The film portrayed a sad, conflicted man. “Like it or not,” he said, “you have to live with it, like a grenade splinter inside your body. I’ve got one in my body, long surrounded by scar tissue. You forget about it as you go about your daily routine, but then what do you do when a small twist or turn causes sudden acute pain?”
Years earlier, Kalashnikov had felt that pain as he stopped for a traffic light in his town. He saw an empty AK cartridge roll down the pavement. “It might have been hurled by a wheel of a car or blown by the wind,” he thought. He found another cartridge and realized that there had been a shootout the previous night in the middle of town. “No one gathers the blank cartridges. No one cares anymore.” He was so lost in thought that a police officer asked if he was all right, having missed the green light. “Armaments which should be kept in arsenals under the close watch of sentries are now freely bought and sold . . . yet it is not arms makers and not politicians that continue to be enemies of the people,” Kalashnikov mused.
Although the film gave Kalashnikov’s son Viktor only a cameo, he was an accomplished arms designer in his own right. Named after Kalashnikov’s brother Viktor, his son designed the PP-19 Bizon, a 9mm submachine gun used by military special forces and tactical police units in close-quarter environments. The weapon used many of the AK’s well-proven aspects, including its trigger mechanism and receiver cover. Its most unusual element was the magazine, which was helical and placed underneath the forestock instead of perpendicular as on other assault rifles and submachine guns. This feature gave the weapon a low profile, allowing it to be more easily concealed under clothing or held close to one’s side without being observed.
As a child, Viktor wanted to design aircraft, but the Kazan Aviation School where he applied did not accept him. Instead, he enrolled at the Izhevsk Institute of Mechanics, where he majored in small arms and received his PhD in 1980. Earlier, in 1967, his design bureau had moved to Izhmash, where his Alexandrov group competed against his father’s group for the 5.45 × 39mm rifle—a competition that his father’s group won.
Viktor was more outspoken and bitter than his father about not being paid royalties for the AK. “My father and I could have been millionaires, just like the U.S. inventor of the M-16 assault rifle, Eugene Stoner, who received a dollar for each gun sold.”
About the same time that the documentary hit the screens, a cutting-edge T-shirt company called OK47 began its growth into a three-continent, hundred-boutique source of fashion alternatives. The company admitted to playing on the surreal contradiction of its name and the AK, as OK47 considered itself a counterpoint to cookie-cutter clothing producers. Not only were its designs unique, but the Toronto-based company bucked the trend of offshore manufacturing and exploitation of workers in less developed countries by making all its clothing in North America. Like the AK, OK47 was rebellious in its fashion and business practices.
The gun was popping up in movies like Jackie Brown, directed by Quentin Tarantino, in which Samuel L. Jackson announced, “AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room.” In the HBO TV hit The Sopranos, Tony Soprano armed himself with an AK after a bear was discovered roaming his New Jersey backyard. Just like Shakespeare had an actor walk onstage and kick a dog to indicate to the audience that he was the antagonist, Hollywood has used the AK to show the antihero, the terrorist, the bad guy.
Artists were discovering the powerful symbolism of the AK. Because it was the definitive icon of protracted, dirty warfare, they incorporated the weapon into their work both as an ironic accent and as a symbol of protest against conflict. In Cambodia, a group of artists funded in part by the actresses Angelina Jolie and Emma Thompson worked almost exclusively in the medium of decommissioned AKs. Students at Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts participating in the Peace Art Project took thousands of AKs collected by the government and turned them into sculptures. After decades of war, including the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge depicted in the book and movie The Killing Fields, the country still remained smothered in weapons, mainly AKs, but the artists hoped to send a peaceful message with these rifles. Changing Kalashnikovs into artwork seemed as natural as Western artists turning their everyday cultural items like cars and soup cans into avant-garde art.
“Taking the weapons and turning them into art seems to be the perfect symbolism of a step away from a post-conflict society towards a society with a culture of peace,” said David de Beer, head of a European Union arms decommissioning program in Phnom Penh. Because of Cambodia’s tradition of sculpture, the weapons turned art seemed a natural. Animals such as elephants, horses, birds, chickens, and snakes were popular subjects. More than a hundred thousand AKs were turned over to authorities. Ones that were not turned into art were burned, many of them in public “Flames of Peace” bonfires that attracted hundreds of onlookers.
The project was loosely fashioned after a similar program in Mozambique called Swords to Ploughshares that offered implements such as plows, bicycles, and sewing machines in exchange for small arms after that country’s civil war ended. Art played a role there, too, as several artists, including Feil dos Santos, turned AKs and land mines into sculptures. Christian Concern, a nongovernmental organization, collected the guns for dos Santos, which he welded together into a display titled From Weapons to Art that has traveled throughout Africa. The sculptures depicted the artist’s stress and sadness at living in a war zone. One sculpture in particular, Dual Surrender, showed a man with outstretched arms, begging for charity, resigned to his decrepit situation. AK trigger handles formed his ears; cartridge shells made his hair. Another work by dos Santos, Melody, depicted a man whose limbs were formed from AK parts. The man was playing a harmonica because many in Mozambique found comfort in music, filling the quiet void left by the long war.
