PČZ - Petrodvorcovij časovoj zavod - was established in 1954 as successor of the TTK-1 company. It's history is based on crown jewels and jewelry company which Peter the Great estabilshed in 1721 of course on Petrograd (St. Peterburg). During the soviet regime before the WW2 predecesor TTK-1 mainly produced watch parts and rubins for 1MČZ company. During the WW2 company was tot aly destroyed (German siege of Leningrad...), after the war factory was rebuild and beside watch parts also the production of the watches started. First watches were Pobeda. As said in 1954 TTK-1 was transformed to PČZ.

In honour of Gagarin first flight to the space in 1962 PČZ launched Raketa trademark, which soon became the trademark for all PČZ watches and finally also PČZ was renamed to Raketa. Raketa was one of the largest and most important soviet watch companies. Fall of the USSR and economic crisis in Rusia heavily hit also Raketa company which was almost fully closed for business. But in 2010 it suddenly reapeared, even more, the new and improved modification of their automatic movement 2615 was released. Raketa developed lot of new watches based on this movement, and it is again important Russian watch producer, who claims to be one of the rare watch producers in the world with it's own production of all parts for it's watches.

Raketa now also owns right for Pobeda trademark, unforutnately this Pobeda watches are quartz watches and not with traditional famous mechanical pobeda movement.

PČZ watches

PČZ used a lot of different brand names in it's collection, to name just some of them: Antarktika, Baltika, Leningrad, Majak, Neva, Rossija, Start (two types of watches), Svet, Zvezda, Pobeda, Raketa.

Raketa - USSR period

Raketa also produced pocket watches, but that was not an important line of business. And as all watch companies, also Raketa produced Sekonda brand.

Raketa - Russia

Main new production is based on "new" automatic 2615 movement. I have several watches with three different modification of that movement. First one - reissue of 1960's Amfibija has a standard 2615 movement. Next - Raketa Code - is very unusual, since all watch functions are reverse to what is standard to us. All hands are turning "anti clockwise". So time on the watch in the middle is 1:22:46. This reverse movement is called 2615R. Next one is the new reediton of the Code.

Second and third row consist of watches with 24h complication, movement is called 2624. Since a lot of them are related to space, they are also presented in a space collection.

The last one is Raketa academic, which is an example of the quartz production. I don't own any Pobeda quartz watch.