Page "Kiev (brand)" Paragraph 38

After the war had ended, the Soviet Union demanded new sets of Contax tools from the original toolmaker in Dresden and then ordered a fair number of trial cameras to be made with Zeiss trademarks and coated lenses from these 1946 in postwar East Germany.

With this successful, everything together with German instructors were transferred to Kiev.

Missing specialists were in a few cases recruited in West Germany.

These had better contracts than the de-facto prisoner-status colleagues from Dresden.

Any still available parts went in the same direction.

In fact, removing the top of some very early Kiev II cameras, one could see that the metal was originally stamped with the Contax name, then pressed out and re-stamped as Kiev.