Vostok, the brand unknown to most Westerners, has been manufacturing mechanical and automatic watches since 1942 in the greatest tradition of the Jura watchmaking industry. It is also, remarkably, one of the rare manufacturers in the world to produce its own movements without buying a single one of its components from outside.
A look back at the events that led Stalin and the Politburo to ask the Allies for help during the Great Patriotic War to design and build the Vostok watch factory. A strategic factory that would become one of the USSR's greatest propaganda vehicles within the future Warsaw Pact of the post-war period.

Hero of the Soviet Union. This famous decoration, which is awarded for remarkable heroism, is the highest distinction and the highest honorary degree of the Soviet Union. Twelve thousand women and men received the Gold Star medal during the Second World War and for their contribution to the victory. The most famous are the fighter pilot Alexander Pokryshkin, Marina Raskova or Ekaterina Zelenko, a famous female SU-2 pilot of the 135th bomber regiment, famous for being to this day the only woman to have achieved an aerial victory by voluntary boarding. A medal that today in Russia has kept its appearance and is called the medal of the Hero of the Russian Federation. In 1941, the Axis forces broke through the Soviet defense lines in fierce and sudden assaults. Operation Barbarossa and its Blitzkrieg caused gigantic destruction and ravaged the Eastern Front. The losses are estimated at more than thirty million people. The Soviet Union is on the brink of a precipice and only a massive surge in which the entire population would be engaged can balance the trend. One of the last options available in this terrible confrontation where all the material resources of the country are engaged is propaganda. A weapon that requires a vector and a symbol: The symbol is the hero's medal: materialized by the red star that recalls the supreme distinction and which will be struck on the dial of Vostok watches, the new propaganda weapon of the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs.

The first Vostok watches will be highly coveted by apparatchiks and will subsequently be a concrete and palpable symbol of the population's commitment to the victory against the enemy of Rodina. Wearing a Vostok can be both a sign of participation in an important project for the Nation but also as a sign of rallying and support for the great patriotic cause. Just look at the dial to determine its affiliation: Vostok will quickly produce watches with personalized dials according to military and scientific events or units. One of the first variants will be the model in honor of dam design engineers, which will have a dam stamped on the left side of the dial. After 1950, the Ministry of Defense will order very large quantities to distribute them to military personnel (Poljot Watches, the technical equivalent of military equipment, being too expensive to produce in large series). In 1965, at the heart of the Cold War, Vostok created the Komandirskie (Commander) model. This model was sold exclusively to high-ranking military or scientific personnel or possibly distributed to foreign dignitaries during their visit or training in the USSR.


This is why many dials display different mentions or logos of armed forces or governments. Unknown in the West or extremely rare before Perestroika, many watches have been sold to collectors since the fall of the Iron Curtain and their very affordable price has favored their diffusion in the 90s. An economically advantageous collection theme compared to others, these watches are however still in limited production in today's Russia and a sign of the times, their price on the second-hand market has more than quintupled in the last three years. The opportunity to be able to obtain them easily tends to end ... you will find our collection here .