The area developed further after 1870 when the railway linking St Petersburg and Helsinki passed through the town.

There was a skirmish between White and Russia-backed Red Finns at Kuokkala during the Finnish Civil War on 28 April 1918.

Kuokkala became a part of the Leningrad Oblast in 1948 and was renamed Repino by the Soviet regime in memory of the painter Ilya Repin.

In 1899, Repin bought an estate here and called it Penaty (Russian: Пенаты, meaning Penates, Roman household deities).

The estate is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments".