How the Soviets revolutionized wristwatches (2016) | Hacker News Reader

How the Soviets revolutionized wristwatches (2016)

collectorsweekly.com

127 pointsgoles79 comments

Just a public service announcement for people interested into looking into Russian watches, and the watch makers that still exist. There are two Vostoks. There is Vostok Europe, which makes more "premium" watches at a premium price and they are not made in Russia, so literally the 'not your grandfather's Vostok.' And Vostok that still makes cheaper mechanical and automatic watches similar to how they used to make them years ago and made in Russia (your grandfather's Vostok).

Sure but neither of them is what collectors are looking for. Your grandfathers Vostok was made during the CCCP time, not today.

As the other commenter said, the Vostoks made in Russian today are largely still of the same design with some small improvements and material changes. However, my comment was more meant for those tho might look and see if Vostok is still around and what they offer today. That there are two Vostoks, and the difference between them in today's watches.

But to most it's not the material or the technology, but some untouchable nostalgia that connects them to a country that was founded on an utopia that doesn't exist anymore.

Maybe not collectors, but Russian Vostok watches are still popular among people who like mechanical watches. They are still among the cheapest mechanical watches and mechanical watch movements you can get your hands on today.

If you live in the US, be careful, purchasing Vostoks directly from Meranom (the Russian factory store) might violate some laws given it's currently wartime and there are sanctions, etc.

I could be wrong, but Vostok watches (from Chistopol) are still made the same way they were during CCCP. They improved things a lot by using more durable materials; for example, bezels are made from stainless steel these days; in the past, they were made from brass. However, the underlying machine design and build process are (or should be) the same.

That is my understanding. Outside of some smallish improvements and change of materials, they are relatively unchanged in the bigger picture. Still using the same movement designs, still have the wobbly crowns, etc.

I collect (mechanical) watches, and my collection is split between Swiss and Russian. The article really does sell things rightly, at their peak Russian watches were rugged, beautiful, and utterly reliable.

Even now Vostok, in particular, is well known for being "cheap and cheerful", producing a number of lines that are similar to the old ones.

There was a dip in quality, which some say never came back, but I've had a few recent pieces as well as the more vintage ones from the 50s,60s and 70s and they all seem to hold up well.

Brands like Pobeda, and Rateka are easy to find online as they really were made in huge numbers - literally in factories!

I got into collecting Soviet watches, I still have them and love them, but I don't wear them as often anymore. They all work great, even the ones that are old. I also just love how they were nice, but not flashy. Also being a bit of a space geek, I also like how most of the names are space related and made many space themed watches (the famous Raketa Copernicus or the Slava Buran watch and the Sputnik watches).

Be aware also there are a lot of "fakes" because a lot of people go on eBay looking for a Raketa or Pobeda watch and it's relatively easy to paint the raketa logo and minute track on a watch dial.

That being said, for $20 or so, who cares if it's fake. It still works like a mechanical watch.

One of the things Gen-X may remember during the dissolution of the USSR was the amount of Soviet goods available in Eastern Europe. Some of it was local stuff or sold by former USSR officers for quick cash on their way back home. Unfortunately most is military surplus so not as good as some of the samples in the article. I picked up a USSR paratrooper watch that was really just a copy of an older Rolex design. Depending on where/when you went to former Warsaw Bloc countries, you could find all sorts of watches, clothes, medals, etc. being sold in shops or street corners.

I bought crapload of high-quality carbon fiber rods and made a lightweight folding kayak frame. Those rods were clearly from aerospace industry, labeled мир, as in space station MIR.

Pre-zoom, pre-autofocus M42 lenses, binoculars, night vision goggles...

What does the Orion nebula have to do with autofocus lenses?

You can only photograph the Orion nebula using an M42 camera adapter, that's common knowledge.

There's a ton of Russian watches for sale in the flea market. However it's cheaper to order them from E-bay, from former Soviet countries.

I picked up a Soviet Army officer's uniform, including cap, slacks, and pistol holster. Uniforms were being sold for peanuts by individuals.

