KRASNY-OKTOBR | 1930-39 | Russia :
Built in Leningrad and arriving ahead of the later Ural, Dnepr and Izh marques, the L-300 was the first mass-produced Russian motorcycle, powered by a 293cc single-cylinder two-stroke engine. The design was not an indigenous one but an adaptation of a German model. From the mid-1920s the Soviet government set out to build a domestic motorcycle industry, and chose to begin by reworking the German DKW 300 Luxus, with the resulting machine named the L-300. The name itself encoded its origins, with the L standing for Leningrad and the 300 for the rounded engine capacity.
The engineering effort grew out of earlier experimental work. A group led by the highly qualified engineer Pyotr Vladimirovich Mozharov, who had carried out his first experiments in Izhevsk, developed the new design after the team was moved to Leningrad, and several experimental machines were produced at Izhevsk in 1929 before the first serial production began at the Krasny Oktyabr, or Red October, plant. The path into volume production was not straightforward. The first series was assembled in 1930 as a close copy of the German machine, with a 293cc two-stroke engine, three-speed gearbox and a deliberately reduced output of around 6.5 horsepower so it could run on the poor-quality petrol then available, and because the Promet works lacked the capacity for true mass production, the work was moved in 1932 to the better-equipped Red October factory. The same drawings travelled east as well. Serial production at Izhevsk was launched in 1933 from the L-300 drawings, where the machine was called the IZh-7, with the improved IZh-8 and IZh-9 following.
In service the L-300 earned its reputation through endurance and competition rather than sophistication. It reached about 80 kilometres per hour, used roughly four litres of fuel per hundred kilometres, saw extensive use by the Red Army for reconnaissance and communication, and remained sought after after production ended thanks to its reliability and easy handling. It also drew many young people into racing clubs, since before the war it was widely used in road and track races, cross-country events, record attempts and long-distance runs of thousands of kilometres, and the Krasny Oktyabr often won, competing as an equal with foreign makes.
Production numbers are uncertain, with some accounts putting the total near 1,500 and others closer to 20,000, and very few examples of the Krasny Oktyabr survive today. The corporate successor’s own account states that the L-300 was produced from 1931 to 1939, with about 19,000 built, and that the factory’s lineage now runs to UEC-Klimov within Rostec.
