The Gun (71 page)

6.
M. T. Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep.
The quotations from this section are taken from p. 152 and p. 166. This section was written by weaving together multiple sources, including Kalashnikov’s memoirs, the displays and materials at the Museum in Izhevsk and St. Petersburg, Kalashnikov’s speeches from 2004 to 2008, and multiple interviews with the author.

7.
Kalashnikovs’ stepdaughter’s published remarks describe his relative material wealth in the postwar Soviet Union. Also, in Mikhail Kalashnikov and Yelena Kalashnikov,
Trayektoriya Sudbi
(Moscow: Vsya Rossiya Publishing House, 2004), Katya is shown in a knee-length fur coat in the photograph section between pp. 96 and 97.

8.
Letter from M. T. Kalashnikov to Edward Ezell, dated June 1973. In the unsorted collection of Ezell’s papers at Defence College of Management and Technology, Shrivenham, UK.

9.
Letter from Edward C. Ezell to “Hal,” dated September 18, 1973. Hal was Harold E. Johnson, an expert on Eastern bloc arms who worked at the Foreign Science and Technology Center of the U.S. Army Material Development and Readiness Command. He was also the author of the once-classified volume
Small Arms Identification and Operation Guide—Eurasian Communist Countries,
published by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. In the Ezell Collection, College of Management and Technology, UK Defence Academy.

10.
Personal communication to author from Dmitri Shirayev, a former Soviet arms design official.

11.
The early versions of Kalashnikov’s memoirs draw heavily from D. N. Bolotin’s
Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition
(Hyvinkää, Finland: Finnish Arms Museum Foundation, 1995); later versions draw from A. A. Malimon,
Otechestvenniye Avtomaty
(Moscow: Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, 2000). Translation by Michael Schwirtz.

12.
Personnel communication to author by Maksim R. Popenker, editor of the
www.guns.ru
website and author of several books on Russian small arms.

13.
Kalashnikov,
From A Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 128.

14.
Mikhail Kalashnikov, at Rosoboronexport, summer 2007. In presence of the author.

15.
Harold E. Johnson, “Assessing Soviet Progress in Small Arms Research and Development,”
Army Research and Development News,
November–December 1974, pp. 31–32.

16.
Y. A. Natsvaladze,
Oruzhiye Pobedy: Kollektsiya Strelkovogo Oruzhiya Sistemy A.I. Sudayera v Sobranii Muzeya
(Leningrad, 1988), pp. 4–17.

17.
Marius Broekmeyer,
Stalin, the Russians and Their War, 1941–1945
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), p. 4.

18.
Ibid., p. 45.

19.
Georgy K. Zhukov provides an officially approved summary in his 1969 memoirs,
The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov.
In the English-language edition, published in 1971 by Jonathan Cape, Ltd., of London, the summary appears on pp. 138–39.

20.
N. Yelshin, “Soviet Small Arms,”
Soviet Military Review,
2, 1977, p. 15.

21.
C. J. Chivers, “Izhevsk Journal: Russia Salutes Father of the Rifle Fired Round the World,”
New York Times,
November 11, 2004. At the ceremony for Kalashnikov’s eighty-fifth birthday, in Izhevsk, where he worked from 1948 until the present day, officials at the arms plant gave these figures.

22.
Arthur J. Alexander,
Weapons Acquisition in the Soviet Union, United States and France.
The paper was prepared for a conference on Comparative Defense Policy at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1973. In the unsorted Ezell Collection.

23.
Adam Ulam,
Stalin: The Man and His Era
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), p. 464.

24.
Bolotin,
Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition,
p. 107.

25.
M. T. Kalashnikov, speaking at the sixtieth anniversary jubilee of the birth of the AK-47, in Moscow, 2007, in presence of the author.

26.
Götz,
German Military Rifles,
pp. 198–204.

27.
Ibid., p. 208, citing Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Rudolf Forenbacher, from the journal
Werhkunde,
1, 1953.

28.
Aberdeen Proving Ground Series,
German Submachine Guns and Assault Rifles of World War II
(Old Greenwich: W.E., Inc., 1968), pp. 1–10. The description of the development of the Kurz cartridge and the
sturmgewehr
was largely derived from Götz and from this document; the production numbers are listed on pp. 5 and 7.

29.
P. Labbett and F. A. Brown.
Technical Ammunition Guide Series 3, Pamphlet 2: The 7.62mm x 39 Model 1943 Cartridge Communist
(London: September 1987), p. 1. The authors were skeptical of the official Soviet account and Soviet sources that relied on them. “Reliance has, perforce, to be placed almost entirely on Russian narratives, without original documents or other evidence being available. The total accuracy of Russian sources is hard to assess and the motivation and inspiration for the design and development of this cartridge may not have been exactly as the Russians portray it.” This summarizes one of the central problems of assessing the Kalashnikov legend.

30.
Bolotin,
Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition,
p. 97.

31.
Ibid., p. 113.

32.
Monetchikov,
Istoriya Russkogo Avtomata,
p. 24.

33.
Broekmeyer,
The Russians and Their War,
pp. 12–13.

34.
Bolotin,
Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition,
p. 113.

35.
Monetchikov,
Istoriya Russkogo Avtomata,
p. 25.

36.
Bolotin,
Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition,
p. 126. Hogg claims that nine thousand of Fedorov’s
avtomats
were made, though he did not provide a source. Bolotin cited Soviet archives. His estimate is used here.

