The Gun

Over the course of a year,⁸² the collective made a batch of prototype rifles. The outline of what would become the AK-47 was only faintly evident:⁸³ the weapon’s overall length, the steeply raised front sight post, the distinctly curved magazine, and the characteristic gas tube above the barrel. But many Soviet efforts at automatics looked like this; these were not unusual traits. The resemblance to the eventual design was superficial. Internal components were still to be reworked. Kalashnikov and his collective nonetheless were proud. They had a gun. “At last the time came,” he said, “when we could actually touch the whole thing, glistening with lacquer and lubricant.”⁸⁴

Sergeant Kalashnikov worked alongside Aleksandr Zaitsev, an engineer who had recently left the army. One design feature was essential. They chose to make their prototypes’ parts loose-fitting, rather than snug, thinking that this might make the weapons less likely to jam when dirty, inadequately lubricated, or clogged with carbon from heavy firing. This was a counterintuitive choice to many Western designers, who had experience with the precision tools that allowed assembly lines to work within tight tolerances and mill parts to an exacting fit. Some Russian designers favored that approach, too. “Tokarev had adopted one principle which determined the overall shape of his weapons: all the elements were stuck to one another so that not even dust could get in,” Kalashnikov wrote. “My approach is different: all the elements are spaced out, as if they were hanging in air.”⁸⁵ The approach was not original. It had been used by Simonov for the SKS and by Sudayev in the AS-44—the weapon that had been the front runner until Sudayev fell sick.⁸⁶ It appeared to reach to the stamped-metal Soviet submachine guns, which were made with a looser fit to accommodate the anticipated shrinking and stretching associated with stamping and pressing metal sheets. It was becoming a trait in general-issue Soviet small arms and would distinguish them from their Western counterparts. To those who did not recognize the reasons behind the choice, the AK-47 could seem crude. Anyone who removed the return spring from a Kalashnikov, for example, would find that many parts, when not held by its tension, would slide and rattle. This was not crudity. This was exactly as the AK-47 was designed, and contributed to the weapon’s ability to withstand field use.

In 1947 the teams gathered with their prototypes back at Schurovo for the field trials, to be held from June 30 to August 12.⁸⁷ The new weapons would compete against one another, while three others—the AS-44 prototype made by Sudayev, a captured German sturmgewehr, and a PPSh—would be used as controls. Kalashnikov was of two minds. In Schurovo he was reunited with Katya, and the pair was married at the garrison. “The testing range became our registry office,” he said.⁸⁸ His personal life had taken a shape that would last for decades. His professional confidence was strained. He was anxious about the tests and wished that if he was to be eliminated, the elimination would be quick. His weapon, listed as the AK-46, was heavy, weighing more than nine and a half pounds.⁸⁹ He doubted its design. “My situation was not enviable as I was becoming increasingly critical of my imperfect creation,” he said.⁹⁰ He worried and fretted, listening to the rifles being fired, and was able to distinguish the sound of his from the others. Once, as the AK-46 was being put through a course that included ten shots, the shooting ceased after a few rounds. The silence tormented him. Had his weapon jammed? The tester who answered the phone laughed. “A moose crossed the firing line so we had to stop shooting,”⁹¹ he told him.

Ultimately none of the submissions were accepted outright in the second phase; all had defects. Several weapons were eliminated, and three⁹²—those submitted by Aleksei A. Bulkin, Aleksandr A. Dementyev, and Kalashnikov—were ordered to be reworked and brought back for a second round. Their konstruktors were issued detailed instructions for improving their arms and sent to their workshops.

The AK-46 test rifles that Kalashnikov brought to the firing trials were much different from the rifles he would return with a short while later. An overhaul was to occur, which would give generations of assault rifles their distinctive qualities. At this point, the available record, already obscured by propaganda and conflicting statements, becomes cloudy once more. Many years later, Kalashnikov, by then a lieutenant general and a Soviet hero in the mold of General Degtyarev, would describe his thinking as he prepared. “In order to achieve the best results in this ‘run-off’ contest, I had to make a breakthrough in the design, not just improve it,”⁹³ he said. By this account, at Kalashnikov’s insistence, he and Aleksandr Zaitsev made a series of changes that fundamentally altered the prototype and assured its selection.

