Mikhaïl Kalachnikov

Biography

Mikhaïl Timofeïevitch Kalachnikov was born on November 10th 1919 in a country family (Koulak S) from the village of Kurya (republic of Altaï) and had seventeen brothers and sisters of which eights survived. At the eleven years age, he knows the deportation in Siberia with all his family. He will escape twice at the fifteen years age and seventeen years.

In 1938, at the nineteen years age, it makes its military service and follows to Kiev a school of mechanics specialized in the construction of tanks. As a driver of tank, it is wounded seriously during the war at the time of the battles of Briansk (1941) intended to stop the German opening towards Moscow.

It makes a long stay at the hospital and during its convalescence, it starts to draw models of guns because it had been struck by the technical superiority of the equipment of the soldiers of the German army. It with the idea to create a rifle D `small, reliable attack and rapid which he presents to the marshal Joukov. This last supports it and pushes it to improve its light machine gun which finally will be retained by the Soviet State to be produced starting from 1947. This rifle is named Avtomat Kalachnikova 1947, celebrates it AK-47. Its simplicity, its lightness and its rusticity will make of them a world success which would have been produced with more than one hundred million units, copies included/understood.

On the whole, Mikhaïl Kalachnikov created about a hundred and fifty various weapons. It is, according to its biography the man more decorated with the Russia (order of Lénine, price Stalin 1949, two spangled medals of socialist work).

He was appointed Supreme Soviet under Stalin then under Khrouchtchev. He lives with Ijevsk in the the Ural where the principal factory of rifles is installed. He has a son, Viktor which works for the factory of light machine gun.

Quotations

Work it is all my life, and my life it is my work. I invented this rifle of attack to defend my country. Today, I am proud that it became for much synonymous with freedom.
They are the Germans who are guilty owing to the fact that I became a manufacturer of weapons. If not, I would have built agricultural machinery. (...) If it is asked me how I can sleep calmly knowing that my weapons killed out of the million people, I answer that I do not have any problem of sleep, my conscience is clear. I built arm to defend my fatherland.

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