Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I am joined today by Max
Popenker, I think I'm pronouncing that, sort of close. - OK. - Max why don't you start by just giving
us a brief introduction to who you are, and what do you do? Because I know the
two of us have worked together briefly before, but I don't think most of my audience has seen you. Okay, I am from Russia, and originally have a background in IT and I was in the Reserves of the Russian Army. Firearms are my long-standing hobby and I have been doing this professionally since 2000. My first magazine article was published in Russia in 2000. Since then I have published 8 books including 4 in English about small arms and I still running same web site, Modern Firearms which will be 20 years old this August. - It is like the classic firearms reference
website out there, world.guns.ru. It was before Wikipedia... - Yep. Oh I remember back in the days when
it was that, and it was Security Arms. No, Security Arms was different - mine was World.Guns.Ru - Those were the only two websites out there for firearms
reference, and yours was much better than Security Arms. So Max has some substantial expertise, in
particular in Russian firearms in a way that we here in the United States and perhaps
more largely in Western Europe don't have. And so Max expressed some interest in talking about
some of the history of some of the Russian firearms, and I thought this would be a great opportunity
to get some of his expertise onto the channel. So we figured we'd take a
few minutes today and discuss the early history, the development of the AK,
because this is an area where there's a lot of misinformation and lack of information in the
English-speaking world. You know, there's still these really deeply held beliefs that it was,
you know, Hugo Schmeisser who designed the... or Louis Schmeisser who designed the AK
by himself and it was just copied by Russia. This is nonsense, but Max I think you
have the actual historical knowledge to be able to explain that better than
someone over here, so can you inform us? Yes, sure. Ok, so we can start. Usually the Soviet story of assault rifle - avtomat - is starting with the Federov. You know the Federov automatic rifle - machine rifle - of 1916. In fact, there were several Federov designs semi-automatic, fully automatic, in 7.62mm and 6.5mm Arisaka but most of these were actually produced in about 1919, under Soviet regime - Soviet Union - Soviet Russia before Soviet Union. And actually, those machine rifles they're intended to be used as squad automatics. Same way as the Browning Automatic Rifles not as individual rifles, but as squad support weapons. Then when Soviet Army - Red Army - began to
work on submachine guns in the late 20s. There was a brief period when it was not yet settled on ammunition so it was a discussion between 9mm Luger, 7.73 - 7.63mm Mauser and a new option considering and a tertiary option was .351 Winchester Self Loading. - OK, that was a popular cartridge in a bunch of different
countries early in automatic rifle development. Yes - it was an intermediate round. Between pistol round and rifle round in power and actually Soviet designers produced 2 or 3 prototypes select-fire prototypes in .351 Winchester Self Loading in about 1928 or 1929. But then the Red Army settled on 7.62 Tokarev...same as 7.63 Mauser for a period submachine gun made in 7.62mm and primarily weapon for infantryman
was considered a self-loading rifle in true full-power 7.62x54mm. So, the intermediate round concept was more or less abandoned. Then, Second World War came and in the winter of - late in 1942 Soviet Army captured first examples of German machine carbine. It was not yet a Sturmgewehr. It was an MKb-42(H). So I will try to show the first Soviet report about this weapon. - I remember reading about some of the German, basically a German combat field
trial with a small batch of MKb-42s. Yes - you see, it says - it's interesting "new German light machine gun" - Okay. You see the report, yes? So it says new German light machine gun which has magazine capacity between 35 and 38 cartridges weighing about 5 kilos So it's sort of...very light...machine gun. So the idea was considered by Soviet experts. The idea was considered and in the middle of 1943 it was decided that Soviet Army needs its own intermediate cartridge and its own small arms system firing this cartridge. The first important difference between German approach
and Soviet approach is that from the start Soviet Army wanted a complete small arms system to replace all existing small arms. So the idea was that the primary infantry rifle would be a semiautomatic carbine with 10-round magazine, clip loading,