> In fact, aside from a few obsessive collectors, the impressive quality of vintage Soviet watches has mostly been forgotten.

If you lurk around watch forums, watch blogs, YouTube channels, auctions and speak with watch collectors, that is not the case at all. There are many people interested in old Russian watches.

However, there's a problem, many old Russian watches are forged, Frankenstein-ized and you need due diligence to find an original watch in good condition.

That is good to know... so is ordering off ebay safe? Or how does one get the real deal? I really like some of these watches. :)

A similar problem befalls any name that gets well associated with Western collectors. Fake HMT watches are all over eBay as well.

If you think you're getting a genuinely 20-30 year old, still in working order Soviet era mechanical watch that runs well (meaning it was serviced by a human) for like $30-$60, no way.

You can buy Vostoks new from Russian factories direct today, and those will be guaranteed to be real, plus they have not changed much since Soviet times, even the designs are the same. It's kind of kitschy like that.

If you genuinely want to buy a vintage Soviet watch like this collector, it's best to find some catalogs, make sure the watch you want was actually produced by the given company. Find pictures of the movement online, and ask your eBay seller to show you the watch with the case back taken off. When it comes to Frankenstein watches, I don't really care if the dial is repainted, so long as the movement is real and from the era.

This is a pretty decent forum. The link is for the Russian watch section. BUt over time some good posts and dicussion has happened in the past on identifying fakes and franken watches.

[1] https://www.watchuseek.com/forums/russian-watches.10/

I have owned two (new) Vostoks so far, and they've proven easier to adjust and tinker with than a Seiko 5 my friend has. They really nailed down mass production of that soviet "Good enough, watch is fine" engineering concept. When properly adjusted (which they don't bother to do at the factory), they also keep time perfectly (+- 1s/day), provided you don't let the spring unwind completely. Some of them are ugly as sin though.

Could you explain how they're easier? I thought all analogue watches were very similar - pull the crown out, rotate, push it back in.

I assume the parent means to adjust the watch internals - changing how fast or slow it runs, and completing basic servicing.

I have a couple of automatic Seiko's and they keep terrible time despite (fairly expensive) servicing, and they are made for home adjustments (though that doesn't stop a lot of people having a go).

He means adjusting the screws / levers that regulate how much or how little of the wound spring to let out at a time. Slight changes to that tolerance can "adjust" how fast or slow your watch keeps time. You can pop the back of a mechanical watch off and adjust these parts with a tweezer and put it back together, then see if the time is kept better.

There's also machines that can detect the time keeping accuracy to help you adjust a watch's timekeeping this way

I collect watches, it's my dumb hobby, but there is a cult following in the community for Soviet watches especially Vostoks on the whole price : value that you get from them.

You can see that the factories and materials that were limited really influenced their approaches to design. It's fascinating to see how Soviet engineers approached problems such as shock absorption or bezel design in a completely different manner than their Swiss contemporaries.

They are harder to get considering sanctions after the war in Ukraine but many collectors do revere their watches. I wish Vostoks weren't as out there with their designs nowadays but I hope to collect a few down the line.

For decades I wanted mechanical watches. Then I had some and I learned that I wanted the image of mechanical watches but not reality.

I gave my mechanical watches to my wife and bought an UHF quartz, which as an 80s kid is much more to my liking I've learned to my suprise.

I wear a mechanical watch and I love it for a few reasons.

First and foremost, I like how it looks. It's jewelry.

I also love that it's a little self-powered machine that captures energy from me living my life and stores it in a little spring. When I hold it very close to my ear and listen carefully, I hear the 4 Hz ding-ding-ding-ding-ding sound that can calm me down almost instantly when I'm feeling a lot of anxiety. If I don't want to hold my wrist to my ear, just watching the second hand moving around the dial has a similar effect.

I feels alive, it's an engineering marvel, a work of art, and useful.

I also have a digital watch I wear for similar reasons. It lacks the kinetic qualities of the mechanical version, but it too is beautiful, a technical marvel (to me), and useful.

A f91-w will keep better time, never breaks, and costs about 2-3 coffees. You cannot beat the utility.

