Petrodvorets watch factory

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The watch factory Petrodvorets ( Russian Петродворцовый часовой завод ) is the oldest watch factory in Russia . Founded under Peter the Great in 1721, it has been making the Soviet watch Raketa since 1961 . The production site is still Peterhof (Petrodworez), today a district of Saint Petersburg . In the course of its almost 300-year history, the factory has changed its name several times.

Originally the factory made gemstone objects for the court of the tsars. Today these objects are in the Hermitage of Saint Petersburg, but also in the majority of the important palaces in Europe, such as Versailles , Louvre and Sanssouci .

Performed works

During the Soviet era, the factory continued to process precious stones. The craftsmen and designers of Petrodworez also created architectural objects and sculptures. Among other things, she designed and built the colonnade on the front of St. Isaac's Cathedral as well as the Lenin mausoleum during the Soviet era in 1924 . In 1935 she made the stars on the Kremlin towers from rubies .

The beginnings of industrial watchmaking

In the pre-war years, the factory's highly qualified skilled workers began manufacturing precision and measuring instruments for the Red Army and the emerging Soviet watch industry.

After its destruction by German troops during the siege of Leningrad , the factory was rebuilt immediately after the city was relieved in 1944. As early as 1945 Stalin , who wanted to reduce the dependence of the USSR on Western imports, gave the order to manufacture clocks. The first clocks left the factory in 1949 under the brand names Pobeda and Swesda . In 1961, the factory launched the new Raketa brand in honor of the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin , thereby establishing its good reputation in the part of the world that was under the radiance of communism.

In the years of its size, from the post-war period to the 1990s, the production facility employed around 8,000 people and produced 4.5 million watches a year for Soviet citizens and the Red Army , as well as some production parts v. a. for measuring instruments in military machines. It was equipped with two nuclear bunkers to protect the 8,000 working people in the event of a western attack. The range of social services was particularly extensive and diversified. The factory offered its own schools, its branch of the technical university and technical college, its hospital, its seaside resorts on the Black Sea and the Gulf of Finland with spa and relaxation programs for employees, its own and sponsored teams and sports clubs, its own kindergarten and holiday camps for children and Young people from employee families, own hotel for foreign delegations, independent bakery and own department store for employees with postponed work shifts, their own communist youth groups Pioneers and Komsomol , as well as their orchestras.

Younger story

In the course of perestroika in the early 1990s, the factory was initially successfully converted into an AG and was able to keep its total production volume at around 3–3.5 million watches despite the difficult order situation and often delayed payment processing on the part of domestic customers.

During the troubled times of the mid-1990s, the company was targeted by takeover owners who were fixated on quick and risky profits, and was artificially drawn into an illegitimate debt trap and bankruptcy. As a result, only small areas remained after 1995 and the production volume fell sharply and survived for the most part thanks to some orders from the armaments industry. In addition, smaller, independent KGs formed in the area, which, without sanctioning, still manufactured watches from old stocks of components, but often of inferior quality, which damaged the brand name and international reputation in the following years.

From 2009 the label “Raketa” was taken up again and major private investment and restructuring measures were carried out in order to revive and expand regular production. The current production figures are around 20,000 watches annually. Despite the not always easy history, it is and will remain the only Russian watch brand with its own production cycle, which is still manufactured at the place of its origin.

Because the USA and the European Union imposed sanctions on Russia in the course of the annexation of Crimea , the factory announced in 2014 that it initially only wanted to sell its products to the West to a limited extent. This applies to watches such as the “Raketa Avtomat”, “Petrodvorets Classic” and “Amphibia”.

It is possible to visit the factory and the factory's museum and sales rooms by registering in advance.

literature

  • AE Sukhorukova: Watches, a masterpiece . Publisher: Det. Il., USSR 1983, 108 pages.
  • AG Tioutenkova: Set the clock . Publisher: Lenizdat, USSR 1986, 181 pages.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RAKETAS ANSWER TO AMERICAN SANCTIONS ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Website of the Petrodvorets watch factory. Retrieved February 27, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.raketa.com
  2. ↑ Visit our Factory in Petergof Website of the Petrodworez watch factory. Retrieved February 27, 2016.

Coordinates: 59 ° 52 ′ 47.7 "  N , 29 ° 53 ′ 33.1"  E