Sources
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88

 
TAZARA ... a journey by rail through world-history © KJS / 2009
Michail Tifomojewitsch Kalaschnikow kalashnikovvodka
CHAPTER 40



Two of our guests achieved some recognition as well, in accordance with their respective environment, of course …
You, Sir Hiram, the ex-American, were knighted by Queen Victoria in 1901 … and you Michail Tifomojewitsch, received the equivalent in RED, the Stalin-Award, although you were born in a family which fell victim to Stalin’s forced collectivism. Your family was taken to Siberia.
So, it would be of great interest to understand the drive that made you a weapon-fan.


„The Germans were the reason why I became an inventor of weapons. If there would not have been the war, I may have invented appliances for civil use. In 1941 I was admitted to a military hospital because of an injury afflicted by a German carbine. That was the moment when I vowed to invent a really excellent carbine for the soldiers of the Red Army.“

Could it be that the weapon you were wounded with had been the German „Sturmgewehr 44“?

„In 1941 it was known by another name, but it was the same type; the superior fire power and the enormous flexibility of this new German automatic weapon did guide my own efforts.“

The name Hugo Schmeisser, does it ring a bell? Born in Jena in 1884, died in Erfurt in 1953? …

„Sure, he was a weapon-inventor as his father had been — in the other camp. In 1943, ten thousand pieces of his new invention were ready to be distributed to the German front. But, in a strange move, Hitler forbade further development and production. Only in 1944, when experiments within the German troops proved the power of the weapon, mass-production was allowed. The carbine was at first called ‚MP44‘ to be renamed in spring 1944 as ‚Sturmgewehr 44‘.“
On 3rd April 1945 American soldiers took the German town of Suhl in Thuringia and immediately stopped all production of weapons. Hugo Schmeisser and his brother Hans were interrogated by weapon-specialists of the American and the Bristish Secret Service.
Then, based on territorial agreements of the Allied High Command, the Americans left in August 1945 Thuringia; the Red Army occupied the weapon-factory.
In the same month, fifty pieces of the ‚Sturmgewehr 44‘ were assembled from existing parts and transferred by the Red Army to the Soviet Union for further exploration, together with almost eleven thousand sheets of technical sketches with regard to the production of war weapons. In October 1945, Hugo Schmeisser was enlisted to co-operate with a technical commission of the Red Army. Such commissions were tasked to investigate the latest development of German weapon techniques in order to make it available to further developments in the Soviet Union.
A year later, Hugo Schmeisser was forced to work as a weapon specialist for a couple of years within the Soviet Union. His fate was joined by several other experts from the Suhl-factory. All of them were taken on 24th October 1946 by a special train to Ischewsk in Southern Ural.
Details of the work by Hugo Schmeisser between 1946 and 1952 in Ischewsk are not known. But how important his work may have been for the Soviet Union shows the fact that all other German specialists were allowed to return in 1952. His stay was delayed at short notice by half a year; he returned to Germany only on 9th June 1952.

Similarities in appearance and construction of the „AK-47“ and the German „Sturmgewehr 44“ did lead to the opinion of some experts, Michail Tifomojewitsch, you simply copied the German invention?

„Well, we had of course examples taken as booty during the war. One has to accept that unavoidable rules and traditions of weapon-building force some optical similarities; and you have not to re-invent time and again basic features in the production of weapons.
But with the ‚AK-47‘ we had introduced a number of new features which make the weapon unpretentious, reliable and practically indestructible — no matter whether being used in the tundra or in the desert, in the jungle or in a mega-city. You can dig in the carbine in mud or in sand, you can drop it on stony ground — it will continue to function with a rather high rate of likelihood.
The lock which I invented does almost never get stuck because it receives a higher portion of energy from the igniting cartridges. This, of course, meant also a stronger recoil of the weapon. The lock’s mechanism does not touch as a whole its casing like a piston in a cylinder but moves on kind of rails. Whereas locks of other weapons get easily blocked by dirt, the empty space provided within the lock of the ‚AK47‘ takes all the dirt whilst still allowing the lock to move. My weapon may be less precise but it is much more practical.
You see, the American competing product, the ‚M16‘, did, at the beginning, come without devices to clean it; the GIs got it during the Vietnam-War together with the information it would be the first weapon that cleans itself, which was a mistake revealed later through investigation of a Congress-commission in the United States. The system led quite often to jamming and to deadly accidents during efforts to clean the weapon. Reports during the Vietnam-War that American soldiers looked for the ‚AK47‘ as booty in order to use it instead of the ‚M16‘ made the rounds, but were never acknowledged by officials.“


Comrade Trotsky did mention already that your invention came too late to help the Red Army during World War II, but later it became a success-story worldwide. How could this happen?

„Right at the beginning the order was no one should know that we had developed the ‚AK-47‘. Soldiers had to carry the carbine wrapped in covers. Then, our leaders discovered that the Kalashnikov would be the ideal weapon to pursue the world revolution.“
The AK-47 turned into the biggest export-hit of the Soviet Union: in Vietnam the Americans were defeated by the Kalashnikov. Nineteen countries bought from the Soviet Union licences to produce the weapon. It is suggested that more than seventy million Kalashnikovs are existing worldwide. It is even widely disseminated within the U.S.A., used especially by drug-dealers and gangs.
„You know, even people who have something illegal on their mind want to use something they can rely on. One can understand it because they want to survive. But I am unhappy that my weapon is being used by criminals. I regret that it was never used for the purpose I had invented it, for the defence of my home country.
Inventors and constructors cannot be held liable for the illegal use of their product. Politicians are the ones who fail to reach peaceful solutions.“


You received a medal, you were promoted to a general and to a member of parliament, but as a private person you haven’t earned a single cent for your invention because no one in the Soviet Union could register a patent in his name.

„Indeed, I had no business experience at all and I am just beginning to learn. It is so different from everything what I was used to … but I have seen so many changes in the world …
Five years ago, in 2002, a company contacted me and wanted to find out whether I would be prepared to give my name for a Vodka-brand … I think, we always had on us a little vodka during the war. It was cold in winter-times and a sip of vodka would mobilize the senses and keep you warm from inside!“


Nastorowje — and congratulation! Whether on the flag of Mozambique, in the heraldic symbols of the states of East Timor or Zimbabwe — or on a battery of vodka-bottles, the Kalashnikov-carbine remains attractive — from the battle to the bottle, so to speak.
Michail Tifomojewitsch, our advice: you should immediately get a copyright regarding the use of Kalashnikov-images …
… and allow us to demonstrate how you as an ex-military person could even become a star in entertainment-business …



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