AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War

by Larry Kahaner

  In interviews after the reception, Kalashnikov said, “I am to blame only for having designed a reliable weapon. . . . I am very sad when I see my weapon being used when they shouldn’t be used, but the designer is not to blame. It’s the politicians who are to blame.” Like a good soldier, he also stuck with his commercial message during public appearances touting the new brew. “I’ve always wanted to improve and expand on the good name of my weapon by doing good things,” he said. “So we decided to create a vodka under my name, and we wanted that vodka to be better than anything made up until now in both Russia and England.”

  In less public moments, however, he expressed his resigned reluctance at becoming a shill, saying, “What can you do? These are our times now.” As he had been for most of his later life, Kalashnikov found himself torn between the capitalist reality of making money in the New Russia and holding firm to his lifelong Communist belief that what matters is doing your duty for the motherland without any thought of financial compensation.

  Propelled by Florey’s skill and Kalashnikov’s notoriety, the vodka juggernaut was on a tear. Hip magazines like FHM placed it among the top ten best vodkas in their staff taste tests. Talk Loud PR, a public relations firm that had worked on the Polstar Vodka account, convinced bartenders to create trendy drinks using the vodka and submitted them to magazines. The London Sunday Times Style magazine displayed a picture of actress Julia Roberts with the caption reporting her interest in a drink called a Scorpino that contained Kalashnikov Vodka. The soft-porn men’s magazine ICE featured an irreverent Q&A with Kalashnikov along with a pictorial titled “Raise Your Glass the Ruskie Way,” on how to drink vodka in the traditional Russian style.

  The initial $90,000 public relations blitz was paying off. The company was on the way to its goal of selling forty-four thousand cases by 2006 to bars and restaurants before targeting the retail trade. Florey even hoped to place a new phrase into the English drinking lexicon: “I went out last night and got Kalashed.”

  Then a problem arose.

  Alcohol Focus Scotland, a group dedicated to “changing Scotland’s drinking culture,” complained to the Portman Group, a regulatory body funded by the drinks industry. It claimed that Kalashnikov Vodka “suggested an association with bravado, or with violent, aggressive, dangerous or anti-social behavior,” and therefore violated the group’s code of practice.

  Complaints of this nature were fairly common as drink makers pushed the envelope as far as they could to create interest in their products, especially among younger consumers. For instance, during the time that the Portman Group was deliberating possible action against Kalashnikov Vodka, it was considering other breaches including whether a line of “tube drinks” named Blow Job, Orgasm, Foreplay, and Bit on the Side violated regulations because they implied a connection between alcohol use and sexual behavior, a group no-no. Another complaint at the time was that a pair of vodka drinks named Rocket Fuel Vodka and Rocket Fuel Ice, in concert with their prominent positioning of their very high alcohol content, 42.85 percent, were clearly using the intoxicating effect to sell themselves, another breach of the code. Both were found to be violations.

  Of the more than 140 complaints dating back to 1996 (the group was started in 1989), the vast majority of upheld complaints concerned blatant sexual content in labels or packaging or false and misleading labels. Until Kalashnikov Vodka came along, only two actions had been taken against companies for violent content: a beer named Heist (even though the group conceded that it was American slang for a robbery), and a product named TNT Liquid Dynamite designed to represent a stick of dynamite with a fuse in it.

  Florey argued that the Kalashnikov brand was based on “comradeship” and not military imagery. Company officials admitted that the brand was “funky” and “in your face,” but that it “didn’t cause people to take up armed conflict.”

  Florey put Kalashnikov out front to help spin public opinion their way. He gave interviews saying that it was wrong to associate the AK with aggression. Wearing an AK tie clip, Kalashnikov told Financial Times reporters, “The gun serves peace and friendship because it is used to defend one’s country. Look how many countries have been liberated using this gun.”

  His arguments did not persuade the Portman Group, and they found that Kalashnikov Vodka violated the industry’s own rules.

