Post date: Dec 23, 2013 4:44:25 PM
Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the simple but sturdy Russian assault rifle, dies at the age of 94.
IZHEVSK, RUSSIA (REUTERS) - Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the simple but sturdy Russian assault rifle that has killed more people than any other weapon in the world, died on Monday (December 23) in the town of Izhevsk. He was 94.
A son of Siberian peasants who never finished school, Kalashnikov invented one of the Soviet Union's best-known and most imitated products - a gun whose shots have been heard around the world for over half a century.Kalashnikov was in his 20s and not long out of World War Two when he created the AK-47, whose number stands for the year 1947. The 'A' is for 'avtomat' - sub-machine gun - and the 'K' forKalashnikov.
The rifle, which rarely jams even in adverse conditions, went into service in the Soviet armed forces in 1949. Today, Kalashnikov rifles are still a mainstay of Russia's armed forces and police.
Russia now produces Kalashnikovs of the so-called "100s series" with the AK-47's original 7.62 mm calibre, with the 5.45 mm calibre adopted for the AK-74 and even for NATO's 5.56 mm cartridge.
At a lavish Kremlin ceremony on Kalashnikov's 90th birthday in 2009, President Dmitry Medvedevbestowed upon him the highest state honour -- the Hero of Russia gold star medal -- and lauded him for creating "the national brand every Russian is proud of".
But Kalashnikov said pride in his iconic invention was mixed with the pain of seeing it used by criminals and child soldiers.
The cheap and simple rifle was embraced by anti-Western revolutionary movements and leftist leaders around the world, as well as gangsters, drug traffickers and militants and rebels of all stripes.
In 1973, Chile's communist President Salvador Allende died holding an AK-47 -- a gift from Soviet-backed Cuban leader Fidel Castro -- in a coup d'etat staged by pro-U.S. General Augusto Pinochet.
Thirty years later, invading U.S. troops found a gold-plated Kalashnikov reportedly given to Saddam Hussein's son Uday at one of the Iraqi leader's palaces in Baghdad.
U.S. arch-foe Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, poses with a Kalashnikov in his videotaped diatribes against the West.
Bearded Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Liberia's gangs of young thugs wearing flip-flops, Somali hijackers and South American guerrillas -- all seem to admire the rifle that continues to work in dust, sand and swampy water.
"It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon," Kalashnikovsaid in a videotaped address to a conference of Russian arms traders and designers held in October 2008, shortly before his 90th birthday.
"I created this weapon primarily to defend the borders of our fatherland."
At first, the upstart Kalashnikov got a cool reception. Renowned Soviet arms designers scoffed at the first, primitive gun which the young sergeant crafted in 1942 while in hospital in Kazakhstan. Five years later, Kalashnikov's rifle beat out the models proposed by some of the same designers.
Kalashnikov, a sergeant during World War Two who was once severely wounded and pulled from a burning tank, used to say that simplicity and reliability save lives in war situations.
"So this has been my lifetime motto -- I have created weapons ... to be simple and reliable."
Those qualities have led to avid imitation, with erstwhile communist allies like Bulgaria flooding the market with copies of the fabled weapon.
In Soviet days, Moscow would routinely sign 25-year licence agreements with communist satellites in Eastern Europe allowing them to produce Kalashnikovs. Now such agreements have expired.
About half of the world's roughly estimated 100 million Kalashnikovs are counterfeit copies produced without licences.
"This powerful rifle ... is the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to turn a farmer, teacher, peasant or even a teenager into an effective killing machine," Larry Kahaner wrote in his book "AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War".
"Many western military experts consider it a piece of junk. Some US soldiers prefer the AK especially in Iraq where dust tends to jam their M-16 rifles but does not affect the AK."
The Kalashnikov is officially in service in 55 countries of the world. Several national emblems feature the rifle, and boys in developing nations have been named "Kalash" after it.
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was born on Nov. 10, 1919 -- during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution -- into a large peasant family in the village of Kurya in the remote Altai region of southern Siberia.
In Soviet times, he was twice honoured as "Hero of Socialist Labour" and became a Stalin Prize and Lenin Prize laureate. Once a Red Army sergeant, he was given the rank of colonel in 1969 and rose to a two-star general by the end of his life.
Having no university diploma, he was awarded a doctoral degree in engineering in 1971.
But Kremlin plaudits and decorations did not make him rich.
In the West, his invention would likely have made him a millionaire. In Russia, he lived in a modest Soviet-era apartment in the city of Izhevsk, near the Ural Mountains east of Moscow, where his famous gun is produced.
After meeting M-16 designer Eugene Stoner in the 1990s, Kalashnikov said his rich American colleague was flying his own plane, while the Russian could hardly afford the 950-km (590 mile) flight from Izhevsk to Moscow.