16. Charles À Court Repington, The War in the Far East: 1904–1905 (New York: Dutton, 1908), p. 315.
17. Tadayoshi Sakurai, Human Bullets: A Soldier’s Story of Port Arthur (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907), pp. 152–53.
18. Hutichison, Machine Guns, p. 89.
19. B. W. Norregaard, The Great Siege: The Investment and Fall of Port Arthur (London: Methuen & Co., 1906), p. 71.
20. Louis A. La Garde, Gunshot Injuries: How They are Inflicted, Their Complications and Treatment, 2nd Revised Ed. (New York: William Wood and Company, 1916). The precise losses remain a matter of dispute. La Garde, who apparently was working off medical data, put the number of Japanese killed in action at more than forty-seven thousand. With disease factored in, the number likely rises significantly.
21. Sakurai, Human Bullets.
22. Ibid., pp. 232–38.
23. Hutchison, Machine Guns, p. 84
24. Armstrong, Bullet and Bureaucrats, p. 139.
25. La Garde, Gunshot Injuries, p. 411.
26. Repington, War in the Far East, p. 490.
27. Armstrong, Bullets and Bureaucrats, p. 140.
28. From the handwritten letters of Alfred Dougan “Mickey” Chater, a captain in a Territorial unit who served on the Western Front from fall 1914 through March 1915, when he was struck in the face by a piece of shell. Captain Chater survived, but the injury and disfigurement were horrible. Letters on file at the Imperial War Museum, London.
29. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 1915–16 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1933), pp. 61–74.
30. Goldsmith, The Devil’s Paintbrush, pp. 131–60. The question of how many machine guns the Germans had at the war’s outset has been clouded by unattributed guesses and estimates. Goldsmith provides the text of a report by “The German Government Agent at the Anglo-German Mixed Arbitral Tribunal,” dated October 5, 1928. The report provided depot-by-depot totals from the former chief of the German Machine Gun Department.
31. Meinertzhagen, Army Diary. pp. 90–94. Meinertzhagen, a British intelligence officer, globe-roaming ornithologist, and self-aggrandizing figure, kept exhaustive diaries. His journals are both interesting and suspect, and his writings have been found to contain frauds. In this case, his account of the battle of Tanga is consistent with other sources, and one of his conclusions, that troops felt disgraced by being defeated by black soldiers, was consistent with many of the misapprehensions of the ways that machine guns were changing warfare.
32. Chater, letter of December 13, 1914. On file at Imperial War Museum.
33. Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme (New York: Norton, 1972). Soldiers were surrounded by signs that, though the age of industrial warfare had arrived, many officers leading the army did not understand what this meant.
34. Ibid., p. 11.
35. Arthur Anderson, from a ninety-five-page hand-written manuscript. On file at Imperial War Museum.
36. Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 49.
37. La Garde, Gunshot Injuries, p. 422.
38. Tim Ripley, Bayonet Battle (London: Pan Books, 2000), pp. 34–35.
39. A. J. Rixon, diary entry of April 1. On file at Imperial War Museum.
40. Rixon, diary entry of May 26, 1915.
41. Rixon, diary entry of September 25, 1915.
42. C. E. Crutchley, Machine Gunner 1914–1918: Personal Experiences of the Machine Gun Corps (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military Classics, 2005), p. 15.
43. Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, p. 21.
44. André Laffargue, The Attack in Trench Warfare: Impressions and Reflections of a Company Commander (Washington, D.C.: United States Infantry Association, 1916), p. 27.
45. Ibid., p. 12.
46. Anderson, from his diary.
47. Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, p. 81.
48. Ibid., p. 106. The quoted section at the end of the excerpt is from Middlebrook’s interview with Private W. J. Senescall of The Cambridge Battalion.
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 Götz, 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 (Hyvinkää, Finland: Finnish Arms Museum Foundation, 1995); later versions draw from A. A. Malimon, Otechestvenniye A
vtomaty (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. Götz, 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 Götz 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 assessing the Kalashnikov legend.
30. Bolotin, Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition, p. 97.
31. Ibid., p. 113.
32. Monetchikov, Istoriya Russkogo Avtomata, p. 24.
33. Broekmeyer, The Russians and Their War, pp. 12–13.
34. Bolotin, Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition, p. 113.
35. Monetchikov, Istoriya Russkogo Avtomata, p. 25.
36. Bolotin, Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition, p. 126. Hogg claims that nine thousand of Fedorov’s avtomats were made, though he did not provide a source. Bolotin cited Soviet archives. His estimate is used here.
37. Bolotin, Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition, pp. 126–27.
38. Ibid., p. 54.
39. Ibid., p. 252. Bolotin provided a list: Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Dybenko, Kuybyshev, Alksnis, and Unshlicht.
40. Yuri Sergeyev, Tekhnika i Vooruzheniye, No. 12, 1970.
41. Perry Githens, “How Good Are Russian Guns?” Popular Science, March 1951, p. 109.
42. Mikhail Kalashnikov with Elena Joly, The Gun that Changed the World (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006), p. 3.
43. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 25.
44. Ibid., p. 24.
45. Kalashnikov with Joly, The Gun that Changed the World, p. 4.
46. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 31.
47. Ibid., p. 404.
48. Ibid.
49. The first version is from From a Stranger’s Doorstep, pp. 408–9. The second version is from The Gun That Changed the World, pp. 10–11.
50. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, pp. 412–413.
