Soviet masks: Ukrainian models

[David Wilson]

Right, time to move on to masks made in a country that was a constituent republic of the USSR but is now an independent nation state: Ukraine. Bordering the Soviet Union's equivalent of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, Ukraine was a logical place to set up factories servicing the water sports market, including breathhold and scuba diving. The name of the Ukrainian plant responsible for the production of basic diving gear, including fins, masks and snorkels, in the 1960s and 1970s was "Красный резинщик" (Transliteration: "Krasny Rezinshchik". Translation: "Red Rubber Worker") and it operated in the capital city, Kiev. Here is a picture of the factory entrance:

The first Soviet mask made in Ukraine is only known by its factory name: Krasny Rezinshchik.

Krasny Rezinshchik

The third image shows the marking with the name of the factory and the city and country of origin, namely Kiev and the USSR.

Here is an English translation of the mask's entry in a Soviet diving mask table:

And here is a pargraph I found about this model:

Полумаска киевского завода «Красный резинщик» имеет силикатное смотровое стекло формы закругленного на вершинах треугольника, обеспечивающего хорошее поле обзора. Стекло крепится в сравнительно жестком резиновом корпусе металлическим ободком. Полумаска обеспечивает хорошую герметичность и удобна для плавания и ныряния. Некоторым недостатком полумаски является излишняя жесткость фланца, прилегающего к лицу.

Rough translation: The semi face mask from the Kiev ‘Krasnyi Rezinschik’ plant has a silicate-glass, rounded triangular shaped lens, providing a good field of vision. A relatively hard metal rim attaches the lens to the rubber body. The semi face mask provides a good seal and it is suitable for swimming and diving. A drawback of the semi face mask is the excessive hardness of the skirt adjacent to the face.

This triangular mask did not survive the Soviet era. It was quite popular, however, in the late 1960s. The second mask I will showcase is the the vintage version of the Akvanavt mask now made by Kievguma.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

David,

I have seen a photo of a similar mask in Rick and Barbara Carrier's book, Dive, the Complete Book of Skin Diving, Wilfred Funk, Inc., New York, 1957, on pages 64-65. I always wondered where these triangular masks came from.

SeaRat

 

[David Wilson]

Thanks, John. I looked up the two pages on my first-edition copy of the Carriers' Dive (1955) and I have those pictures too.

My first dive mask, bought for me by my parents in the late 1950s, was a green triangular Australian-made Turnbull Sea Raider mask. It served me well during my early snorkelling efforts, but I no longer have it in my possession. However, I do have an image of this mask from a Grays of Cambridge ad on page 29 of the July-August 1957 issue of Triton, the magazine of the British Sub Aqua Club:

So much water has flowed under the bridge since then, and even the currency has changed from 12 pence=1 shilling and 20 shillings=1 pound to 100 pence=1 pound... .

States-side, triangular masks bring to mind Desco, whose company logo has that shape:

The triangular full-face mask picture on the right can also be found on page 96 of Schenk and Kendall's Shallow Water Diving and Spearfishing (Cambridge, Maryland: Cornell Maritime Press, 1954).

And returning to the topic of the Ukrainian mask, the model certainly demonstrates that Soviet diving equipment designers were aware of what was happening elsewhere in the underwater swimming gear world, including the West.

 

[David Wilson]

Now for the second Soviet-era mask from the "Красный резинщик" (Krasny Rezinshchik) stable. The Kievguma Akvanavt (Russian: Акванавт; English: Aquanaut) mask is still marketed and its first incarnation had a metal rim.

Akvanavt

Note the markings. Picture 2 has the image of the Kievguma factory front gate on the top. Picture 3 has the quality control ink stamp. Picture 4 has the name "Akvanavt" and "GOST 20568-75", the Soviet Standard of 1975 for rubber underwater swimming masks.

Later versions of this mask more closely resemble the modern incarnation but with a wider range of skirt colours:

The following image has the old "Krasny Rezinshchik" plant name embossed on the strap:

This concludes the thread on Soviet-era Ukrainian diving masks. My next thread will focus on Russian and Ukrainian snorkels past and present. This item of equipment will be the hardest to research as no snorkel from either country, so far as I am aware, was ever assigned a product name. I propose to follow up that thread with threads about fins, masks and snorkels elsewhere in Eastern Europe.