Tolyatti

“I still go around town sometimes, with my eyes wide open, thinking maybe he’s sitting somewhere, but he doesn’t remember us, but maybe we’re there in his subconscious mind,” Ms. Seleznyova said in an interview late last year in her one-room apartment in Tolyatti, an industrial city on the Volga River that is home to Russia’s largest car manufacturer.

Other official events were held in the industrial city of Tolyatti and in Syzran and Novokuybyshevsk.

The bus stations in Samara and Tolyatti, two large Russian cities in the Samara region, on Thursday halted service to Uralsk, a border city in Kazakhstan.

Avtovaz employs more than 30,000 people in Russia, including at its flagship plant at Tolyatti on the Volga river.

It’s 50 years to the day since the first Lada ran off the production line in Tolyatti, a Russian company town – also known as Togliatti – on a bend in the Volga.