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The success of Russian watches in recent years can be traced back to a long history of innovation and many Soviet-made models are prized collector’s items

Text: Kevin O'Flynn Photography: Rory Daniel

ut it on your hand and you will immediately feel the weight, a solid chunky object on your wrist that you feel might drag you down into the water rather than help you tell the time down there. This is the Vodolaz, a Soviet diver's watch, 58mm in diameter

and weighing 260 grammes, one of the thousands of Soviet watches that have bewitched collectors and tourists since the timepieces became available over the last two decades. The appeal of the watches is both in their retro style and their history, with many of them linked to different areas of the Soviet system from the Navy with the Vodolaz to the space industry and the army. Most of them are mechanical and remain reliable and true to their owners years and sometimes decades on.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union was the second biggest watch manufacturer in the world after Switzerland and the variety and breadth of the industry is huge. “Russian watchmakers tried to make timepieces that conformed

to the socialist ideal,” says Mark Gordon, a well-known Singapore-based collector of Soviet watches, who is currently writing a history of them. Like the ethos of the Soviet state, the majority of the watches produced used simple utilitarian designs that were – in a vast country where people were used to fixing things

themselves – easy to repair. Timepieces in the Tsarist era were

very much for the elite and it wasn't until after the Revolution that the watch industry became a mass phenomenon. A Chasovoi Dvor or Watch Courtyard existed on Myasnitskaya ulitsa not far from the Kremlin in the 17th century where Russian and foreign watchmakers lived and worked. Top watchmakers

like Paul Buhre and Henry Moser had their own workshops too but the majority of timepieces were made by local craftsmen using imported movements and parts from Switzerland.

In the 1920s when the Soviets were looking for ways to create a new industry from scratch, the

Opposite: a selection of Soviet-era diving watches. The model

on the far left weighs more than 280 grammes

and was produced in the 1960s by the

Zlatoustowsky Factory

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easiest thing to do was to just buy a factory new, which is what they did. Two bankrupt factories in the United States, the Dueber-Hampden Watch Company in Ohio and one from Brooklyn in New York, were purchased and they became the basis of state watch factories No. 1 and No. 2 in Moscow, two of the most famous watchmakers in Soviet times. Twenty-one employees of the American factory were brought to help set up No. 1 State Watch Factory and their influence was strong as a few watches were even produced with the words Dueber-Hampden Watch Company engraved on them. They are very much a collector's item today. In the 1930s, the Soviets bought Chronoflight watches from the Swiss manufacturer Jaeger-LeCoultre to put in aircraft cockpits and later bought a license to produce them in Russia. French watch firm LIP also helped set up factory in Penza and licenced several designs to be produced there.

There are hundreds of different kinds of Soviet watches but one of the most famous is the Pobeda (Victory) and the design of these watches were said to have been approved of by Stalin himself when they were first produced in 1946. The watches, which featured a celebrating soldier on its dial, were extremely popular among Soviet citizens. The No. 1 Watch Factory produced another legendary Soviet watch brand, Poljot, the official watches of the Soviet space mission. Yuri Gagarin actually went into space wearing a Navigator watch, which were worn by air force pilots. Other moments in Soviet history were marked with new watches. When the first satellite Sputnik went into space in 1957, a special watch was produced and that same year a 24-hour timepiece was created for the Soviet expedition to Antarctica. Both watches are rare finds today. In 1965, cosmonaut Andrei Leonov took a Strela watch with him on the first-ever space walk.

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1. Singaporean Mark Gordon has one of the largest collections of Soviet clocks and watches2. A pocket watch manufactured in 1934 by the 1st State Watch Factory

3. A selection of timepieces associated with Soviet exploits in space. On the left is a clockwork device which displays 10 space missions starting with Sputnik in 1957

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A selection of timepieces from the earliest days of Soviet watchmaking. At the top is an aircraft chronograph clock

If you want to start off buying watches, collectors suggest starting with a Vostok, which is known for its reliability. There is the Vostok Komandirskie, an army service watch which features a parachute on its face, and a Vostok Amphibie, which was first produced for the Soviet navy in the 1970s which had a number of different chunky designs some with a diver on its face.

Many of the Soviet watch factories did not survive capitalism but a few have battled on and are these days producing both old and new models. Vostok Europe makes trendy Soviet-looking chunky watches named after different Russian successes such as Artika after successful Arctic expeditions and TU-144 after the plane. The new lease of life goes back to 1991 when Igor Zubovsky was a radio physicist at a radio device measurement institute in Vilnius, Lithuania which was working with the Vostok watch factory. When time came to pay the institute in Lithuania, the Soviet Union did not exist and money supply had almost collapsed so the factory sent a suitcase of watches in lieu of cash. Zubovsky sold the watches at the market and from then on slowly built up the company.

There is also Vostok, which works with Vostok Europe. The factory is based in Tatarstan because in 1942 all of the No. 2 Watch Factory and its 500 employees were evacuated

to Chistopol in the republic as the Germans moved on Moscow. Later renamed Vostok, the factory was awarded a defence ministry contract and created the Komandirskiye watch, which gained huge popularity in the armed forces. On a tour around Europe a few years ago the company would show off the enduring strength of its Amphibia model by inviting people to whack it with a hammer and then show that it continued to work.

Another factory with new ambitions is the Petrodvorets Watch factory in St Petersburg whose history goes back to the early 18th century when it was founded by Peter the Great as a workshop to make carvings of precious stones. The factory worked on the Lenin mausoleum and the red stars on the Kremlin spires and released the Raketa (rocket) watch in 1962 in honour of Yuri Gagarin. As with other factories, Petrodvorets had a rough period after the end of the Soviet Union but has now rebranded itself. Russian supermodel Natalya Vodianova has designed a model for the factory and the watches are now available at Moscow’s plush GUM department store as well as in Paris. One of the stylish new models is the Yalta 34, a reworking of a 1960s version which was in honour of the Yalta summit at the end of Word War II and which the factory notes is perfect for meetings with world leaders.

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