Raketa Owner Review : Elegant, mysterious and powerful

Dials are generally divided into four. 60 minutes gives four quarters of an hour of 15 minutes, or twelve twelfths of 5 minutes. This is how we represent time. We count in multiples of 5, then 15 minutes. This watch is an exception; it divides 60 minutes into three times twenty minutes. It might seem like nothing, but it changes everything. We represent time differently. The three-sector pattern evoked the "caution radiation" sign for the Soviets, hence the name "atom" watch. It is sometimes called the Yalta, a reference to the Yalta Conference, where Charles de Gaulle was not invited and there were only three leaders dividing Europe after Hitler's fall. Basically, we're not used to having thirds of an hour; for twenty minutes, we prefer to say "a good quarter of an hour" rather than a third of an hour. Whereas for cocktails, on the contrary, we say a third, even if it's only a small third and there are more than three. Marcel Pagnol's recipe for mandarin-lemon-curaçao from the Bar de la Marine is a good example. It's a question of tradition above all, more than arithmetic, with all due respect to Marius. The name of this watch, which wasn't chosen by the brand's marketing team, but by its users, is quite revealing of what was going through their minds at the time (or perhaps still today). Yalta and the atomic bomb, Ozirosk and Chernobyl—no one thinks of the Holy Trinity or cocktails, which are deeply anti-Soviet concerns (Christian or bourgeois). It's a very elegant watch, in its gold-plated version with its majestic dauphine hands. My copy doesn't reflect this very well because it's only chrome, its dial has clearly shown signs of age, and the second hand has been replaced with a less stylish generic model. The design nonetheless remains elegantly minimalist. The case is chrome-plated brass, 36 mm in diameter, with a clip-on case back. The movement is a 21-jewel Baltika 2909A. For the soundtrack, I'm reminded of the music from the animated film "The Mystery of the Third Planet" by Alexander Zatsepin, a landmark work in the early days of Soviet electronic music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQL5fYHIyxo&list=RDtQL5fYHIyxo&start_radio=1&rv=tQL5fYHIyxo Adjectives: elegant, mysterious, ternary, striking, terrifying, powerful