And the F-105W will do the same but with a usable night light.

I have an F-91 and the thing I dislike about that watch and watches like it are the 3-button design. There's a pad for the fourth button and some functions could have been easier with a fourth button, but it probably increased the bill of materials by $1. Not sure why, but the 3-button asymmetry just feels wrong to me.

Timex has a similar watch with 4 buttons and when my Casio dies, I'll probably buy one.

I also have a (little more expensive) GWM5610-1 and I think it is the best watch (for what is important to me, solar, sleep mode, radio, gshock, waterproof) - it will probably outlast me.

I have one too, but find myself favouring the much lighter and simpler F-105 anyway.

Then I need to get that one too ;-)

Same. I have the Withings Steel Hr, which looks mostly analog except for the small screen.

The mechanical watches started breaking down and becoming unreliable, and fixing Russian (Poljot mentioned in the article) and Chinese watches is a challenge, apparently.

Sometimes the Soviets made watches disappear:

https://aboutphotography.blog/blog/2019/10/12/the-story-behi...

And old habits die hard:

https://www.rferl.org/a/russian_patriarch_watch_disappearing...

If you are a watch enthusiast, another path worth exploring is Chinese mechanical watches. Some are on par with Swiss Made watches while being much pocket friendly.

I came across these recently from a quote on a deals forum that said they’re better than anything you can get in North America for less than $4-500. It absolutely shocked me what you get at the price. Look up steeldive official store on aliexpress

I wonder what an affordable modern wristwatch would be.

I looked at the stores in my country and it was all either smart watches/wristbands, or ones that look like they scream "sports". Nothing wrong with that aesthetic per se, but I'd very much like something neutral looking.

A quick search even on AliExpress turns up something like what I'm looking for https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005201883255.html (might have actually gotten one, but at the same time I have exactly 0 expectations for the quality, more like an odd curiosity), yet there's nothing with similar designs sold in the popular marketplaces in my country.

Where's the simple, reasonably reliable and affordable watches for the modern day working person, not someone who wants to pay bank to make a fashion statement?

As the other person mentioned, Casio is solid (especially the digital stuff like the F91W), but if you're in the US/Western market Timex/Citizen/Seiko are also good. If you want a mechanical watch the Seiko 5 is a classic, and Ali has a lot of really good value for money "homages" by folks like Pagani Design for around $100-200. I think there's a subreddit for chinese (mech) watches if you're curious.

The generally accepted principle is that watch brands' watches are of a far higher quality than that of fashion brands (eg Diesel/Nike etc). Modern quartz movements are damn good, but cheap ones aren't easily repairable or generally even worth repairing if you get it from one of these fashion brands.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that out, this is useful to know!

Be careful with venturing into the world of Chinese watches, it's addictive. They're like between $50 and $200, depending on the brand (they have more and less expensive brands now, they've been at it for years and years), with very reasonable quality, often using Japanese movements (eg Seiko), and resembling famous designs ("homages"). To the point that it's almost impossible to tell if you're wearing $25,000 Rolex or $40 "Olevs", unless you look at it from arm's length. I have like 8 now, all looking and working great, and keep checking AE sales for new ones. Someone please stop me...

Orient is also worth a mention as their value and quality are similar to Seiko and Citizen; Orient Bambino and Mako are popular alternative models to Seiko's line of divers and dress watches.

Just an FYI this type of watch design is usually referred to as "field watch". It originated in watches that were designed and made specifically for soldiers during WW2 in UK and US. Hamilton is known for making modern versions of these, with the appropriate price tag (slightly under $1,000). Many other companies have these, Timex being the most budget-friendly, but any self-respecting brand has field watch designs (Seiko, Citizen, Casio, Rolex, Orient, etc etc). You can go quartz or mechanical, your pick.

As for everyday watch, nothing really beats budget digital watch, like the cheap ones Casio has been making for generations. F91W is literally (not figuratively) 5 to 6 cups of coffee, and it will outlive you. Not to mention that you can pick up a clone on AliExpress under a dollar and it will work just as well.