For citizens of countries in which the AK killed millions, seeing the weapons turned into harmless, sometimes stunning and beautiful art pieces has gone a long way toward healing the wounds of war.
Even high-end commercial artists and designers joined the AK design movement, mainly for shock value and to titillate Western consumers. At the Milan Furniture Fair in 2005, world-renowned designer Philippe Starck revealed high-end table lamps fashioned from replicas of AKs, M-16s, and Beretta pistols. Black shades lined with crosses sat atop the lamps. Said Starck, “I am a designer, and design is my weapon. I want my furniture to show that everything, even furniture, can be a political choice.”
The founders of the online photography magazine AK47 used the name to grab attention in the overcrowded Internet space. “The AK47—and those four symbols A-K-4-7 are iconic. So from an Internet magazine’s point of view, where you want to stand out on a search page—AK47 just grabs the eye,” said editor Joerg Diekmann. “Coming from South Africa, the AK47 has always played a terrifying role in our history. Bank robbers, burglars, carjackers, an angry disenfranchised people—it’s the AK47 that puts real fear into people. They cost about $30 in the streets. Using the name AK47 for a photography magazine is hopefully an affirmation that those dark days are nearing an end. It’s a signal of change. An icon from a different era. Yet it is still edgy and raw, and churns up emotions. I like photography that induces an emotional response—it can remain murky—but there has to be an emotion.”
KALASHNIKOV ATTEMPTED TO CASH in on the growing momentum. In 2003, he signed an agreement with Marken Marketing International (MMI) a Solingen, Germany, company that offered to market consumer items under the inventor’s name. For lending his moniker, Kalashnikov would receive a one-third stake in the venture. The company planned an ambitious line of goods including pocketknives, flashlights, snowboards, umbrellas, and tennis rackets. The goal was to transfer the Kalashnikov reputation for solidness, simplicity, and rugged design to these products in much the same way that Harley-Davidson sold branded clothing and the Dannon yogurt company had a line of bottled water. Although neither of these companies knew anyth
ing about clothes or water, consumers associated them with quality, and that made product extension possible and profitable. Kalashnikov had hoped for the same outcome.
The fact that AKs enjoyed an antiestablishment cachet would help sales of products aimed at youths and those who liked to think of themselves as outside the mainstream. Harley-Davidson had successfully fostered an outlaw biker patina even though most Harley riders were males over forty, who had wives and children and enjoyed high family incomes from straitlaced jobs. For masculine sports and camping gear, the Kalashnikov name probably could move products if the marketer was skillful. “The articles are very similar to my rifle,” Kalashnikov said. “Reliable, easy to use, and indestructible.”
The announcement was met with great fanfare and media attention, but nothing ever became of the scheme. The company simply disappeared, and once again Kalashnikov failed to make money on his invention.
Still, the AK mystique grew stronger. Playboy magazine in 2004 listed the AK-47 as number four in its feature “50 Products That Changed the World: A Countdown of the Most Innovative Consumer Products of the Past Half Century.” That the AK was considered a consumer item, behind the Apple Macintosh desktop computer (number one), the Pill (number two), and the Sony Betamax VCR (number three), was a true indication of the gun’s seminal and long-lasting effect on the modern world. Citing a July 1999 State Department report mentioning the weapon, Playboy’s editors noted, “In some countries it is easier and cheaper to buy an AK-47 than to attend a movie or provide a decent meal.” The magazine also cited a Los Angeles Times article calling the gun “history’s most widely distributed piece of killing machinery.”
Amid the AK hype, museums began looking at the rifle’s effect on civilization and culture in a more somber and thoughtful way. The Dutch Army Museum in 2003 and 2004 hosted an exhibit on the AK called Kalashnikov: Rifle without Borders that offered visitors a look at multimedia displays on wars in which the rifle had played a deciding role. It showed combat children holding AKs in Africa and elsewhere. One exhibit dramatically illustrated the weapon’s destructive ability by showing a bullet pattern in a porous block. However, even a serious museum could not ignore the Kalashnikov’s pop culture side: attendees saw AKs that had been chrome-plated; others were covered with hot pink fabric and glitter. Even a military-oriented museum could not escape the fact that AKs had become so ingrained in world culture that people adorned them with bright colors, perhaps to defuse some of their power. Kalashnikov himself opened the exhibit amid fanfare. Again, as he had done at every public opportunity in the past, he used the forum to blame politicians for misusing his invention and to absolve himself of the AK’s terrible legacy.
