Lada factory - Togliattigrad

Tolyatti or Togliatti is a city in Samara Oblast, Russia. It is the administrative center of Stavropolsky District. Population: 718,030 (2007 est.); 702,879 (2002 Census); It is the largest city in Russia which does not serve as an administrative center of a federal subject.

It was founded in 1737 as a fortress called Stavropol (Ста́врополь) by the Russian politician Vasily Tatishchev. Informally it was often referred as Stavropol-na-Volge (Ста́врополь-на-Во́лге) to distinguish from Stavropol, a large city in South-West Russia. During the construction of Volga Hydroelectrical Plant in the 1950s, the old settlement fell into the flooding zone of the Kuybyshev dam on the Volga River and was completely rebuilt on a new site. In 1964, the city was renamed Tolyatti (after Palmiro Togliatti, the longest-serving secretary of the Italian Communist Party).