The Unusual Metro Systems of the Soviet Union

Yerevan

The capital of Armenia got its (partly above-ground) metro in 1981, after a considerable amount of arm-twisting. Moscow had determined that no city with under 1 million inhabitants deserved a full-fledged underground. But the Chairman of the Armenian Communist Party, Karen Demirchyan reportedly managed to convince Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev with a bit of population prognostication:

Each Armenian who lives away from his or her parents must visit them daily. As a result the passenger flow will be at least 1.5 times greater than projected. Moreover the republic is growing and becoming more developed at an increasingly large amount, sooner or later many of the Armenian diaspora (which outnumber those living in the former Armenian SSR) will want to return home. In this case, by 2000 our capital will not have 1.5 million, but 2 million inhabitants. We need Metro!