Petrodvorets Watch Factory

The Petrodvorets Watch Factory (Russian Петродворцовый часовой завод ) is the oldest clock factory in Russia. Established under Peter the Great in 1721, it represents since 1961 ago the Soviet Raketa clock. The production site is still Peterhof ( Petrodvorets ), now a suburb of Saint Petersburg. Throughout its nearly 300 - year history, the factory has changed its name several times.

Originally, the factory gemstone objects for the Imperial Court ago. Today, these objects are in the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, but also in most of the major castles in Europe such as Versailles, the Louvre or Sanssouci.

Executed works

In Soviet times, the factory processed further gemstones. But the craftsmen and designers of Petrodvorets also designed architectural objects and sculptures. Among other things, it has the Colonnade of the front side of the Isaak cathedral as well as during the Soviet period 1924, the Lenin Mausoleum designed and manufactured. In 1935 she made ​​of rubies the stars on the Kremlin towers.

The beginnings of the industrial production of watches

In the prewar years, highly skilled workers of the factory started up the manufacturing of precision and measuring devices for the Red Army and the incipient Soviet watch industry.

After its destruction by German troops during the siege of Leningrad, the factory was built just after the relief of the city back in 1944. As early as 1945 gave Stalin, who wanted to reduce the dependence of the USSR by Western imports to manufacture the watches command. The first watches left the factory in 1949 under the brand names Zvezda and Pobeda. In 1961, the factory launched in honor of the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, the new brand Raketa, thereby founding their reputation in that part of the world, which was under the radiance of communism.

In the years of their size, in the postwar period, the manufacturing facility employs 8,000 people and made 4.5 million a year ago clocks for Soviet citizens and the Red Army. It was equipped with two nuclear bunkers, which should protect the 8,000 workers in the event of a Western attack. They had their own schools, their university, their hospital, their seaside resorts on the Black Sea, their own communist youth formations pioneers and Komsomol, as well as their orchestra.

The current situation

In the wake of the troubled years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Back guided tours of the private property, the factory has greatly reduced their production volume. Despite the great difficulties in adapting to the capitalist system, it is the only Soviet watch brand that continues to be made ​​at the place of their origin.