  The group’s assessment was both good and bad news for Florey and Kalashnikov. Although the Portman Group upheld the complaint, it officially recognized the pop icon status of the AK to the Western world. Even though the vodka’s packaging did not look like an AK or contain any violent or antisocial references, the Kalashnikov name alone was enough to provoke a passionate response in the hearts of consumers. To marketers, this was a good thing. The panel said in its January 21, 2005, report, “Having considered the product as a whole, including its packaging and overall presentation, the Panel concluded that a name that primarily evoked an image of a contemporary gun, namely the AK, which was one of, if not the most widely used firearm in the world, was an unacceptable choice of brand name for an alcoholic drink, because it indirectly suggested an association with violent and dangerous behavior.”

  In true entrepreneurial flip style, Florey told those around him that any publicity was good publicity. At the same time, however, he took Portman to task publicly, complaining that other alcoholic beverages were named for weapons, including Spitfire beer, Bombardier beer, and Claymore scotch, and they had not been banned.

  Florey had no choice but to begin negotiations with the panel to find a solution, which probably would mean changing the name in the United Kingdom. The company could still keep it for export. In fact, the vodka was doing extremely well in the Middle East. “There’s an affinity in the Middle East with the gun,” Florey noted. “And we’re setting up a franchise in South Africa called ‘AK-47 Freedom Vodka.’”

  With negotiations going nowhere and bottles banned from shelves, the situation was looking grim until a journalist at a Portman-held news conference—convened to explain its decision—suggested a name that Portman chairman Sir Paul Condon admitted would probably work. By fall 2005, “General Kalashnikov Russian Vodka” was slated for a comeback in England and a push toward North America.

  ALTHOUGH MANY PEOPLE (like the Portman Group) considered exploiting a deadly weapon for financial gain in bad taste, even more bizarre examples began to crop up. No longer only part of the military, counterculture, or Middle Eastern “Kalashnikov Culture,” the AK was being seen and mentioned almost daily in mainstream movies, books, and on TV. What once was a horrible but everyday item in some parts of the world was now a solid part of contemporary global culture.

  Rapper Eminem, whose rise to notoriety was portrayed in the hit movie 8 Mile, used the powerful image of the AK to express his anger at the U.S.-led war in Iraq and to convince young people to vote against President George W. Bush in the 2004 election. In an animated video titled “Mosh,” Eminem was seen leading a group of disenfranchised citizens wearing hooded sweatshirts through the dark “police state” streets of America. The keyed-up mob entered a government building, but instead of rioting, the group quietly lined up to register to vote. Eminem attacked President Bush as a liar and thief for putting his own agenda before that of the country. Along with an animation of Bush holding an AK, Eminem sang, “Let the president answer our high anarchy / Strap him with an AK-47 / Let him go fight his own war / Let him impress daddy that way.” By invoking the AK image, Eminem brought his controversial message home.

  Perhaps the weirdest consumer item to hook into the AK’s iconic status was the AK-MP3 Jukebox from UK audiobook publisher AudioBooksForFree.com. The music player was built into a banana-shaped magazine of the rifle and could be attached to the Kalashnikov rifle instead of the regular magazine or played on its own. It could hold up to nine thousand songs or three thousand hours of audiobooks. “This is our bit for world peace,” said Russian ex-rock star Andrey Koltakov, founder of the successful company. “W
e hope that from now on many militants and terrorists will use their AK-47s to listen to music and audiobooks. . . . They need to chill out and take it easy.” The company featured the product on its web site along with camo-bikini-clad models holding the weapon and player/magazine in provocative stances.

  In India, the vibrant Bollywood dream factory played on the AK’s drawing power with a terrorism potboiler titled AK-47. At the time of its release, reviewers chided it for being formulaic, base, and too violent. Drawn by its name, however, audiences flocked to see it. It didn’t seem to register with moviegoers that India had been undergoing frequent, severe, and large-scale hit-and-run attacks on rural oil, chemical, and mining facilities by Maoist terrorist groups wielding AKs.

