Host Grandma's Sewing Machine

Our Host Grandmother has an old hand-cranked sewing machine from the soviet-era that she still uses pretty much on a daily basis. I posted this photo of the machine of to the Vintage Sewing Machine Subreddit (yes, such a thing exists), and got a fascinating story back:

According to Redditor PAPPP: 

For those who have never heard it, assuming I'm identifying that machine right, those have a really cool story behind them. It looks like a Singer because it is... sort of. repeatedly.

As I understand the story, Singer set up a factory in Podolsk Russia starting in 1900, which was producing machines by 1905, and made sewing machines until it was mostly converted for munitions work during the first world war. After the revolution in 1917-1918 it was nationalized (Singer was apparently compensated some token amount in the process) and returned to sewing machine production under the names "Gosshveymashina" (Which is, AFIK, more or less "National Sewing Machine Factory") and later "Podolsk" - these machines were similar to but not exactly Singers, because under Singer the plant was mostly set up for major castings and finishing work, and many of the small machined and unfinished wood parts were imported, so they had to improvise/redesign for local production. (Hilariously jingoistic account of that part here.)

After the second world war it was updated with equipment and plans stripped from the more modern Singer facility in Wittenberg as war reparations, and produced machines under the badges Podolsk Engineering Plant (PMZ), and later as Kalinin Sewing Machines (ZIK). Then, in 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Semi-Tech, who at the time owned the Singer brand, bought the old factory and put the Singer name back on it until it was closed around 2000 (Source for the relevant bit of the Semi-tech part of Singer history here, the whole James Ting holdings scam fully collapsed less than a year after that article). Ref with most of the details but no sourcing of its own for the overall story here- I've read accounts that differ in some details elsewhere.

I'm not an expert (in fact I just barely know what I'm talking about) but that looks like one of the post-WWII approximately 15-91 machines from the PMZ era; the shape and decals match other examples I've seen pictures of, though the badge is a bit different.

Maybe you have to be a little bit of a sewing machine geek to really appreciate it, but to me, this is a really cool piece of history.