Liski is a Russian town standing on River Don (a river port), 98 km to the southeast of Voronezh.

It is a railway knot. The town with the territory of 65 sq km has the population of 55 864 persons (as of 2010).

History of Liski

It was first recorded in the 16th century as the New Pokrovka (Bobrovsky) settlement on the left bank of Don. In 1870 a railway station named Liski was built in the center of New Pokrovka Settlement is constructed the (from 1717 to 1803 it was called Peropavlovskoye Settlement).

Initially the name of Liska River was recorded in some sources of the 13th-19th centuries as Lyska and Lysochka derived from the Russian adjective “lysyi” meaning “bald”. Similar names are usual for geographical objects that lack vegetation.

A considerable part of freights was transported down the river.

According to population census of 1897 Bobrovsky District of the Voronezh Province had 5486 dwellers.

In 1928 Novopokrovsky Settlement was merged with the station settlement into an industrial community, the centre of Liski District, which was named Svoboda (i.e. Freedom). It became a town in 1937.

During the Great Patriotic War 1941-45 in the course of hardened fights fascist armies were stopped on July 6, 1942 on the right coast of Don, opposite to Liski; thus, Liski and Zaluzhnoye settlements were almost completely destroyed.

In 1943 the town was renamed into Liski. In 1965 it was renamed into Georgiu-Dezh after the last name of the figure of the Romanian Communist Party Georgiu-Dezh (1901-65), and in 1991it was restored into Liski.

Divnogorye Reserve

At a 10 kilometers distance from the town center there is a Natural Historical and Archaeological Memorial Estate Divnogorye. The open-air museum occupies the area 1100 hectares, including the flood plains of Rivers Tikhaya Sosna and Don, steep slopes of the right bank of these rivers, and steppe sites with cretaceous deposits. In the territory of the memorial estate there are monuments of history and architecture of republican value: cave cretaceous churches of the mid 17th century; Mayatsky ancient settlement site of the 9th-10th centuries; nature sanctuaries: the region’s only cretaceous pillars – remains of Diva; unique landscape formations, relic and endemic vegetation; and endemic insects.