"Samara, the Detroit of Russia" a Samara Travel Page by heplion

I travelled to Samara for work purposes so if this sounds more like a business trip report I appologize in advance :) But even though I was here for work, I had the opportunity to walk around the city at length in the evenings.

Samara in many ways lives up to the self imposed declaration of being "The Detroit of Russia" The city and the region/Oblast is predominantly a manufacturing center with such international and local companies represented as GM/Opel, Delphi Packard, Henkel, and Volga Motor (Russian Auto Company). Samara was also the birth place of the "Vostok" and "Soyuz" (space rockets) carrier rockets as well as the space crafts "Foton", "Resurs", the "Kosmos" satellites and the Russian space shuttle "Buran", which by the way never flew due to a lack of funding. Oil is refined in the region, beer and vodka are produced and many of the support industries are located here as well.

Samara was founded in the late 1500's as a fortress and opened the first river port and customs office in the early 1600's and shortly afterwards the foreigners and investment started arriving. By the 20th century it had become one of the largest trade centres on the Volga. In 1941 Samara (or Kuibyshev, its soviet name) all the embassy offices were moved to Samara from Moscow due to the German offensive. After the war, the city was closed to ALL foreigners because many of the military enterprises were located here and tanks, planes and missiles were all developed in the area.