the settlement's pioneers was Murat Xandinov (1807–1883): together with Fyodor Fanaylov he surveyed the valley of the future Krasnaya Polyana and brought the first Greek families here. From that moment begins the Xandinov line on this land. By family descent, Pavel Bunin is a sixth-generation descendant of Murat Xandinov.
In the Xandinov family, bearers of the surname alone across the generations number around 700 people. The family lived here through the turning of eras: the Russian Empire, the Revolution, the Soviet period, the post-Soviet renewal, the 2014 Olympics. Every generation remained on this land.
Six generations of our family
owned this land.
What the sources say
The history of Krasnaya Polyana is well documented by local historians. In the autumn of 1878, Pontic Greeks who had fled the Ottoman Empire and settled in the Stavropol Governorate crossed the Pseashkho pass and took the emptied mountain valley of the former Circassian aul of Kbaade. Among the pioneers, local-history literature names Murat Xandinov and Fyodor Fanaylov; in all, thirty-six Greek families came to Polyana.
The settlers built the church of Saint Charalampus, and in 1886 they opened the village's first school — in the house of Georgy Muratovich Xandinov, son of Murat. This fact, recorded in several independent sources, documentarily links the first two generations of the family.
Sources: B. D. Tskhomaria. «Krasnaya Polyana». — Krasnodar, 1963; local-history materials of the Caucasian Biosphere Reserve and the Adler Central Library System of Sochi.
1992: grandfather and the plot
On the plot where БАНЬСКЪ stands today, from 1992 onward, Pavel's grandfather — Avraam Vasilyevich Xandinov, great-grandson of Murat Xandinov, founder of Krasnaya Polyana — kept the farm. Here they kept horses, cattle, goats and hens. In summer it smelled of grass and fresh hay; in winter, of woodsmoke from the stove and damp logs.
Pavel grew up in this atmosphere. He helped his grandfather haul water, chop wood, tend the animals and build the first cattle shed. For ten whole years grandfather and grandson built a house together on this plot — and it is on this home ground that БАНЬСКЪ now stands. At the time it wasn't seen as anything special — just ordinary life. But it is precisely such moments that stay sharpest in memory.
2016: the arrival of БАНЬСКЪ
In 2016, on that very land where his grandfather had kept horses and cows, Pavel built a banya. Not as a business project — as a continuation. Without grand plans or investors. He simply wanted to make a place where it would feel good to be.
Much of it was built gradually. Some things were rebuilt several times. What mattered was not the outward picture but the feeling. So that wood smelled of wood. So that the stove was fed by logs, not «for atmosphere». So that someone arriving from the noisy city could, at last, exhale.
БАНЬСКЪ never tried to look perfect. And perhaps that is exactly why people began to be drawn to it — there is no sense of artificiality here. Over ten years, hundreds of guests have passed through these gates — from Olympic champions to those who simply wanted silence.
They return not for status. For an atmosphere that cannot be invented: the crackle of wood, the hush after snow, the smell of timber and steam. And for the people who have worked here since the first day.