At home, his countrymen were preparing to honor their most famous inventor, too. In 1996, construction of a Kalashnikov museum in Izhevsk began but was suspended due to insufficient funding. With pleas for money throughout Russia and on the Internet, the $8 million Kalashnikov Weapons Museum and Exhibition Center opened on the arms maker’s eighty-fifth birthday in 2004. The museum was designed not only to honor Kalashnikov’s work, but also to jump-start the decaying city of Izhevsk, a boom-town during World War II and the cold war years, now fallen on hard times. Isolated and far from much of Russia’s commerce, the city existed for the production of arms, which it made at the rate of more than ten thousand a day during World War II. Later during the cold war it continued to produce weapons, mainly AKs in great numbers, providing employment and prosperity.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, with no more AKs being made, Izhevsk officials hoped that the museum would attract tourists. In what was once a top-secret location, closed to outsiders and casual tourists alike, city officials were hoping for urban renewal and better times based on the AK’s star power. During speeches, the mayor conveyed that the museum embodied the strength of the city in that it produced a dependable product, one that worked reliably and was revered worldwide. Like commercial marketers hoping to make money off of Kalashnikov by selling consumer items with his name and endorsement, his adopted town was relying on his celebrity status, too, to help jump-start its economy.
So far, the results have been lukewarm.
PERHAPS THE INVENTOR’S GREATEST chance at financial success came in 2003, when British entrepreneur John Florey was looking for his next big thing. Florey reasoned that Russia was known for its vodka, the way France was known for wine, the Caribbean for rum, and Scotland for scotch whiskey. Russia was also known for producing the AK, and the Kalashnikov had already achieved global cult status. For Florey, the mix of Russia’s favorite spirit and favorite celebrity seemed the perfect concoction. Over dinner one evening, the idea of Kalashnikov’s AK and vodka seemed like a sure shot.
Florey had been a representative for chess champ Gary Kasparov and understood how to promote Russian culture. He had also helped to establish the Moscow Business School, so he was introduced to Kalashnikov in 2001 through the school.
Kalashnikov was interested albeit wary of the idea. He had been burned several times before. The failure of Kalashnikov’s first excursion into the world of vodka branding was not lost on Florey, who approached this project with a showman’s vision for big, bold promotions but without leaning too heavily on the gun angle. He believed that the previous vodka deal did not “extend” the Kalashnikov brand. He also brought a solid business plan. Kalashnikov was named honorary chairman of the “Kalashnikov Joint Stock Vodka Company (1947) plc.” and was to receive a small equity stake and 2.5 percent of net profits for using his name and likeness on the bottle. A 1947 picture of a young and vibrant Kalashnikov was etched into the bottles, and non-rolling shot glasses, invented by Kalashnikov himself for the Russian navy, were slated for use at bar promotions.
Florey assembled an all-star cast including David Bromige, the creator of Polstar Vodka, an Icelandic spirit that played on the motto “Strength Through Purity” along with a polar bear logo. Bromige also was a director of Reformed Spirits Company, owners of Martin Miller’s Gin, a product that had received a lot of attention for its citrus, pear, and clove flavors in Icelandic glacial water, all contained in a hip, angular bottle that bartenders liked to handle as they imitated Tom Cruise’s dexterous motions in the movie Cocktail. Although the brand had come into existence only in 1999, it boasted using “England’s oldest copper still.” With the opening of the former Soviet Union, vodka was growing more popular in Europe and North America as venerable vodka makers like Stolichnaya, Absolut, and Finlandia (the last two were not from Russia) were wooing younger drinkers with offbeat flavors, edgy bottles, even edgier advertisements, and higher prices that pushed prestige appeal. Florey hoped to catch the wave.
The Kalashnikov 41-proof vodka was going to be produced by a distillery in St. Petersburg, with bottling done in England. Florey had to position the product just right for it all to work. Too much on the military angle would turn off drinkers. Too little and it was just another vodka. Florey pushed a well-honed message: “Kalashnikov stands for Russian design, integrity in so far as the product is true to itself, comradeship and strength of character, which epitomizes the General’s life and the role he has played in Russian culture.”
The company’s public offering went well with investors—it was oversubscribed—and listed on the United Kingdom’s JPJL market, a junior market to the OFEX, the country’s independent market focused on small and medium firms.
Florey’s approach was spot-on. Having Kalashnikov as your pitchman guaranteed that the story would be picked up by the world’s major media. By the summer of 2004, Kalashnikov, clad in his honorary general’s uniform complete with colorful ribbons, graced the pages of magazines and newspapers worldwide. Instead of holding an AK across his chest with his traditional two-handed grip, Kalashnikov delicately raised a martini glass up to the camera in a mock toast. This was a brilliant promotional trick; even though vodka was usually served in regular glasses, the martini glass’s unique triangular shape was instantly recognizable as a cocktail
drink, whereas a normal cylindrical glass could have contained any ordinary liquid. There was no doubt that the AK-47’s inventor was enjoying a shot of liquor.
At the official launch at London’s Century Club, Kalashnikov stayed on message, too. In Russian, he said to the crowd, “I would like the product we are about to launch to be as reliable and easy to use as my gun.” It would be a message that he would repeat on many other occasions.
The reception included samples served to the crowd by Natasha, Anoushka, and Ivana, models clad in white, military-type uniforms and short skirts and known as the “Nikita Girls.” Their role was to visit bars during promotional efforts to push the Kalashnikov brand.
In an effort to cash in on his weapon’s newly established status as a cultural icon, Kalashnikov lent his name to a branded vodka. “I’m not interested in war anymore—only my military-strength vodka,” he said. The Kalashnikov Joint Stock Vodka Co. (1947) plc.
AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War Page 23