The company traces its origins to the
Dux Factory, established in Moscow in 1894 as a small bicycle manufacturer. At the start of the 20th century, the Dux Factory transitioned from bicycles to producing cars and airships. By 1910, its focus shifted to aircraft manufacturing. During World War I, Dux supplied the Russian Army with various aircraft, including the
Morane-Saulnier G,
Voisin L,
Voisin LAS,
Nieuport 17,
Nieuport 24, and several models from the
Farman family (IV,
VII, XVI, XXX). The factory also produced a significant number of military bicycles. By 1917, it had become one of the largest aircraft manufacturing centers in the Russian Empire. After the
October Revolution, the plant was nationalized and renamed State Aviation Factory No. 1 (GAZ No. 1). It continued producing Farman and Nieuport aircraft. In October 1941, during
World War II, GAZ No. 1 was evacuated from Moscow to Kuibyshev (now
Samara), near the
Volga River. There, at the newly established "Progress" factory, workers produced
Ilyushin Il-2 and
Il-10 aircraft alongside the
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3. By the end of the war, the factory had produced 11,863 Il-2s, 1,225 Il-10s, and 3,122 MiG-3s—averaging about 15 aircraft per day over four years. Remarkably, one in six Soviet aircraft used in combat during the war was built at the Progress factory. Meanwhile, the
R-7 Semyorka, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), was under development at
OKB-1 in
Kaliningrad, a Soviet
design bureau led by rocket pioneer
Sergei Korolev. Initially designed to deliver nuclear warheads to American targets, it was first successfully tested on 21 August 1957. These early prototype R-7 missiles were built at the OKB-1 facilities, but they were not suited to large-scale serial production. On 2 January 1958, the USSR Council of Ministers approved converting the Progress factory to mass-produce the R-7 missiles. Korolev dispatched his deputy,
Dmitry Kozlov, to oversee the effort. On 17 February 1959, the first R-7 missile produced at Progress was test fired. In March 2024, the 1,000th spacecraft developed by RKTs Progress was launched into orbit. == Rockets produced ==