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Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47, Dies at 94

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  • Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47, Dies at 94





    Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, the arms designer credited by the Soviet Union with creating the AK-47, the first in a series of rifles and machine guns that would indelibly associate his name with modern war and become the most abundant firearms ever made, died on Monday in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurtia republic, where he lived. He was 94.

    Viktor Chulkov, a spokesman for the republic’s president, confirmed the death, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

    Born a peasant on the southern Siberian steppe, General Kalashnikov had little formal education and claimed to be a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weapons to conceive of a rifle that achieved battlefield ubiquity.

    His role in the rifle’s creation, and the attention showered on him by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, carried him from conscription in the Red Army to senior positions in the Soviet arms-manufacturing bureaucracy and ultimately to six terms on the Supreme Soviet.

    Tens of millions of Kalashnikov rifles have been manufactured. Their short barrels, steep front-sight posts and curved magazines made them a marker of conflict that has endured for decades. The weapons also became both Soviet and revolutionary symbols and widespread instruments of terrorism, child-soldiering and crime.

    The general, who sometimes lamented the weapons’ unchecked distribution but took pride in having invented them and in their reputation for reliability, weathered the collapse of the Soviet Union to assume a public role as a folk hero and unequivocal Russian patriot.

    A Soviet nostalgist, he also served as the unofficial arms ambassador of the revived Russian state. He used public appearances to try to cast the AK-47’s checkered legacy in a positive way and to complain that knockoffs were being manufactured illegally by former Soviet allies and cutting into Russian sales.

    The weapon, he said, was designed to protect his motherland, not to be used by terrorists or thugs. “This is a weapon of defense,” he said. “It is not a weapon for offense.”
    Honestly, I didn't know the guy was still alive. I thought he had died years ago.

    It's worth reading the full obit if you don't know Kalashnikov's history. He's an interesting character, a true believer in the Soviet state. We can say what we will about the efficacy of Communism, but I think one has to admire someone who really, genuinely believes is something like that.
    It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
    In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
    Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
    Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

  • #2
    Man, you'll get all warm and fuzzy over a commie as long as he's a gun guy.
    Enjoy.

    Comment


    • #3
      His Line of Grievance in Purgatory will be long.
      “Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

      ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Norm dePlume View Post
        Man, you'll get all warm and fuzzy over a commie as long as he's a gun guy.
        What? Whereinahell did you come up with that? Or, more specifically, why do you think that it's somehow exclusive to Kalashnikov just because he's a "gun guy?"

        Hint: I have a lot of respect for Mikhail Gorbachev, too.




        Is this just your bigoted Leftist stereotype coming out that claims that I just hate anything and everything that was ever related to the Soviet Union?

        BTW, I talked to my brother on the phone Saturday. He lives in Moscow with his formerly-Soviet wife. Her parents, who were "journalists" (a polite cover for "spy" in the Soviet days) were with him, his wife, and their three kids at their dacha, getting ready to go spend Christmas and the Russian New Year on the beach in Dubai. I guess you figure I hate all of them, too.
        It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
        In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
        Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
        Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

        Comment


        • #5
          I didn't say a soviet, I said a commie.
          Enjoy.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Norm dePlume View Post
            I didn't say a soviet, I said a commie.
            So it is just your bigoted Leftist stereotype, then. Got it.
            It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
            In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
            Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
            Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Adam View Post
              So it is just your bigoted Leftist stereotype, then. Got it.
              You're the one blurring the distinctions. Kalashnikov wasn't only a soviet, he was a Communist through and through. You know, that genuine belief that you admire.
              Enjoy.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Norm dePlume View Post
                You're the one blurring the distinctions. Kalashnikov wasn't only a soviet, he was a Communist through and through. You know, that genuine belief that you admire.
                And there you go making shit up again.

                Trolling fail.
                It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
                In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
                Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
                Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

                Comment


                • #9
                  Er...
                  Originally posted by Adam View Post
                  It's worth reading the full obit if you don't know Kalashnikov's history. He's an interesting character, a true believer in the Soviet state. We can say what we will about the efficacy of Communism, but I think one has to admire someone who really, genuinely believes is something like that.
                  Enjoy.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Norm dePlume View Post
                    Er...
                    Don't even bother trying.
                    It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
                    In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
                    Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
                    Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

                    Comment

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