Frayleben

Frayleben ("Free Life" in Yiddish, Uchastok 3) was a Jewish agricultural colony established in the mid-1920s. It was the seat of a rural council that included five Jewish settlements, with a total population of 1,339. A Yiddish secondary school operated in Frayleben until the mid-1930s.

Jewish refugees from Bessarabia arrived in the Frayleben area after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The village of Frayleben and the surrounding area were occupied in August 1941, but by then many of the Jews had been able to flee. Over the following month, some 490 Jews (both from Frayleben itself and from the villages of the Frayleben rural council), including some seventy refugees from Bessarabia, were murdered near the village of Yudendorf.

Frayleben was liberated in mid-March 1944.

After the war, the village was renamed Stepovoye.