Vostok

Vostok dates from 1942, when part of the First Moscow Watch Factory was evacuated during the war to Chistopol, on the Kama river in Tatarstan, where the factory still operates. It made wristwatches from 1943 and in 1965 became an official supplier to the Soviet Ministry of Defence. The Vostok name, Russian for east, was adopted in the 1960s.

The Komandirskie, introduced in 1965, is a field watch first made for officers and later sold to the public. The Amfibia of 1967 was designed in Chistopol as a diver rated to 200 metres, using a thick domed acrylic crystal, a gasket that seals harder under pressure and a loosely fitted crown; it has been produced ever since in many case shapes, largely with the in-house automatic calibres 2415 and 2416. The factory was privatised in the 1990s and restructured after a bankruptcy in 2010, and it still makes its own mechanical movements. Vostok-Europe, a Lithuanian brand, is a separate company.