Vostok Komandirskie Owner Review : Spartan, essential and timeless

This is one of the first models of Komandirskie, po Zakaz MO SSSR. This small watch (35mm diameter) from the late 60s early 70s has a design that I like a lot. It is a production of the Chistopol factory on order of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. It is therefore a watch that was used and distributed in the army. Afterwards, it was not necessarily soldiers who wore them because many were sold in stores reserved for the military, the stocks left very quickly, in just a few hours and served as a currency to have other products or services, so that indirectly everyone could get it. Moreover, the following generations of this watch will be called ministry, because that is what was required to be offered to the officials of the ministry when we met them. This watch has a 2234 movement with the date (in red) and the stop-second function that allows you to set the time to the nearest second, it has a 38-hour power reserve. It has a luminescent coating (radium) on the indexes and hands. I can't say that I wear it often but I like it a lot. The gray star as a sign of mourning and the inscription Chistopol remind us that this city is known for its watch factory but also for its prison where many political opponents, especially Ukrainians, have been and that Anatoly Marchenko, the first winner of the Sakharov Prize, the European prize for freedom of thought, died there in a last fight against the Soviet dictatorship. The publication of "My testimony", an autobiographical work in 1966 and his incarceration after the repression of the Prague Spring in 1968 are contemporary with this watch. His death occurred in Chistopol in 1986 and his posthumous victory in 1987 when the first secretary of the party granted his request for the release of political prisoners. He received the Sakharov Prize in 1988. As if freedom of spirit is stronger than the totalitarian oppressive machine, torture or death.