Watches from USSR
HISTORY
After World War II, the First Moscow Watch Factory focused heavily on wristwatch production. This lead to a proliferation of discrete brands in the 1950s, all powered by First Moscow Watch Factory movements. These brands included Antarktida, Kirovskie, Kosmos, Mayak, Moskva, Orbita, Pobeda, Poljus, Rodina, Signal, Sportivnie, Sputnik, Stolichnie, Strela, Sturmanskie, and Vympel.
The Sturmanskie brand (Штурманские, meaning "navigator's") denoted an exclusive, military-issued timepiece which was awarded to graduates of the Soviet Air Force flight school. Such timepieces were never available in the open market or otherwise available to the general public. The Sturmanskie was produced in four main versions, each with its own movement, and always including the iconic USSR Air Force logo on the bottom of the dial.
Sturmanskie made history on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet Union launched the first successful manned space flight. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, wore Sturmanskie on his wrist during that historic flight (he received this watch upon his graduation from the Soviet Air Force fligth school in 1957). The watch operated flawlessly in weightlessness and became the first watch ever to go into the cosmos.