  That same year, the AK had reached another cultural mile-stone. Stuff magazine, which appealed to young men with pictorials and text about gadgets, semiclad women, and the latest video games, featured the gun in a two-page spread along with a Q&A with the inventor. The automatic rifle was held up as a hip classic tool, a cool accessory like a fast motorcycle, a beautiful woman, an edgy video game, or the latest earphones. As expected, Kalashnikov seized the platform to blame politicians and not weapons designers for the misuse of his weapon. He also assured U.S. troops in Iraq that he didn’t have them in mind as targets when he made his rifle.

  Kalashnikov used the opportunity to push his latest branding venture. “I’m not interested in war anymore—only my military-strength vodka. I like to sit and toast friendship. If the world did more of that and little less fighting, it would be a better place.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE LAST DAYS OF THE AK?

  IN 1980, SOVIET OFFICIALS searched for a remote place to exile Nobel Prizewinner and dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov. Hoping to contain him and his democratic rhetoric, they sent him to Gorky, a city sequestered from the rest of the world for decades. Despite his being relocated to this remote location, however, his beliefs and writings spread throughout the world, leading to his release in 1986 and fueling the eventual downfall of the Communist superpower.

  When Russian military officials in 1993 sought a venue to display a radically new assault rifle to select government officials and engineers, they chose the same city. By then it had reverted to its prerevolutionary name, Nizhni Novgorod, but still maintained an air of isolation. In an attempt to keep information about the weapon from spreading, soldiers manning the arms fair booth offered nothing about the rifle beyond what was printed on a small caption card.

  Just as Sakharov’s ideology could not be contained by this isolated location, neither could information about the new rifle. Speculation grew among military officials worldwide, who were abuzz about this new entry in the world of small arms. Russian officials remained mum about plans for the rifle, and it would not be shown again for another three years, but anticipation in military circles grew.

  Finally, Russian officials announced that the AN-94 would replace the venerable AK as the standard infantry weapon in the Russian arsenal. Many had predicted this, but even so, members of the world military elite still were stunned by the pronouncement.

  This change had been in the works for a long time. As mentioned earlier, when the Soviets built the AK-74 in order to accommodate the smaller 5.54 × 39mm round, the rifle was a compromise, a way to get them into the small-cartridge game in a hurry by adapting Kalashnikov’s design. Not that the design was substandard—the weapon and its “poison bullet” had proven itself in Afghanistan—but the Soviet Union’s military was not satisfied with the AK-74. They desired accuracy on a par with the M-16 to go along with the AK’s awesome killing power.

  Any new design would have to wait, however. The Soviet economy was then falling into disarray—largely because of the high cost of the Afghan war—and research money was scarce. On the other hand, the Soviets were lagging in small-arms technology, and something had to be done.

  The economical answer was a contest that would pit the nation’s best arms designers against each other. The main requirement was for the new rifle to have a “hit ratio” of one and a half to two times better than the AK-74—in other words, one and a half to two times more accurate in automatic mode. It would also have to be reliable and easy to use by troops. Although the AK-74 was a superior weapon in many ways, it was still hard to control in automatic mode (although greatly superior to its predecessor the AKM with its larger 7.39mm round). While it was perfect for poorly trained troops who could “spray and pray,” the Soviets realized that greater lethality could be achieved with greater accuracy—hitting the same spot several times in rapid succession. This was particularly important in confrontations with enemy soldiers wearing the newest body armor.

  Recoil was the age-old enemy of accuracy. When a soldier fired his rifle, the recoil from the first bullet would always make the following shots less accurate. Not even the best marksmen can fire several shots rapidly in a row exactly on target because the weapon moves from the recoil of the preceding shot.

  There were several standard ways to mitigate recoil. First was to use a smaller, less powerful round; however, designers believed they had made it as small as they could while maintaining its lethality. Other methods included a counter-recoil system like in the AL-7 that lessened the recoil blast with springs. While this greatly reduced recoil—and was cutting-edge for the time—it was still not what military planners sought. Other obvious possibilities included different types of shock absorbers in the shoulder stock, and even having the shooter wear more cushioning in his shoulder.

