MOSCOW, (AFP) – Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of fabled AK-47 automatic
rifle, died Monday, the office of the presidency in the Udmurtia region where he
worked said. He was 94.
Kalashnikov designed a weapon that became synonymous with killing on a
sometimes indiscriminate scale but was seen in the Soviet Union as a national
hero and symbol of Moscow’s proud military past.
“He died about one-and-a-half hours ago,” Viktor Chulkov, the spokesman for
the Udmurtia leader Alexander Volkov, told AFP.
Lavished with honours including the prestigious Hero of Russia prize for
designing the iconic rifle, Kalashnikov has said he had never intended for it to
become the preferred weapon in conflicts around the world.
“I created a weapon to defend the fatherland’s borders. It’s not my fault
that it was sometimes used where it shouldn’t have been. This is the fault of
politicians,” he said during an award ceremony at the Kremlin to mark his 90th
birthday.
AK-47′s name stands for “Kalashnikov’s Automatic” and the year it was
designed, 1947. Also called the “Kalashnikov”, the rifle and its variants are
the weapons of choice for dozens of armies and guerrilla groups around the
world.
More than 100 million Kalashnikov rifles have been sold worldwide and they
are wielded by fighters in such far-flung conflict zones as Iraq, Afghanistan
and Somalia.
But their inventor, a World War II veteran, has barely profited financially
from them and lived modestly in Izhevsk, an industrial town 1,300 kilometres
(800 miles) east of Moscow.
The Izmash factory that was the home manufacturer of the weapon in the
central Russian region of Udmurtia has now fallen on hard times after a collapse
in orders following the fall of the USSR, a fact that prompted Kalashnikov to
make a personal appeal to President Vladimir Putin.
Born in a Siberian village as the 17th child of family on November 10, 1919,
Kalashnikov had a tragic childhood during which his father was deported under
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1930.
Wounded during combat in 1941, Kalashnikov designed his rifle in 1947, driven
by Soviet defeats in the early years of World War II at the hands of far better
armed German soldiers.
In October 1941 in fierce battles around Bryansk he was heavily wounded and
shell-shocked.According to his official Izmash biography, Kalashnikov first
conceived of the weapon while recovering in hospital.
The rifle quickly became prized for its sturdy reliability in difficult field
conditions and Kalashnikov was honoured with the Soviet Union’s top awards
including the Lenin and the Stalin prizes.
Yet the design was never patented internationally and Izmash always
complained that its potential income from the weapon was hit badly by the
“pirated” versions of the designs made abroad.
The 205-year-old Izmash plant remains one of the main producers of Russian
weapons and is treasured as a national icon.
But Izmash has also suffered from dwindling demand and a failure to make up
for this with foreign orders — a problem plaguing many specialised post-Soviet
industries.
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