VAI, Voronezh — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in VAI?

The aircraft factory is why the district exists. The Soviet government decided in April 1929 to build a set of large industrial works, the Voronezh aviation plant among them, and it started production on 15 March 1932. Fighters and bombers came off it.

The plant built them in different Soviet decades and civil aircraft as well, and the microdistrict grew up east of it. Industry still fills the ground. A refrigeration plant and a works making reinforced concrete stand here, with bread and vegetable depots beside them.

What is the history of VAI?

The district was called residential district number twenty-six at first. It grew east of the aviation plant, and only later took the name it has now. VAI stands for the Voronezh aviation institute.

That school was created out of the construction institute in 1941, lasted a few months in Voronezh, and was to have its buildings on Tsiolkovskogo street, close to the plant it served. The buildings were never finished. Construction started before the war, the institute was evacuated to Tashkent in 1941, and it was never re-founded in Voronezh, merging back into the construction institute in 1944 while parts of it stayed in Tashkent or went to Kuybyshev and Leningrad.

The acronym outlived the school. It was never meant to decline, but because the institute was never built the place name became the main sense of the word, and people in the city now say they live na VAyakh, a form the local rock band Sektor Gaza used as well.

Where is VAI?

VAI lies in the Left Bank district of Voronezh, east of the aviation plant, along Volgogradskaya, Tsiolkovskogo, Tupoleva, Irkutskaya and Barrikadnaya.