Tolyatti had every chance of becoming a typical provincial town, known only to its indigenous people. But a rich history, one of the largest car factories in Russia, a prosperous demographic situation and talented people of Togliatti made the city, located directly opposite the Zhiguli Mountains, famous not only throughout Russia, but also beyond its borders.
A brief history of the settlement
Until the twentieth century, Stavropol, as the city of Togliatti was previously called, and translated from Greek as "the city of the holy cross", was a very modest settlement. The population of Togliatti in 1920 was only ten thousand inhabitants, which influenced the decision of the authorities to transform Stavropol into a rural settlement.
The city experienced a second birth in the 1950s. In record time, the Soviet authorities built a hydroelectric power plant, an electrical plant, Volgocemmash, several chemical industry enterprises and an automobile plant built jointly withItalian car manufacturer Fiat. The population of Tolyatti began to increase dramatically due to young professionals who came to the "new" Volga city in search of stable and well-paid work.
About the same time, in 1964, Stavropol was renamed. The city received its modern name when the population of Togliatti reached 123.4 thousand people. Actively built not only industrial enterprises that provide newcomers with work, but also residential areas. In just fifteen years, the population of Tolyatti has already exceeded half a million.
Current demographic situation
To date, the city continues to grow. Social protection of the population of Togliatti, together with the statistical authorities, report that the city is the only one in the Samara region where a positive natural population growth has been recorded. For example, in 2013, the number of joyful events associated with the birth of a child exceeded the number of mourning events by almost a thousand.
The population of Togliatti in 2017 is 710.5 thousand people, of which about 450 thousand Togliatti residents are able-bodied. The slogan “Tolyatti is a city of the young!”, which began to appear in the media a few years ago, seems quite justified, because the average age of a resident of the village is 38 years and 4 months. This is lower than in the Samara region or in Russia as a whole.
Administrative-territorial division
The city is divided into three administrative-territorialunits: Avtozavodsky district, Central and Komsomolsky. In 2006, Tolyatti expanded to include adjacent settlements, which became microdistricts or parts of existing districts.
Avtozavodskoy district, which Togliatti residents themselves call the New City or Avtograd, includes twenty-six residential areas. The population of Togliatti, living in this territorial unit, is mainly employed at an automobile plant. The number of employees of OJSC AVTOVAZ includes more than 65 thousand specialists, while about 442 thousand inhabitants live within the boundaries of the Avtozavodsky district.
The central district (or the Old City), although it is the administrative center of the city, is much smaller than its "neighbors" - Avtozavodsky and Komsomolsky. Most of the Old Town is built up with private houses, there are also many attractions, cultural and architectural monuments.
Komsomolsky district (or Komsa) has only 120 thousand inhabitants. The territorial unit is valuable, first of all, from a historical point of view. The area literally "tells" about the large-scale construction of a hydroelectric power plant in the mid-twentieth century, and many buildings even date back to the nineteenth century.
City infrastructure
The city, whose population is confidently striving for the millionth mark, has a developed infrastructure. But Tolyatti is also characterized by two typical problems of most Russian settlements:
- Unsatisfactory housing workutilities and non-stop tariff growth;
- deplorable state of roads and inconvenient buildings - many streets are simply not adapted to the passage of a large number of personal vehicles.
Economic situation and industry
Relatively recently, Tolyatti was one of the most prosperous Russian cities, but with the global economic crisis, the situation has changed significantly and not for the better. Today, Togliatti residents are dissatisfied with the overstated official statistics, which report that the average salary in the city is at the level of twenty thousand rubles. Well, at least you shouldn’t complain about the lack of vacancies - the Togliatti employment center reports a shortage of workers at an automobile plant.
In addition to the city-forming enterprise, you can get a decent job at the following industrial facilities:
- GM-AVTOVAZ is a joint Russian-American automobile production.
- POLAD group of companies, producing a wide range of products for the engineering industry.
- "Detail construction".
- "Johnson Control Togliatti" is a company specializing in the production of car covers.
- "VazInterService" - a plant that produces components for cars.
- "AvtoVAZagregat".
- CHPP of the Volga Automobile Plant.
- Togliatti CHPP.
- TolyattiAzot is the world's largest ammonia plant.
- KuibyshevAzot, which produces mineral fertilizers.
- Tolyattikauchuk is a plant specializing in the production of synthetic rubber.
- Food industry: distillery, meat processing plant, bakery, dairy, winery and many more.
The population of Togliatti is attracted by the full package of social guarantees, fixed working hours and stability that the above-mentioned enterprises offer their employees.
