This material was published in 2006
In the General history of the Second world war, the battle of Bryansk looks battle unimportant, at best worthy of mention in the footnotes. But all Bryansk has won its place in history. It is there that is unknown at the time the tank commander Mikhail Kalashnikov decided that his Russian comrades will not be broken. In the years after the great Patriotic war, as it was called by Soviet propaganda, he invented and developed the weapon at the same time very simple and revolutionary that changed the conduct of war and achieve victory. It was an AK-47.
AK-47 has become the most common and effective military weapons in the world. His device is so simple that in many countries this machine is cheaper than a live chicken. It can be seen on several flags, coins and banknotes, they are fighting insurgents and guerrillas around the world. On account of the AK-47 accounts for about a quarter of a million people killed each year. This weapon is in service with 50 armies of different countries and countless armed groups from Africa and the Middle East to Latin America and Los Angeles. It has become a cultural phenomenon, its characteristic form — store in the form of the banana has become for us a symbol of deadly weapons.
This week, the American military presence in Iraq for the duration will exceed the duration of the participation of the U.S. army in combat during the Second world war. AK-47 will be the eternal link between these two wars. The history of weapons, from inspiration in Bryansk under to the bloody insurgency in Iraq, is also the history of modern warfare. AK-47 destroyed the old calculations create superiority on the battlefield, the formation of tactics and strategy, determine who can be a soldier and what technologies will bring the victory.
Ironically, the weapon that ended the Second world war, the atomic bomb, at the same time paved the way for the less sophisticated, but more deadly AK-47. Guaranteed mass destruction with nuclear weapons has forced the two superpowers during the Cold war to engage in an indirect conflict in poor countries, where poorly trained soldiers engage in a firefight, as a rule, armed with light, cheap and reliable AK-47. When one war ended, arms brokers gathered the machines and resold them in the next hot spot. The proliferation of weapons around the world helps to understand why after the Second world war “small conflict” lasted for months and years, contrary to predictions. Indeed, despite the billions of dollars Washington spent on modern weapons and technological capabilities of the space age, the AK-47 remains the most deadly weapon on Earth, transforming conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. With these machines well-armed fighters can seize territory, terrorize civilians, and even to keep the superpowers at a distance.
Using the tactics of lightning war — blitzkrieg — during the Second world war, Germany has significantly changed the manner of warfare. Instead of static fighting with a weekly or monthly seat in the trenches as it was in the First world war, blitzkrieg involved the concentration of all efforts on a single point in the defensive line of the enemy, breakthrough, and deep penetration into enemy territory that caught the enemies by surprise and forced to surrender to the waves is extremely effective attackers.
At the end of September 1941 the German “Juggernaut” (the villain — approx. ed.) reached the outskirts of Bryansk, in the region of the Desna river southwest of Moscow. In battle, the Nazis destroyed the city by 80% and killed 80 thousand people. 21-year-old Kalashnikov was wounded in the left shoulder when his tank came under artillery fire. To the hospital he got after a terrible two-day Hiking trip. He was tormented by nightmares about how the Germans deal with his comrades.
Kalashnikov is entirely possessed by the idea of creating a machine pistol, which would throw the Germans out of his native country. Lying on a hospital bed, he sketched a very simple machine. This obsession then led him to the Studio, where he made a prototype machine, and then in technical school, where he invented a carbine, and then, finally, to the creation of the Kalashnikov assault rifle 1947 (AK-47), which received approval for production in that year. The machine combines the best features of a submachine gun (light weight and durability) and a machine gun (killing power). At the end of 1949 the weapons factory produced about 80 thousand AK-47.
Although the Second world war, the AK-47 was late, the Soviet leadership understood that their machine will be the most important weapon of the modern age, and they really tried to hide it from Western countries. Soviet soldiers had AK in special cases, hiding the real shape of the weapon. They also collected the spent shells to keep secret new ammo for the machine.
The uprising in Hungary in 1956 forced Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to send the Red Army in Budapest. The situation demanded first use of the AK-47, and the machines have proven themselves in urban environments where tanks were stuck in narrow streets, where they were met by a mob armed with Molotov cocktails. The uprising was crushed, killing 50 thousand Hungarians, compared to seven thousands of Soviet soldiers.
