The life of Mikhail Kalashnikov begins and ends as one of those stories that could have been told to young Russians during the years of the Soviet Union to give them an example of behavior: a young man coming from a family of humble origins who, thanks to his genius, brings greatness and luster to his mother country.
But let's start from the beginning, Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov born in 1919 in Kray a province located in today's federal district of Siberia, seventeen of nineteen children is deported to a Siberian village because of the campaign of Russian repression against the kulaks, ie the expropriation of land and possessions belonging to peasants and landowners.
The conditions of poverty in which the family found themselves were lethal for the father who died during the first winter. Mikhail lived with his family until he was twelve, when he decided to return to his hometown and work as a mechanic in a station: from an early age he was attracted by mechanics but also by poetry and during his work he developed a great interest in weapons.
In the 1938 he enlisted in the Red Army and, thanks to his technical skills, he was employed as a mechanic for tanks. He later became commander and began to develop projects and inventions that would have improved the mechanisms of Russian tanks and not only: he proposed improvements for weapons and rifles and in the 1941 during the rehabilitation period after being wounded in battle began his most famous project, that of an automatic rifle which later became the first AK-47 model.
After several years of trying, in 1947, his project was finally approved and from 1949 the AK-47 became the new rifle supplied to the Russian army and to most of the nations belonging to the Warsaw Pact. Mikhail did not stop working on his rifle which was improved several times over the years and numerous models were created starting from the design of the first AK1, such as the Saiga rifles, which can be found semi-automatic or smooth barrel variants or the Vityaz-SN, SMG variant of the AK-74.
But what made this rifle so famous and widespread compared to other models?
The AK is a cheap rifle and very resistant to adverse weather conditions, from the desert to the tundra, and is easy to use compared to other guns of the same genre as for example the M16 of American production.
The reliability of the AK is certainly the strong point of the weapon, it is said that during the Vietnam War, American troops preferred to use AKs taken from their enemies compared to the supplied M16s. The M16 in fact because of the extremely humid climate they often jammed and had problems of rusting while the AK did not suffer from any problem, mounting moreover more capacious loaders (30 shots compared to the 20 of the American rifle) and resistant.
The original AK model used 7.62x39 caliber ammunition, which exiting the barrel at a speed of about 715 meters per second could cause significant damage and penetrate walls or vehicles.
The cover and the handle in laminated birch plywood are resistant to deformation and impact, easy to manufacture and very economical.
AK over the years became a symbol of war and liberation, its image became part of flags, its impact on culture and society was great and all over the world its variants were used by regular armies, revolutionaries or terrorists making it one of the most counterfeited and connected to the illegal traffic of all time.
Six months before his death Mikhail sent a letter to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, writing about the remorse he felt over the years for his lives taken away from wars due to the use of his weapons. The patriarch replied with reassuring words: Mikhail, he said, acted for the good of his mother country.
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov died on December 23 2013 due to a gastric hemorrhage and was buried in the Federal Military Cemetery in Moscow.
1https://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/kalashnikov-guns.asp short list of the main variants of the AK
(photo: web)
