The metro system was the seventh opened in Russia, and the fifteenth in the former Soviet Union region.

However, World War II ended such attempts, and in the post-war USSR, only the largest capitals of Union republics could afford a Metro system.

Nevertheless, in 1979 the Kazan city's population passed the one million mark: a Soviet requirement for a Metro to be allowed.

The original design was to prove the final one, as the City of Kazan effectively followed a typical Soviet model with a historical centre on the inflow of the Kazanka River into the Volga, and the various industrial and "bedroom" districts (housing complexes) on the edges.

The first line would follow a north–south axis beginning in the Transit Railway Station in the north, passing through the post-war Stalinist buildings and then down south of the Kazanka, next to the Kazan Kremlin and through the historical centre to the microdistrict of Gorki.

In 1991, the Soviet Union broke up and the economic, as well as political turmoil that rocked Tatarstan and Russia, caused the Kazan Metro project to be axed.

Luckily for Kazan, throughout the 1990s, the status of it being the most visible autonomous capital reinforced its position; enough for the Federal government to issue a review of the project in 1995 and authorising the construction.

In a desperate attempt, in late 2003 the Russian Ministry of Transport ordered metro brigades from Samara and Moscow to assist and the first stage was made one station shorter, leaving the difficult path under the Kazanka River to open at a later time.

[3] At present, the Kazan Metro is a single-line system that stretches nearly sixteen kilometres and has eleven stations.

Smart-card ticketing and semi-automatic train drive are features that at the time were just being introduced in selected Moscow stations.

Trains were produced by Saint Petersburg-based Vagonmash factory in cooperation with Škoda Dopravní Technika of Plzeň, Czech Republic in 2005.