firing new intermediate ammo. The submachine gun should be replaced with automatic carbine with detachable box magazine of about 30 or 45 rounds and there should be a squad automatic in same calibre. Magazine fed or belt fed, it was not yet decided. And then there should be a bolt action carbine for rear echelon troops. It was a complete small arms system. So work on the cartridge was started in the summer of 1943 and work on small arms for this cartridge was started as soon as the first specimens were ready, late in 1943. On all 4 systems. First... probably better known; semiautomatic carbines. Simonov SKS which won trials, but there were a lot of competing designs including one from a young and aspiring designer [Mikhail] Kalashnikov. Actually there were at least two different Kalashnikov carbines. One was using en bloc clips like a Garand and second using stripper clips. Both failed - they were much heavier and
less reliable than Simonov. At the same time the squad automatic role was lead by Degtyarev. He was an experienced designer and he developed a belt fed RPD light machine gun as early as 1944. And the automatic carbine was first taken by Sudayev the same who designed the PPS-43 submachine gun. You see this? - Okay. Yes, I can see that. This you see from old report. This is actually early version of intermediate cartridge which still had a case not 39mm but of 41mm. Flat base bullet you see early belt in drum for RPD machine gun and box magazine for Sudayev AS-44 assault rifle. - OK, is that the Sudayev on the bottom? Yeah, the early RPD is on the top and AS-44 is on the bottom. You see it has an integral bipod. It was a select-fire weapon, fired from an open bolt. But it was a proper assault rifle. A small batch of AS-44 along with a small batch of RPD were tested as early as the summer of 1945 shortly after victory in Europe. It was tested by different infantry units including mechanised units riding on armoured vehicles, or tanks. Military was pretty happy with squad automatic, but when they considered the tested version of Sudayev assault rifle a little bit [too heavy]. So it was pretty good accuracy-wise but it was about 5 kilo [11 pounds] in weight, so they wanted it to be lighter. Also, the war was over so there was no immediate pressure to...force something into supply line, so they decided okay, we have enough time, let's make a proper competition. They had a lot of designers. There was already a lot of competing designs from Degtyarev, from Tokarev, from Shpagin, from a bunch of other less known designers, so let's hold a proper trials. Let's select the really best assault rifle. So, they had already decided
more or less on the Simonov carbine. So they were more or less decided on primary weapons on rifle, and on squad automatic. So they wanted sort of replacement of submachine gun for assault troops for mechanised troops, for airborne. So it was at the moment like a second priority. So they decided to hold a proper trial in 1946. They open the trials for a lot of designers and here we can see you a few of competing designs - not all. Only a few. So, let's see - one of Simonov which was more or less based on the SKS. You see the very unusual Korobov bullpup, a gas-operated, tilting bolt weapon from 1945. Dementiev, Bulkin, and first Kalashnikov AK-46 assault rifle. Okay - who was Kailashnikov? Who was the guy? He was like a peasant, like a former tank driver - how can a person without a proper education design assault rifles? Even hope to win trials [against] experienced
designers like Tokarev or Shpagin? So the answer is this. In 1942 Kalashnikov has been wounded in combat and was on medical leave while recuperating from his wounds he decided to develop a submachine gun for tank crews. It was not yet PPS ... Sudayev was not yet available it was only Shpagin, which was a little bit too big for a tank crew. In fact, Kalashnikov developed his first submachine gun more or less compact weapon for tank crews. So you can see it in the photo... It was too complicated. Too expensive to make to be really considered for adoption. But authorities that examined it saw that Kalashnikov has potential as a small arms designer. That he is talented, he is a mechanically advanced person, and instead of going back to the tank troops he was assigned to the scientific proving grounds for small arms at Schurovo, not far from Moscow. This was not just a proving ground, not just shooting range where
different small arms are fired, it was a scientific research institution. Started by very experienced ordnance officers that operate with scientific method to anything - in fact they had their own design bureau among other designers, Sudayev worked there. Organizing effort. It was sort of like Springfield Armoury in the United States with less concentration on manufacturing and
