Izhevsk

A city of perhaps 500,000 located about a 3 hour drive to the north of Nizhnekamsk, home to the Kalashnikov munitions factory and a few other military-related industries. This city would have been - and was - closed to westerners in the Soviet times. Eight of us took a van and toured the Kalashnikov museum and tried out the shooting range in the basement (first rifle I'd shot since I was a kid). The city was otherwise interesting with its soviet architecture and theaters. This was no longer in Tatarstan but in Uudmert - people of Finnish descent.