  None of these “inside the box” ideas proved satisfactory. A totally new design was necessary if military officials were to realize their dream of zero recoil. This meant jettisoning the Kalashnikov design all together.

  Many arms designers believed that a truly zero-recoil assault rifle was akin to designing a perpetual motion machine. According to the law of physics, it could not be done. In fact, through the years the Soviets had touted the AK-74 as recoilless because its recoil had been greatly diminished. True, it was better than those before it. Now they were reaching for the sky in the hope of designing a weapon that, like the Kalashnikov, could one day become an arms classic: no recoil, light, dependable, and easy to use by troops.

  Code-named Abakan (a town in south-central Russia), the contest began in the late 1970s with about a dozen design groups competing against each other. Izhmash, where Kalashnikov held the post of senior designer (although it was more of an emeritus position), threw two design groups into the fray. His son Viktor headed one design bureau and the other group was headed by Gennady Nikonov, a well-established arms maker who had worked at Izhmash since he graduated technical school at eighteen. Both Nikonov’s parents worked at Izhmash and early in his career he had distinguished himself by designing a trigger mechanism for an underwater rifle. He had also worked on sporting weapons and won accolades for the accurate and smart-looking Izbur (Buck Deer), a high-end carbine that was produced in limited quantities for discriminating shooters. During his tenure at Izhmash, Nikonov snared two prestigious awards, the Company’s Top Designer and the Top Designer of the Ministry, and he was awarded more than forty patents. His wife, Tatiana, worked as an engineer in the same design center.

  Kalashnikov lobbied heavily for his son’s team to win the contest. Even after the winning rifle received its official name, AN-94—Automatic Nikonov 1994—and its adoption appeared certain, the elder Kalashnikov continued to push for his son’s design. He wanted to carry on the family tradition, but his efforts at calling in political favors were of no use. Viktor’s group came in second.

  To add further insult to the dean of Russian weapons makers, Nikonov further separated himself from the AK by announcing publicly that his designs were influenced by the legendary designers Evgeny Dragunov and Azariy Nesterov, not Kalashnikov. The AN-94 looked and acted nothing like the AK.

  One of the startling differences of the AN-94 was the muzzle attachment. Called a flash eliminator, this asymmetrically sha
ped muzzle device featured two vent holes on either side plus a vent hole in the upper right side of the first of two chambers. The upper vent hole was configured like a dog whistle, designed to produce a sound out of the range of human hearing caused by the fast-moving air pushing out of the barrel.

  The AN-94 and a thirty-round magazine weighed nine and a half pounds, about two pounds more than an AK-74, and the furniture was produced from fiberglass-reinforced polyamide, similar to the newer AK models and most modern rifles. The rifle had improved sights and safety switch ergonomics, but the most dramatic difference was in how it worked.

  The gas-operated system employed a design that the Russians called “blow-back shift pulse” that fired in two-shot bursts, instead of the usual three, with no recoil from the first to second shot. In addition, the first two shots fired at the astounding rate of 1,800 rounds per minute (about three times that of the AK’s 600 round-per-minute rate) when in the two-shot burst mode. When the gun was placed in automatic operation, the first two rounds fired at 1,800 rounds per minute before decreasing to 600 for the remaining bullets.

  Nikonov’s groundbreaking design was genius, because he freed himself from traditional arms design conventions and the limiting configuration of the AK. While the AK’s design was simple, the AN-94 was complex because it solved the problem of recoil with the help of extra components such as a pulley and cable configured in a way never seen before. Nikonov also realized that while a balanced system was easily accomplished for smaller rounds, if his rifle was to become the standard design for a family of Russian military guns it also had to accommodate larger rounds, such as those used in heavy stationary machine guns. The pulley and cable system allowed the mechanism to be scaled up for larger rounds while retaining its recoilless nature.