49. Ibid., pp. 137–38.
50. Ibid., p. 185.
51. Ibid., p. 123.
52. Anderson, from his diary.
53. Maxim, My Life, p. 313.
54. Ibid., p. 315.
55. Wilfred Owen, “The Spring Offensive,” 1918. Owen, a lieutenant, was killed by a bullet a week before Armistice, roughly a month after writing these lines.
56. Crutchley, Machine Gunner, p. 15.
57. W. H. B. Smith, and Joseph E. Smith, The Book of Rifles (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1965), pp. 62–73.
58. Hans-Dieter Gotz, German Military Rifles and Machine Pistols, 1871–1945, trans. Dr. Edward Force (West Chester, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, 1990), p. 222.
59. Ian V. Hogg and John S. Weeks, Military Small Arms of the 20th Century, 7th Edition (Iola, Wis.: Krause Publications, 2000), p. 93.
60. Louis A. La Garde, and John T. Thompson, “Preliminary Report of Board to Determine Upon Bullet for Military Service Pistol.” Written in Chicago, Illinois, March, 18, 1904.
5. Stalin’s Contest: The Invention of the AK-47
1. Kalashnikov: Oruzhiye, Boyepripacy, Snaryazheniye, Okhota, Sport. Special Issue, 2004, p. 18. The polygon is also described several times in Kalashnikov’s memoirs.
2. M. T. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep to the Kremlin Gates, (Moscow: Military Parade, 1997), p. 203.
3. Ibid., p. 164.
4. Dmitri Shirayev, “Legendarn Kalashnikov—Ne Oruzheinik, a Podstavnoye Litso,” Moskovsky Komsomolets, January 3, 2002. Moskovsky Komsomolets is a Russian-language newspaper published in Moscow. Various sources say the artillery commission received from ten to fifteen submissions. Fifteen, the number provided by S. B. Monetchikov’s Istoriya Russkogo Avtomato is used here, in part because Monetchikov lists the contestants’ names. His book was published by Atlant in Saint Petersburg, 2005.
5. According to the State Statistics Committee in June 1946, out of 24 million workers and office employees who received their full wages or salaries 5.6 percent were paid about 100 rubles; 9.2 percent from 101 to 150 rubles; 10.7 percent from 151 to 200 rubles; 8.8 percent from 201 to 250 rubles; 8.7 percent from 251 to 300 rubles. Less than one-third of laborers and white-white collar workers were paid from 300 to 600 rubles. Research by Nikolay Khalip.
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 (Hyvinkaa, 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. Gotz, 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 Gotz 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