51. Kalashnikov with Joly, The Gun that Changed the World, p. 26.
52. Ibid., p. 33.
53. Interview of Mikhail Kalashnikov by Nick Paton Walsh, who shared the notes of his interview with the author.
54. Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–45 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p. 84.
55. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 73.
56. Broekmeyer, The Russians and Their War, xiv–xv.
57. Vladimir N. Zhukov, Second Birth, translation by Army Foreign Science and Technology Center (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1974). Originally published by Voyenizdat, Moscow, 1963, p. 58. An official Soviet biography of Kalashnikov. Kalashnikov embraced this biography, and presented it as fact to his first Western biographer. Many passages are demonstrably false or at odds with Kalashnikov’s later accounts.
58. Kalashnikov and Joly, The Gun that Changed the World, p. 19.
59. Ibid., p. 35.
60. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 75.
61. Zhukov, Second Birth, pp. 59–63.
62. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 76.
63. Some sources, particularly in the English language, say Kalashnikov was treated at Kazan. These stories appear apocryphal; the principal sources, including Kalashnikov himself, describe his treatment in Yelets.
64. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, pp. 92–93.
65. Ibid., p. 87.
66. Zhukov, Second Birth, p. 85.
67. Kalashnikov: Oruzhiye, Boyepripasy, Snaryazheniye, Okhota, Sport. Special Issue, 2002, p. 17.
68. From interview of Kalashnikov by Edward Ezell in July 1989. A partial transcript of the interview was published in “Conversations with Kalashnikov,” in the Small Arms World Report, December 1992, p. 5.
69. Zhukov, Second Birth, pp. 108–9.
70. Mikhail Degtyarov, in “Istoki ‘Kalashnikov’” Kalashnikov: Oruzhiye, Boyepripasy, Snaryazheniye, Okhota, Sport. Issue 5, 2003, pp. 6–9. The year of birth of Kalashnikov’s son, Viktor Mikhailovich, is from the museum in Izhevsk.
71. Kalashnikov has refused over the years to discuss the mother of his son, Viktor, saying only that she died when Viktor was young and he then received custody of the boy. The reasons Kalashnikov is otherwise silent on the subject are not clear.
72. Ezell, “Conversations with Kalashnikov,” Small Arms World Report, December 1992, p. 5.
73. M. Novikov, “This is Kalashnikov,” Volksarmee, No. 1, January 1968, p. 9. Volksarmee was the magazine of the National People’s Army, the military of the German Democratic Republic.
74. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 122.
75. Ibid., p. 121.
76. Ibid., p. 132.
77. Ibid., pp. 133–34.
78. Viktor Vlasyuk, “Weapons Designer Vasily Lyuty,” Zerkalo Nedeli, No. 12, March 23–29, 1996. Vlasyuk quotes Lyuty in the section cited. Translated by Viktor Klimenko.
79. Ezell, Small Arms World Report, December 1992, p. 6.
80. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, pp. 237–38.
81. Ibid., p. 216.
82. Kalashnikov with Joly, The Gun that Changed the World, p. 61. Here Kalashnikov said that a year had passed before he returned to the Schurovo polygon for the competitive fiel
d tests.
83. Ezell, Kalashnikov: The Arms and the Man, p. 71. A photograph of the disassembled rifle appears on this page; the external shape of the AK-47 is evident, but the guts of the weapon have not yet been worked out.
84. Bolotin, Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition, p. 69, quoting remarks by Kalashnikov published on September 20, 1957, in Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the official newspaper of the Red Army.
85. Kalashnikov with Joly, The Gun that Changed the World, p. 64.
86. Malimon, Otechestvenniye Avtomaty, chapter 9.
87. Ibid.
88. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 220.
89. Ezell, Kalashnikov: The Arms and the Man, p. 72.
90. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 209.
91. Ibid., p. 210.
92. The available sources differ on this point, and Kalashnikov has published inconsistent accounts. Bolotin listed three finalists: Kalashnikov, Bulkin, and Dementyev. The museum in Izhevsk listes four: Kalashnikov, Dementyev, Bulkin, and Sudayev. (The addition of Sudayev appears to be an error; he died in summer 1946, long before the rifles’ field trials. His weapon was used as a control.) To these lists, Kalashnikov has at times added Sphagin and Degtyarev, two of the best-known figures in Soviet arms design.
93. Kalashnikov, From a Stranger’s Doorstep, p. 213.
94. Bolotin, Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition, p. 69, citing Red Star newspaper, September 20, 1957.
95. Kalashnikov with Joly, The Gun that Changed the World, p. 63.
96. Malimon, Otechestvenniye Avtomaty, chapter 9.
97. Kalashnikov with Joly, The Gun that Changed the World, p. 62.
98. Ibid., p. 63.
99. Ezell, Small Arms World Report, December 1992, p. 7.
100. Bolotin, Soviet Small Arms and Ammunition, p. 70.
101. Bolotin’s book was both accurate and authoritative enough, in Kalashnikov’s view, that he cited it in his own memoirs, although not on the subject of Zaitsev’s design contributions to the final AK-47 prototype.
102. Malimon, Otechestvenniye Avtomaty. Chapter 9 includes excerpts from a letter by Zaitsev. The book was published by the Russian Ministry of Defense and serves as both an official chronicle of the tests and a fuller account than Kalashnikov provided. Only five hundred copies were printed, and its circulation was tightly limited.
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