Togliatti had every chance of becoming a typical provincial city, known only to its native inhabitants. But the rich history, one of the largest automobile factories in Russia, a favorable demographic situation and talented 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 village
Until the twentieth century, Stavropol, as the city of Tolyatti 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 rebirth in the 1950s. In record time, the Soviet authorities erected a hydroelectric power station, an electrical plant, Volgocemmash, several chemical industry enterprises and an automobile plant, built in conjunction with the Italian automobile manufacturer Fiat. The population of Togliatti began to increase sharply due to young specialists who came to the “new” Volga city in search of a stable and well-paid job.
Around 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 providing visitors with work, but also housing estates. In just fifteen years, the population of Togliatti has already exceeded half a million.
Actual demographic situation
Today the city continues to grow. Social protection of the population of Togliatti, together with statistics authorities, reports that the city is the only one in the Samara region, where a positive natural population growth is 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 for 2017 is 710.5 thousand people, of which about 450 thousand Togliatti are able-bodied. The slogan “Tolyatti is a city of young people!”, Which began to appear in the media several years ago, seems quite justified, because the average age of a resident of a settlement is 38 years and 4 months. This is lower than in the Samara region or in Russia as a whole.
Administrative division
The city is divided into three administrative-territorial units: Avtozavodsky district, Central and Komsomolsky. In 2006, Togliatti expanded due to the inclusion of adjoining villages into the community, which became micro-districts or parts of existing areas.
Avtozavodsky district, which the Togliatti residents themselves call the New City or Avtograd, includes twenty-six residential neighborhoods. The population of Tolyatti living in this territorial unit is mainly employed at an automobile plant. The number of employees of AvtoVAZ OJSC totals more than 65 thousand specialists, about 442 thousand inhabitants live in the Avtozavodsky district.
The central region (or Old Town), 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.
The Komsomol district (or Komsa) has a total of 120 thousand inhabitants. A territorial unit is valuable, first of all, from a historical point of view. The district literally “talks” about the large-scale construction of a hydroelectric power station in the middle of the twentieth century, and many structures date back to the nineteenth century.
City infrastructure
The city, whose population is confidently striving for the millionth mark, has a developed infrastructure. But characteristic of Togliatti are two typical problems of most Russian settlements:
- unsatisfactory work of housing and communal services and non-stop increase in tariffs;
- deplorable condition of roads and inconvenient development - many streets are simply not adapted to pass a large number of personal vehicles.