more concentration on development, testing, and research So it was something like a combination of Aberdeen Proving Ground and Springfield in American terms and Kalashnikov had been sent there to study under the best Ordnance officers. Between 1942 and 1945 he developed not only his submachine gun but also a light machine gun which was again not a success, but it was a lesson in small arms design. When he designed his semiautomatic carbine which was better but still lost to Simonov. So actually, before entering the assault rifle trials he had several years of experience designing small arms under guidance of the best Soviet small arms experts. So while he had no formal education he had a lot of trials. We can remember that Browning has no formal education, Schmeisser has no formal education, John Garand has no formal education. They all have talent and they all experimented and worked it out. Same story with Kalashnikov. So, 1946 has come and gone and no contender was entirely successful. Every gun has its own set of faults. So, the military decided, okay, let's have a second trial and the two best - two of the best designs were from Bulkin and Dementiev and Kalashnikov talked his way into getting a permit to get into [the next round]. The interesting aspect was each designer received a comprehensive set of recommendations from trial commission. So actually for each designer it not only said, okay, you have so much breakages, these are the reasons it's not satisfactory, they actually said okay, this can improved in this way, this part can be redesigned in this way, and so on. For example, a recommendation for Kalashnikov was to redesign the trigger system along the lines of the Czechoslovak Holek ZH29 because it was considered one of the best trigger systems available. So to abandon his his two part separated safety and selector details and to make it into a single part. And so there was a long list of recommendations for each desiger. The trick was that while Kalashnikov listened to most of these recommendations, his two competitors did not. It is not know why but I have a copy of report from early 1948 and it expressly states that Bulkin and Dementiev ignored most of recommendations of the proving ground. So a lot of people say Kalashnikov was inexperienced, so
he has been helped by others - in fact the trials commission tried to help everyone. So actually their work was to get the best possible designs they issued a lot of practical recommendations so it was up to the particular designer to
accept those recommendations or not. To implement them this way, or another. So, then in 1947 We have 3 competing designs - Kalashnikov Bulkin and Dementiev. Kalashnikov redesigns his rifle almost entirely, so probably one of the things he kept from his AK-46 was his Garand-style rotating bolt everything else has been changed. Long stroke gas piston, removable top cover with U-shaped stamped steel receiver, Holek style style trigger, and Browning style safety. There were some similarities between Bulkin and Kalashnikov externally in layout. However, all the results compiled in late 1947 showed that Bulkin and Dementiev were much less reliable than Kalashnikov they broke a lot of parts, so Kalashnikov design was head and shoulders above both competitors in terms of reliability and durability. The only thing that it lacked was accuracy in full auto there was no scientific requirement actually generated for trials; the Army wanted the new submachine gun replacement to be as accurate as Shpagin in both semiautomatic and full auto. In semiautomatic the Kalashnikov outperformed Shpagin because it had much more powerful rounds about 2 times longer effective range. In full auto it had wider dispersion, understandable because recoil impulse is almost 2 times higher. But Army decided okay, we can work on it, squeezing down the full auto accuracy, but it seems that we have good, reliable, workable design, which can be put [into troop trials]. So in January of 1948 decision was made to abandon everything but Kalashnikov AK-47 and to order small batch production of Kalashnikov for troop trials for real not just 2 guns, but to order 1,500 guns complete for widespread trials. This design work was done at Schurovo and in the city of Kovrov, also not far from Moscow in the same factory where Degtyarev worked. It was a fully equipped design bureau for small arms Kalashnikov has been helped here
by several designers like Zaitsev but all design work has been made at Kovrov or Schurovo. So in the middle of 1948, Soviet Army [issued] in American terms there was a contract, a manufacturing contract for 1,500 AK-47 rifles that's what they were actually called at the time; AK-47 So the Ministry of Military Industries assigned this contract to the small arms factory in Izhevsk and in the summer of 1948, Kalashnikov along with all of his data package, his prototypes, his drawings travels for the first time to Izhevsk to make this first batch. Here, ok, we come to the story of Germans German engineers in Izhevsk. Yes, Soviet... All Allies captured everything they can engineers, drawings, all knowledge from Germans to be used for future development. It was very practical, logical. So, some German small arms designers went to France, like Ludwig Vorgrimmler who worked there for several years before moving to Spain. So some [not so voluntarily] moved to the Soviet Union to Izhevsk. There were not a lot of them but there were some very important features. Everybody knows about Schmeisser...but let's speak honestly. By the end of WW2 Schmeisser was like a manager of the Haenel factory. So in fact it was - there were people in Izhevsk, German people like Horne and Gruner the two men who were responsible for design