Edit: spelling

Look up JDM Seikos on Sakurawatches. You can find some that are radio controlled (so time is always pinpoint accurate), solar powered (no battery needed), have sapphire glass (the hardest to scratch), and look nice. Some even have "super clear coating" which looks cool.

I have one myself, it cost $250 new. Probably could have got it for much less, but it's the only watch I've ever needed all these years later. Never have to worry about whether the time is right. Never have to worry if it matches my outfit. Never have to worry about it period. I'm sure a digital watch would be cheaper, but I like the analog look too.

I got a cheap quartz Armitron watch after I suffered for long enough with various smart watches. Two benefits stand out:

1) You can tell what time it is in broad daylight

2) The time display is available about 1ns after you turn the wrist, instead of several seconds the smart watch takes to wake up, if it does at all.

That linked watch is basically (visually) a timex, which are reasonable quality and sold just about everywhere and for relatively low prices.

Some kind of Casio watch?

Hamilton Khaki or Tissot Gentleman are great all-around watches.

Discussed at the time (of the article):

Movements of the Cold War: How the Soviets Revolutionized Wristwatches - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13182251 - Dec 2016 (34 comments)

> if it’s a well-tuned mechanical watch, you can probably reset it once a week or once a month.

The watch I am wearing most often with a relatively modest ETA 2824-II, is 1 second per day off. Since I am OK with a 30 seconds difference I set it 30 seconds earlier and reset it in 2 months.

I switch watches every few days, so my typical routine is either to wind yesterday's watch and trust it kept time, or to go to my watch box and pickout a new one to wear - setting the time/date before putting it on.

I know they're not as accurate as quartz/digital watches, but I've never had a watch that would drift too much over the course of a few days so I don't need to reset them other than when changing.

(My routine is one of the reasons why I avoid watches with date-complications, it makes it easier to wear a watch that has been in the box for a couple of weeks. That's why I prefer the Submariner original vs. the one with the date for example.)

A gem in the middle of the article:

> A wristwatch Type-1 variant was also produced, though a pocket-watch movement on your wrist makes for an enormous wristwatch, and it was very outdated with a noisy ticking sound.

> The old joke was that during the war, the Germans didn’t have to seek out any Soviets — all they had to do was listen for their ticking watches and shoot in that direction.

> a pocket-watch movement on your wrist makes for an enormous wristwatch, and it was very outdated with a noisy ticking sound.

With the modern fashion for big watches, it would probably be popular today.

When the Red Army captured Berlin, the #1 thing the soldiers wanted to loot was wristwatches.

A fascinating piece that combines technology, precision in micromanufacturing, design aesthetics, economics, politics, and history -- centered on the now all-too-forgettable wristwatch in the smartphone age. I haven't worn a wristwatch since I got a Blackberry about a 100 years ago (wink) but it is articles like this that rekindle my appreciation of them.

What movie was it with Schwarzenegger and Belushi, where Schwarzenegger swaps his soviet watch with Belushi's more expensive watch? I don't even recall what brand Belushi's watch was... time to do some google-fu-ing...

Red Heat?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095963/

red heat

Among soviet ones Belarus produces it as well from 1950s up until today.

Vostoks are nice little mechanical wristwatches for those looking to dip their toes into the ocean.

Offtopic:

> which allowed them to pilfer surviving equipment from German factories

Remember kids, the Soviets only pilfer and plunder, while The Great West gives jobs and opportunities (especially in the rocket industry)!

It is especially jarring in the article what essentially praises the same Soviets.

It's objectively true though. The Soviets moved entire factories from their German occupation zone back into the motherland as war reparations (initially they essentially wanted to turn Germany into a deindustrialized and demilitarized agrarian state). Meanwhile Western Germany received massive funding from the US via the Marshal Plan which helped to kickstart the economy and turned the western half into an economic powerhouse.

> It's objectively true though

  Webster:

    pilfer

        intransitive verb
        : steal
        especially : to steal stealthily in small amounts and often again and again

        transitive verb
        : steal
        especially : to steal in small quantities

  OED:

    pilfer, v.

        transitive. To steal (property), esp. in small quantities; to filch. Also figurative.

