The Brutal Russian Mafia Wars of Tolyatti, Russia's Detroit

The Underworld Podcast

Documentary, True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 1980s, as the Soviet empire crumbled, organized criminals eyed up the sprawling VAZ automobile plant in the city of Tolyatti, “Russia’s Detroit.” When it collapsed all hell broke loose. Old-school “thimble kings” battled it out with bodybuilding skinheads, Chechen paramilitaries and the Volgas, partying hotheads who’d become a fearsome mob, for supremacy over one of Russia’s most fabled companies. It’d take hundreds of deaths and Kremlin SWAT teams to bring the bloodshed to an end. A story that we don’t think has been reported in English before, the Tolyatti Car Gang Wars are one of Russian crime’s bloodiest episodes. And given the terrible things they’re doing now, that says a lot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:07.0	April 13 1998 in the city of Tolletti workers at the city of Toliati. Workers at the city, known as Russia's Detroit because of the
1:15.8	dominance of its Larda car factory, are settling down to get hammered at a bar for veterans
1:20.8	of the brutal Soviet war in Afghanistan where over a hundred
1:24.7	thousand soldiers have served. Since the fall of the USSR the guys in
1:29.6	Toliati have fought a different kind of war. From 1992 dozens if not hundreds of mobsters have been dropped
1:37.0	often with Battle-worn AK-47
1:39.0	by gangs that sprang into life
1:42.0	under the thawing years of Glaznost and saw a chance to seize
	...

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