The pair had already borrowed features from Allied and Axis weapons and others from his own previous work. In a hurried fashion in late 1947 at the design bureau in Kovrov, a new weapon emerged. Kalashnikov and Zaitsev shortened the AK-46’s barrel by 80 millimeters. They altered its main operating system, combining the bolt carrier and the gas piston into one component, a modification that closely resembled the previous prototype by Bulkin. The alteration proved invaluable. By reducing the number of parts, it made the rifle easier to disassemble and clean. A second result was more important. The combined bolt carrier and gas piston were now massive, and by giving these parts heft, the designers provided the AK-47’s operating system an abundance of excess energy every time a shot was fired. Each time the piston and bolt were pushed backward by the gas vented from the barrel into the expansion chamber, this energy was available to push through any dirt or accumulated carbon inside the weapon. The massive operating system, combined with the looser fit from the earlier prototype, would later give the rifle much of its legendary reputation.

The team was at work on other components, too. The trigger mechanism was also overhauled—a project that seems to have been led by Vladimir S. Deikin, a Soviet army12 major and test official assigned to work with Kalashnikov.⁹⁴ The bureau also changed the safety catch, removing the AK-46’s small selector lever and replacing it with a large sheet-metal switch. As a result of this revision, when the weapon was on safe this lever served as a protective cover over the bolt and the area around the chamber and blocked sand, dust, and dirt.⁹⁵ They also designed a large, one-piece receiver cover. The modifications completed much of what would become the AK-47 and made the already simple prototype more simple still. Time was tight. The field tests had ended in August. Revised prototypes were due back at NIPSMVO in mid-December. Zaitsev said that by working day and night, the group managed to finish the documents for the new design in a month, and a month and a half later had made the first of the new models in wood and steel. By November they had made three models. “We felt that we were on an uphill path,” he said.⁹⁶

Exactly who was responsible for all of these final modifications is unclear. General Kalashnikov would describe a near epiphany, a eureka moment. “I came up with several new ideas that turned my life upside down. I completely altered the general structure. As the rules of the competition didn’t allow me to change its overall design, I had to pretend I was working on a mere improvement. Sasha Zaitsev, my faithful right-hand man from the start of the competition, was at this time the only person aware of my real plan.”⁹⁷ He added, “Our design represented a real leap forward in the history of automatic weapons construction. We broke all the stereotypes that had dominated the field.”⁹⁸ He also claimed the changes were related to an inherent flexibility in his design style.

Often times designers become affixed to a certain idea and hesitate to discard it. They are so attached to their original concept, you could say, like a spinster to her cats! I am just the opposite. Today this idea seems good, tomorrow I might just toss it. The day after I might do the same until such a point, when I can feel the design is completed. When you work with somebody who is afraid to discard an idea that has outlived its usefulness, you notice that they find it difficult to part with it. They think their accomplishments should last for all times. I am referring here to the need for a certain flexibility (of mind), i.e., the ability to test as many ideas as possible and not get too attached to any one in particular. This enables one to develop models of high reliability…. There is no limit to improvement!⁹⁹

That was Kalashnikov’s version. Zaitsev remembered events differently. He said that in fact he had conceived of the changes. Kalashnikov, he said, opposed them. His recommendations were made at Kovrov after Kalashnikov returned from NIPSMVO with the judges’ recommendations. “I suggested the Kalashnikov assault rifle be entirely redesigned,” Zaitsev wrote. Kalashnikov resisted, Zaitsev said, because he thought there was not enough time to overhaul the design before the final trials. “I managed to convince him I was right.”¹⁰⁰ D. N. Bolotin, a Soviet arms writer who was friendly with many designers, thought enough of Zaitsev’s account to include it without challenge in his published work.¹⁰¹ Aleksandr Malimon, an officer who worked as a test officer at the polygon, also chronicled Zaitsev’s contributions as matters of