of Hitler's [Buzzsaw] MG 42 [Famous...] [medium] machine gun, the universal machine gun. They worked in Izhevsk - they were assigned different tasks and there's a lot of unclassified paperwork available, in Izhevsk which describes their work. So it says, okay, like Hugo Schmeisser claimed that he has no specific educations, that he was more manager than designer, so okay, he worked on minor projects just helped with production. So, like Horne he was trying to sabotage everything. Okay, I'm too ill; he refused to cooperate with Soviets. Gruner, on the other hand, was freely cooperating with Soviets. He designed several light machine guns along the lines of his late war prototype the MG-45. So he... So this is... You can see... This is exposed. This is a drawing designed by Gruner, it says - on the right corner in Russian. So this is stamped steel, short recoil operated, medium machine gun more or less along the lines of the MG-42. So Gruner actually cooperated with Soviets. But the results were just on paper. Because nothing ended. And there was another document from the archives that specifically requested no Germans should be allowed to access classified information about the development of Soviet small arms. And Kalashnikov's work was classified until mid 1950s. - That makes perfect sense. Why would the
Russians want to have the German engineers deeply involved in brand-new ... as
you're saying, in classified development? So, in fact Germans were not allowed to be near production of AK-47. Probably the only thing they could be useful for was stamping. Because we know there were issues with stamping receivers. And in fact, Schmeisser was not big on the stamping his Sturmgewehr has been produced - stamped
with the help of Merz Werke. So probably Horne or Gruner had more experience in stamping because MG-42 has been stamped - but they were not allowed to go near AK. So basically in mid...in late 1948 a batch of AK-47s was produced issued to troops, and tested and tested until in the summer of 1949 Soviet Army officially adopted the AK as a replacement for submachine gun. And here, the addition "-47" disappeared from [documents]. So if you look at the early documents regarding trials and early production, SKS RPD, and AK all have a numerical index So it was SKS-45, RPD-44 and AK-47. Upon adoption they were adopted just as SKS RPD, and AK. - OK, interesting. So actually, AK-47 [can be used only] for experimental first batch of preproduction guns. A few still survive in museum collections, but still [the real] AK-47. Everything made after adoption was just "AK" - Alright, well very cool. That is
some great background to have. So there is the official manual dated 1949 which has has a huge "AK-47" on the cover, but if you will look at the documents
printed in 1950 and later, it's always "AK". It's interesting so when in 1951 they had to go back to the machined receiver instead
of the stamped one the definition... everything has been kept the same. Same index, same internal designation same AK. It was quite different in [function], different receiver but it was still same AK. It was the AK during several iterations like Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, until development of AKM in the late 1950s, which became definite and AK became a primary infantry weapon only with the introduction of the AKM (Modified). Before that, the primary weapon of Soviet Army was Simonov - the SKS. So AK was mostly issued to assault troops, airborne, to some specialised units and so on. So most of the units were equipped with semiautomatic carbine and RPD. But first experience gained like a first generation of intermediate calibre small arms system showed that it can be improved. One, that the RPD was found lacking in several respects. So one problem was that intermediate power cartridge like 7.62x39 was had not enough energy to spare to reliably cycle a belt feed. You know it's... the belt fed system requires a lot more energy. So it was desired to that RPD should be replaced with something new. Also several experiments showed that the assault rifle can be improved - made lighter, more accurate, and have less dispersion. So about 1950... sorry, 1955 Soviet Army initiated next round of research and development to produce a new small arms system which should include a new assault rifle, and new squad automatic based on the same design. So for simplification of logistics of training and so on, but this is a different story and I think we should discuss it separately, which would lead us to AKM and RPK. So we discuss it next time. And right now I say thank you for letting me to maybe debunk some myths and talk to your audience, which I highly value. - Absolutely. Thank you very much for taking the time
to come on and talk to us. I really appreciate it. Thank you! Bye. - Hopefully you guys enjoyed watching the video. If you did, please make sure to let
me know down in the comments. And I suspect we're going to be
doing some more chats with Max on some additional topics regarding Soviet
and Russian firearms development. Thanks for watching.