Or it's spoils of war or it's pilfering. It can't be both. Especially when a country with 27M of casualties is accused of robbing[0] the country which inflicted those casualties.

Do I need to provide the definition of the word 'steal'?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388461

Semantics... you can call it what you want and I actually agree that it was in the SU's right as a winner of WW2 and occupant of East Germany, but the point is that the US cannot be accused of the same thing (like you did in a perfect display of whataboutism), because the US pumped massive amounts of money into the West German economy, which then made West Germany a much more thankful and valuable ally to the US than East Germany ever was to the Soviet Union.

Ah, yes, labeling taking war reparations as stealing is just 'semantics' and any other option is 'whataboutism'. Also casually ignoring what Drittes Reich did to the Soviet People, because that's also semantics, I guess. Yes, they are thankful to Uncle Sam what the Soviet Union didn't do to them what they did it the Soviet Union people (it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert).

And the most amusing thing is what in the first comment I explicitly marked the difference on how it's described depending on the side.

> it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert

Well it pretty much was compared to West Germany in 1990. And the little economic successes the GDR had were definitely not because, but despite our "beloved" Soviet Big Brother who didn't miss a chance to milk East Germany dry (lookup the uranium mining in East Germany from 1945 into the late 70s for instance - if the Soviet Union would actually have paid anything close to fair prices for the uranium, East Germany would have been much better off).

East Germany looks how it does today because West Germany also pumped massive amounts of money into rebuilding the economy and infrastructure after the reunification, just as the US did in West Germany after WW2.

I'm not ignoring the atrocities that Nazi Germany did in the Soviet Union during WW2 (and all of Eastern Europe btw, not just Russia, Belarus and Ukraine).

The 'semantics' was about your nitpicking of whether taking "spoils of war" is the same as "pilfering". I called it "moving" btw, which as far as I'm aware doesn't have any negative connotations (maybe in Russia, dunno).

The "whataboutism" remark is because you brought the "Great West" into the discussion out of nowhere. A true cornerstone of the Soviet and Russian propaganda playbook to deflect any criticism of the Soviet Union and today's Russia under Putin. The "Great West" had absolutely nothing to do with the complicated relationship between the Eastern half of Germany and our Soviet overlord.

The author is not wrong. The Soviet Army stole all equipment it could find on its way West only to "gift" some of it back. German industry was officially treated as spoils of war, watch factories, optics, photography, chemistry, the lot.

It was common trope to see soviet soldiers with multiple stolen watches on the wrists, even most famous photo of raising flag on Reichstag had to be retouched to hide that common and very visible fact.

People greeted soviet liberators pompously, then came sobering up.

The Soviet top military commander (Zhukov) even got in trouble with Soviet customs for smuggling whole trainloads of loot back home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU1f47SC_A8

They were greedy at times of peace and out of control during war.

AFAIK, it is true that the Western allies focused more on top personnel and prototypes while the Soviet Union took whole factories but scored much less top personnel.

Top personnel often fled the Russians, expecting better treatment and economic conditions in the West - and they were right about that. Besides its own nature, the SU had also suffered many large-scale German war crimes to make it harsh on the defeated Germans.

History always upset Russians, do not remind them about their collaboration with Hitler , the genocides or how they robbed everything they could East of Berlin.

No what about X that also genocide the natives or Y that did Z, that does not excuse what USSR/Russia did or is a good reason for Russians to modify their history books and attempt to push alternate history in media and push excuses why their crimes are justified compared to other countries.

It would be completely uncontroversial to say that the US pilfered Germany for rocket scientists. Very tiresome of you to deliberately take offense at something you have only imagined.

The Soviets had their own Germans much like Operation Paperclip (look up "Operation Osoaviakhim") except that the relocation to the Soviet Union didn't happen quite as voluntarily. The Germans and their families were simply loaded onto trucks in the middle of the night and carried off to Moscow. In the end the Soviets didn't make much use of their Germans because they never trusted them (the only somewhat popular and surviving result of German designed tech by those engineers are the Tu-95 engines).

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