I started at the Moscow Gramzapis Plant (MOZG) in 1978, just two months after it opened. The plant was actively hiring for different departments and labs. I already had experience working in a defense industry design bureau and was really into sound recording, especially everything related to vinyl records.

I was lucky to get a job in the plant’s design and engineering department. The Melodiya All-Union Recording Company (VFG “Melodiya”) had eight plants, several studios (including the All-Union Recording Studio), and a bunch of record stores all over the country. MOZG had a special place in that system. This is where the master recordings were made, and then they were sent to other plants to be duplicated, even down to creating the pressing matrices. For smaller print runs, MOZG would sometimes make the matrices itself and ship them to other plants.

By 1987, the plant had adopted and mastered DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) technology, which replaced lacquer discs with copper ones. This move brought Melodiya closer to the standards of top Western labels and really improved the quality of Soviet vinyl records.

Quality and Equipment

For collectors, MOZG was known as the go-to place for top-notch vinyl records in the USSR, and with good reason. The pressing shop had new Swedish TOOLEX ALPHA 1201 presses, the same machines used at the Riga studio. On the other hand, other plants still used outdated equipment. For example, Aprelevka used over 100 LENED presses (USA), which were installed back in 1969–1970.

To be fair, spare parts and technical support for the LENED presses were supplied regularly, but much of the other equipment was worn out and obsolete. Quality control at the Moscow plant was always on point, probably because they weren’t churning out as much as Aprelevka, Leningrad, and the rest.

Another unique MOZG product were flexi-discs, which were often mocked but widely used. They were only made at the Moscow plant. Magazines like Krugozor and the children’s magazine Kolobok, which included these records, remained popular well into the late 1980s — especially Kolobok, which was a hit among kids.

We also introduced another product line — stencils — after my proposal, which I developed with Mr. Ilyinsky. Before printers and computers were everywhere, these blue PVC stencils were produced by the millions and used across the USSR (and later Russia) for more than 10 years.

Entering the Digital Era

By 1989, the plant was really getting the hang of making compact discs. This included installation, staff training, and start-up and calibration work. I was lucky enough to be at the forefront of this process and led the plant’s CD production from 1989 to 1991 (as detailed in “Compact Disc in the USSR” Parts I and II).

For almost three years — until a second plant opened in the Urals — MOZG was the only place in the USSR making CDs. A lot of other plants would build on our experience later on, but the original “clean room” technology we used was replaced by “clean zone” monoline systems pretty soon. These were more efficient and easier to maintain.

And finally, a few words about the photos and captions from that report. On the first page, there’s a shot of a corner of the main building, which was designed by the Giproteatr institute and architect V. Mikhailov. Today, the building wouldn’t stand out much, but back in the ’70s, it looked modern and impressive. In the lower left corner is the plant’s first director, Gennady Chebotaryov. I always thought he was a very worthy leader — a bit laid-back, strict but fair — something that couldn’t be said about his successor.

On the second page, there’s a photo of the GAUSS electroplating line at the bottom, and on the third page, there’s a shot of the vinyl pressing shop. Back then, they stacked freshly pressed LPs in boxes near the presses to help prevent warping (“dishes” or “propellers”).

The text is full of talk about overfulfilling the plan, socialist pledges for the 60th anniversary of the USSR, and earning the title of “exemplary enterprise” for the youth, but it all seems like pure nonsense now. But let me tell you, back then, that was just the way things were done. We had these collective shop-floor pledges, weekly political briefings, mandatory shifts with the People’s Volunteer Guard, working at vegetable depots — the list of absurdities from those years goes on and on. That was the last year of Brezhnev’s life, and the other weak old men in the Politburo (Andropov, Chernenko, and the rest) didn’t last much longer. And in Afghanistan, thousands of young men were dying. But that’s a whole other story.

The plant kept growing and developing as part of Melodiya until 1992. When the chaos of the ’90s hit, MOZ “Gramzapis” broke away from the company, was privatized (under a Russian Government decree dated October 15, 1993), and then slowly withered away before finally “dying” at the turn of the century. The reason? It’s just plain greed and cowardice from the management. We had to buy the spare parts and materials ourselves instead of getting them from Melodiya, and management wasn’t interested in spending money on new equipment. Piracy wasn’t really helping anymore — by then, dozens of plants were doing the same thing.

Since 2001, the building has been home to a shopping and business center called the “Krona” Trade Center, which remains there to this day.

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© 2016. Viktor Kuzin

Translated by Artur Netsvetaev from Source