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Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, the landscape of the world's largest country remains populated by numerous monuments and structures that together shaped a unified Communist identity. Strolling through certain neighbourhoods and towns can be akin to going back in time and reliving, through these physical relics, an unforgettable chapter in Russian history. On a much larger scale, entire towns that were birthed from the principles of the Soviet planned economy still exist to this day, although many of them, like the Soviet Union itself, have collapsed.
A calque from the Russian word 'monogorod,' a monotown is a populated area whose economy depends on a single industry or company. The planned economy targeted specific locations, based on military, political, and economic criteria, where industrial facilities would be established. Each facility and the town that would erupt around it would specialize in a specific industry, with the enterprise responsible for production and the provision of social services to the population. As they were often located in geographically inhospitable areas, monotowns had economies that were inflexible and dependent on the prosperity of the dominating enterprise.
The fall of the Soviet Union prompted the privatization of most monotowns' dominant enterprises, leading to widespread bankruptcy. Of the companies that still anchored monotowns, most refused to provide social services to the local population, citing "economic inefficiency." The government did try to upload that responsibility to the new monotowns, though a chronic lack of resources made the handover a fruitless endeavour. These newly created municipalities, which had enjoyed higher-than-average wealth during the Soviet period, were now crippled.
A 2000 government study recorded 467 cities and 332 smaller towns in Russia that could be classified as monotowns. With a collective population of 25 million, a sixth of the country's numbers, the monotown enterprises accounted for approximately 30 percent of industrial production. Manufacturing, fuels, timber, and pulp remained relatively prosperous heavy industries. Largely recognized as the largest monotown, Tolyatti is home to a large factory for AvtoVAZ, Russia's biggest carmaker.
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