
Movements of the Cold War: How the Soviets Revolutionized Wristwatches - bootload
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-the-soviets-revolutionized-wristwatches/
======
Animats
A strange watch-like device that came out of the USSR was the watch-sized
circular slide rule. Looks like a small pocket watch, and has two knobs, one
for the inner dial and one for the cursor. I have one of these. Pictures:

[http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulefrontmed...](http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulefrontmed.jpg)

[http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulebackmed....](http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulebackmed.jpg)

These date from the era when the US was making pocket calculators, an area in
which the USSR lagged.

~~~
jacobolus
How easy is it to actually turn those dials? I would expect a regular (linear
or circular) slide rule to be much faster to work.

~~~
mroatman
Very, very easy. Though I wouldn't argue that a linear slide rule isn't easier
to work with.

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dmreedy
I just got in to soviet watches myself. If you've not seen them, the Raketa
brand from the Petrodvorets Watch Factory in St. Petersburg had some
beautiful, non-traditional timepieces that are still classy enough to avoid
'gaudy'. I picked up a Raketa Kopernik for my brother for Christmas, and I'm
damn tempted to keep it for myself...

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I grew up in the Eastern Bloc. The Raketa brand (tr: "Rocket") were quite
popular - and had a good reputation too.

Nice article, it brought back memories. Like many child geeks back then, I was
intrigued by the innards of wristwatches. The rubies used in those tiny
bearings were fascinating.

~~~
mroatman
Of all the Soviet brands, Raketas are the most interesting, aesthetically
speaking, in my opinion. To me, it seems like the designers were just having
fun. My Raketa collection now numbers 241 pieces(!!), with my favorites being
those with stone dials (jade, jasper). These were a nod to the origins of the
Petrodvorets Factory.

[http://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-
ussr/raketa](http://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-ussr/raketa)

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I had one of those square designs when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure it was a
Raketa. But the color scheme of the face had a deep blue background.

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trhway
reminded about another, and extremely significant, jump start of USSR tech by
a US business around the same time - the car factory GAZ set up by Ford :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ#1929_to_2000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ#1929_to_2000)

~~~
nine_k
In 1930s, USSR was buying American and European technology like crazy,
especially the heavy industry technology. USSR was able to pay gold for that;
gold still was the monetary metal at the time. The gold was earned by selling
wheat and other agricultural supplies. The wheat was also produced like crazy,
but, being a dictatorship, Soviet authorities just took however much they
could from the collective farms (private farming was mostly eliminated). This
likely contributed to a famine in 1932-33 in Ukraine, then a part of the USSR
[1].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)

~~~
flukus
You also have to wonder how WW2 would have turned out had the USSR not been in
such a rush to industrialize (not that they knew at the time)? Then again,
they may have had more people to fight the Nazi's.

~~~
trhway
> (not that they knew at the time)

well, the previous 1000 years of history there could have been a hint :) By
the 192x-193x that history took specific forms of "export of revolution" (into
which hundreds of years of the Russian Empire's expansion morphed) on one side
and the Mein Kampf's "new living space for Germans" (into which the hundreds
of years, from the times of Teutonic Order, of "Drang nach Osten" morphed) on
the other side.

If Germany didn't attack USSR in 1941, it would be pretty real possibility
that USSR would attack it few years later. Especially in the alternative
Universe where Stalin didn't destroy the very modern-military-technology-
minded Red Army leadership - like Tuchachevsky and his elk - in the 1936.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
I'm not totally sure it's valid to use 'Rust Belt' to describe Ohio in 1929.

~~~
mroatman
Right. It was still iron back then.

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arprocter
Vostok Amphibias are interesting due to the clever way they chose to make them
waterproof (as the outside pressure increases the domed crystal flattens).
They're still making new ones, although the older ones tend to be slimmer.

The problem with cheap watches is if anything goes wrong it will probably be
uneconomic to get repaired

~~~
lb1lf
Depends how you look at it. I have spent the value of a 1960's Certina DS many
times over servicing and repairing it over the last couple of decades.

Totally worth it; it was my grandfather's favourite watch.

(Idea being - if you have some sort of emotional attachment to a watch, it
doesn't really matter all that much what financial value the rest of the world
puts on it.)

I would guess collectors of these watches feel much the same way - they are
maintaining a bit of history, not a watch. Besides, a lot of them probably do
routine CLA (Clean, Lube, Adjust) on their own; it is surprisingly simple
given a very modest investment in tools - and guess how good it feels when
you've successfully dismantled and reassembled your watch - and it still
works...)

~~~
mroatman
Nailed it.

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barryp
I was curious about the workers from Ohio who went to the USSR to help setup
the transferred equipment (did they make it back? end up in a gulag?), found
this short article:

[https://dueber-hampden.blogspot.com/2012/12/to-russia-
with-l...](https://dueber-hampden.blogspot.com/2012/12/to-russia-with-
love.html)

Sounds like they were treated like kings and came home after their contract
was up

~~~
kapitza
Ha, not in all cases:

[http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/772/1/the...](http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/772/1/the-
forgotten-american-emigrants-to-the-ussr)

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guard-of-terra
Well, people smuggled those watches to Poland after the collapse of USSR to
get economy going.

Post-soviet state could not arrange proper exports, imagine that.

~~~
trhway
>Post-soviet state could not arrange proper exports, imagine that.

it was the time of "privatization" and the exports were "privatized" too.

For example Putin got his start in the Russian "business" (after running
scared away from his KGB job after the failed coup of 1991) as one of the key
persons - he was issuing export licenses, ie. representing that "Post-soviet
state" \- in the massive export channel of the "privatized" commodities
(mostly metals, some oil, etc) through St.Petersburg(Leningrad). A typical,
and relatively small, example of such "privatized" export back then :

[https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/04/19/putin-
and-a...](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/04/19/putin-and-a-
controversial-past/)

~~~
guard-of-terra
There was perhaps a long list of people who could have save the day, and
nobody did. As far as I am concerned, the whole society has failed. Blaming it
on a handful people is pointless IMO.

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nraynaud
If I were to have a watch one day, I would want a Lip watch (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIP_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIP_\(company\))
), and I want one of the watches that was hidden in the caves.

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deftnerd
Better link: [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-the-soviets-
rev...](http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-the-soviets-
revolutionized-wristwatches/)

The current link at Hodinkee is just a summary of the collectorsweekly.com
article.

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the link from [https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/how-a-
bankrupt-rust-belt-w...](https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/how-a-bankrupt-
rust-belt-watch-company-kick-started-the-soviet-watch-industry-and-the-
obsessive-collector-who-chronicles-their-history).