In the late 1950-ies, the USSR began to use the AK to spread communism. At the beginning of the cold war, Washington and Moscow tried to win over the undecided countries through gifts and transfers of arms. Compared to the proposed Americans with rifles M-1 and later M-14, AK was much better. Its durability is perfect for harsh conditions and lack of repair shops in the poor countries. The USSR also provided a free license to manufacture AK-47 to “fraternal” countries, including Bulgaria, China, East Germany, Hungary, North Korea, Poland and Yugoslavia.
American weapons experts are not aware of the superiority of the AK-47, clinging to outdated methods of warfare, embodied in M-1. This rifle is flawlessly manifested itself during the Second world war, and General George Patton called it the best of all weapons ever invented. But the rifle was heavy, clunky and contained a total of eight rounds in the magazine and was not automatic. The war was changing, and M-1 could not keep up with the changes.
Only during the Vietnam war, the first major indirect collision of Americans with the Soviet Union, the American soldiers met AK-47 on the battlefield. They had to pay dearly for the failure of the American government to recognize the simple power of weapons of the Kalashnikov.
One of the key challenges that the US faced in Vietnam, was connected with a basic weapon: despite all its military might, the us army lacked small arms, able to withstand AK in the prevailing conditions on the battlefield. Often in the jungle patrols unexpectedly came face-to-face, and defeated the party that could do more shots.
After years of bureaucratic red tape the us army got finally own automatic weapons — assault rifle, M-16, a nifty and sophisticated. In the summer of 1966, it was ordered more than 100 thousand copies of this weapon, which was delivered in the Asian theater of war. But in October received an unexpected message.
The m-16 often misfired.
American soldiers often died when they dismantled the machine, trying to find and eliminate the cause of the misfires during the attack. The morale of the soldiers collapsed as they could not rely on their weapons. When the Vietcong found out about these problems, they, on the contrary, cheered, and “black rifle” as he was called this weapon the Viet Cong, no longer instilled fear in them. Although the army tried to minimize the implications of this for public opinion, Congress have received information from parents of soldiers and from soldiers, who considered themselves devotees. The Subcommittee of the Congress listened to the unpleasant testimony about what the American soldiers prefer to fight in battle taken the trophy AK, not M-16.
It turned out that the problem was not the machine gun, and ammunition. M-16 misfired, because the authorities insisted on changing the composition of gunpowder in the cartridges, and the remains of a burnt substance was scoring mechanism for frequent shooting. But, although the problems were settled, it was too late. AK acquired the image of the world’s best infantry weapons, able to beat the best Western analogues. It was a simple Soviet technology against the U.S. sophisticated technology, and the Communists won the propaganda struggle.
The Vietnam war did the name of the AK, and the war in Afghanistan and continuing the collapse of the Soviet Empire contributed to the spread of these weapons falling into the hands of insurgents and terrorists, who considered the AK a symbol of the struggle against the imperialists. From a strategic point of view the initial Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was successful. Killed at least 70 soldiers, and most of them not in combat. The Soviet plan was to leave the troops there for no more than three years. The deadline seemed reasonable since the Afghan fighters lacked modern weapons.
But that all changed when the CIA began to provide extensive assistance to insurgents by sending through Pakistan hundreds of thousands of AK (mostly Chinese, where the rapidly developing production of such weapons). The CIA preferred the AK due to its reliability, low cost and availability. In addition, Soviet weapons in the hands modzhahedov it was difficult to trace to the United States, and Washington could officially deny everything. Years later, representatives of the CIA reported to Congress that as of 1984, for modzhahedov it spent $ 200 million, and in 1988 this amount reached two billion dollars, while the active channels of the CIA.
Not without bribes and corruption to supply the CIA helped the rebels to keep warehouses full with weapons. In the mid-1980s, the war reached a stalemate, despite the presence in Afghanistan of about 100 thousand Soviet soldiers, and public opinion in the USSR an increasingly negative attitude to the armed conflict, which seemed impossible to win.