37.
Bolotin,
Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition,
pp. 126–27.

38.
Ibid., p. 54.

39.
Ibid., p. 252. Bolotin provided a list: Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Dybenko, Kuybyshev, Alksnis, and Unshlicht.

40.
Yuri Sergeyev,
Tekhnika i Vooruzheniye,
No. 12, 1970.

41.
Perry Githens, “How Good Are Russian Guns?”
Popular Science,
March 1951, p. 109.

42.
Mikhail Kalashnikov with Elena Joly,
The Gun that Changed the World
(Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006), p. 3.

43.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 25.

44.
Ibid., p. 24.

45.
Kalashnikov with Joly,
The Gun that Changed the World,
p. 4.

46.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 31.

47.
Ibid., p. 404.

48.
Ibid.

49.
The first version is from
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
pp. 408–9. The second version is from
The Gun That Changed the World,
pp. 10–11.

50.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
pp. 412–413.

51.
Kalashnikov with Joly,
The Gun that Changed the World,
p. 26.

52.
Ibid., p. 33.

53.
Interview of Mikhail Kalashnikov by Nick Paton Walsh, who shared the notes of his interview with the author.

54.
Catherine Merridale,
Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–45
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p. 84.

55.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 73.

56.
Broekmeyer,
The Russians and Their War,
xiv–xv.

57.
Vladimir N. Zhukov,
Second Birth,
translation by Army Foreign Science and Technology Center (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1974). Originally published by Voyenizdat, Moscow, 1963, p. 58. An official Soviet biography of Kalashnikov. Kalashnikov embraced this biography, and presented it as fact to his first Western biographer. Many passages are demonstrably false or at odds with Kalashnikov’s later accounts.

58.
Kalashnikov and Joly,
The Gun that Changed the World,
p. 19.

59.
Ibid., p. 35.

60.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 75.

61.
Zhukov,
Second Birth,
pp. 59–63.

62.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 76.

63.
Some sources, particularly in the English language, say Kalashnikov was treated at Kazan. These stories appear apocryphal; the principal sources, including Kalashnikov himself, describe his treatment in Yelets.

64.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
pp. 92–93.

65.
Ibid., p. 87.

66.
Zhukov,
Second Birth,
p. 85.

67.
Kalashnikov: Oruzhiye, Boyepripasy, Snaryazheniye, Okhota, Sport.
Special Issue, 2002, p. 17.

68.
From interview of Kalashnikov by Edward Ezell in July 1989. A partial transcript of the interview was published in “Conversations with Kalashnikov,” in the
Small Arms World Report,
December 1992, p. 5.

69.
Zhukov,
Second Birth,
pp. 108–9.

70.
Mikhail Degtyarov, in “Istoki ‘Kalashnikov’”
Kalashnikov: Oruzhiye, Boyepripasy, Snaryazheniye, Okhota, Sport.
Issue 5, 2003, pp. 6–9. The year of birth of Kalashnikov’s son, Viktor Mikhailovich, is from the museum in Izhevsk.

71.
Kalashnikov has refused over the years to discuss the mother of his son, Viktor, saying only that she died when Viktor was young and he then received custody of the boy. The reasons Kalashnikov is otherwise silent on the subject are not clear.

72.
Ezell, “Conversations with Kalashnikov,”
Small Arms World Report,
December 1992, p. 5.

73.
M. Novikov, “This is Kalashnikov,”
Volksarmee,
No. 1, January 1968, p. 9.
Volksarmee
was the magazine of the National People’s Army, the military of the German Democratic Republic.

74.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 122.

75.
Ibid., p. 121.

76.
Ibid., p. 132.

77.
Ibid., pp. 133–34.

78.
Viktor Vlasyuk, “Weapons Designer Vasily Lyuty,”
Zerkalo Nedeli,
No. 12, March 23–29, 1996. Vlasyuk quotes Lyuty in the section cited. Translated by Viktor Klimenko.

79.
Ezell,
Small Arms World Report,
December 1992, p. 6.

80.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
pp. 237–38.

81.
Ibid., p. 216.

82.
Kalashnikov with Joly,
The Gun that Changed the World,
p. 61. Here Kalashnikov said that a year had passed before he returned to the Schurovo polygon for the competitive field tests.

83.
Ezell,
Kalashnikov: The Arms and the Man,
p. 71. A photograph of the disassembled rifle appears on this page; the external shape of the AK-47 is evident, but the guts of the weapon have not yet been worked out.

84.
Bolotin,
Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition,
p. 69, quoting remarks by Kalashnikov published on September 20, 1957, in
Krasnaya Zvezda
(
Red Star
), the official newspaper of the Red Army.

85.
Kalashnikov with Joly,
The Gun that Changed the World,
p. 64.

86.
Malimon,
Otechestvenniye Avtomaty,
chapter 9.

87.
Ibid.

88.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 220.

89.
Ezell,
Kalashnikov: The Arms and the Man,
p. 72.

90.
Kalashnikov,
From a Stranger’s Doorstep,
p. 209.