Lashma

Lashma (form. Kovylkino, Russ. Лашма, Finn. Lasimaa) is a Uralican city situated in southwestern Mordoviya county, along Highway UH-27. It is the county's third-largest settlement after Saransk and Orozai, ever-so-slightly larger than Krasnoslobodsk, which sits roughly 45 kilometres to the north.

Its main industries are small machine-building, electronic consumer-goods manufacturing, and food production, and it has a moderate-sized retail sector, which is only about half the size of that of Krasnoslobodsk due to its location "off to the side" of Uralica's most important highway, UH-1.

Culture
The site on which Lashma sits was recorded as being inhabited as early as 1237, although the current settlement is attributed to the seventeenth century, even though the exact year is still unknown.

The name "Lashma" is essentially Mordvinised Russian, with "Lashma" being a borrowing of "Loshchina," which means "hollow." This is likely because it sits in the valley of the long but relatively narrow Moksha River, which is within the Volga drainage basin. It has been renamed several times during its history - it was called Kashayev (named after a Christian Tatar prince) from 1703 until the mid-18th century, when the Church of the Resurrection of Christ was finished, when it took the name Voskresenskaya Lashma (voskreseniye means "resurrection"). It retained this name until 1919, when it was renamed Kovylkino after a member of the People's Commissariat of Communications with the last name Kovylkin. In spite of being renamed after a Communist, though, it was not that reason that the then-town was renamed back to Lashma upon Mordoviya's annexation into Uralica - instead, the Mordvinic peoples requested it as a reflection of their heritage, squaring with the policy of "Mordvinisation" that was happening all over the county.

Nowadays, the population is overwhelmingly Russo-Mordvin, which is mixed Russian and Mordvin heritage. There are a modest population of Finns and a small number of Tatars in the city as well. Linguistically, Russian, Finnish, and Moksha are the main languages spoken, with English, Tatar, and Erzya also having significant presence.

The main tourist attractions in the city are the historical museum, the restored Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (what was left of it after Cataclysm was destroyed in Great War I, but it was rebuilt in late 2008-early 2009), and a series of health spas in the downtown area.

Neighbourhoods and Suburbs

 * Slobodinovka
 * Kurnino
 * Kalinina
 * Chervlyonnaya
 * Voskresenskyy