15 Feb 1989 left Afghanistan last Soviet soldiers, but the huge infrastructure of the weapons has not disappeared. Having existed for ten years, she is deeply rooted in the economy and culture of Afghanistan and neighboring States. Even before the withdrawal of Soviet troops the Western media pointed to the giant supply of AK in the region and on the emergence of the lexicon the words “Kalashnikov culture”. In Pakistan a significant part of the economy, including gangs of robbers and kidnappers, drug traffickers, following existing paths of the arms, and small markets in the villages, where they sold, bought, repaired and produced their own versions of the weapon depended on the ubiquitous AK.
International distribution AK reached even greater proportions with the collapse of the USSR, when former Soviet republics started to sell their arsenals. AK sold at low prices in Africa, where countries were divided into tribal unions with longstanding civil conflicts. In Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone and other countries of AK led to delays in the almost dry small conflicts. In some areas, this weapon has become so familiar a part of everyday life, what has been called the “African credit card”, that is, things without which people cannot leave home.
In Latin America, AK fell into the hands of cartels and anti-government rebels. The CIA was supplying these weapons not only in Afghanistan but also in Nicaragua in the early 1980-ies, supplying guns to the contras in their fight against the USSR focused on the Sandinistas. AK fueled the civil war in El Salvador, as well as the violence associated with politics and the drug trade in Colombia. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently announced its intention to buy 100 thousand AK from Russian arsenals. He also announced plans to establish production AK-47 in Venezuela — the first attempt of production of these weapons in the Western hemisphere.
Before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a moderate Islamic country, but a brutal war led to the spread of more radical forms of religion flourishing in a country with easily available weapons and a ruined economy. In a mountainous region near the Pakistani border who was born in Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden has been adopting increasingly extremist view of Holy war — first against the Soviet invasion, and then against the United States and the West.
Shortly before the us invasion of Afghanistan in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin bin Laden issued the first of several videos warning about the consequences. All the entries are the leader of “al Qaeda” holds close to AK, or this machine lies behind it. Typical photos in the banks of images dressed in white represent bin Laden during firing from AK that must mean his commitment to the struggle against imperialism.
In the battle against the United States, many militants of al-Qaida and fighters of the different tribes still wear the same AK who bought the CIA over ten years ago. The first American soldier was killed in combat in Afghanistan, Sergeant first class Nathan Ross Chapman, Nathan Ross Chapman of San Antonio, was killed by a teenager armed with an AK.
AK was also the main weapon in the last “small war” that the superpower was hoping to spend quickly and painlessly: in Iraq.
Although coalition bombing destroyed most of the aircraft, tanks and Scud missiles the Iraqi regime in 1991, the army of Saddam Hussein retained small arms, including AK. When in March 2003 began operation “Iraqi Freedom”, in the arsenals of the Iraqi army was kept seven to eight million small arms. American strategists did not consider these weapons a big threat at the time of the home invasion, but after the main fighting machines became very dangerous for American soldiers. During the chaos that followed a quick victory, it was looted huge quantity of weapons in Iraqi warehouses. Part of it fell into the hands of law abiding concerned citizens, but others were supporters of the Baath party and other opponents of American occupation, and they used these weapons to launch another war in the cities.
In Iraq, the AK also has a symbolic meaning. Saddam Hussein was so fascinated with the AK that was built minarets for a mosque in Baghdad in the form of this machine. His son Uday had a gold plated AK. When Saddam was captured in his underground shelter was two AK.
Soldiers of the new Iraqi army, trained by American military and civilian contractors abandon the M-16 and M-4 of American manufacturing. When the coalition provisional authority began to discuss the Iraqi armed forces, they were surprised to learn that the Iraqis insist on AK. “For better or for worse, but in this part of the world, the AK-47 is the main weapon,’ said Walter Slocombe (Walter Slocombe), senior adviser to the coalition authorities. — It appeared that every Iraqi male over the age of 12 years is able to disassemble and reassemble the AK with my eyes closed, and quite a good shot”.
Kalashnikov sometimes expressed disappointment at the killing machine that he gave the world. “I’d like to invent a lawn mower,” he told The Guardian in 2002.
In Iraq, Sierra Leone, Sudan and other hot spots of war, constitute the fighting in urban environments, where the guerrillas held against the better trained soldiers. Sophisticated expensive weapon does not help to overcome armed with AK rebel, need little preparation and good knowledge of the area. Some call it the new reality of small conflicts.
This feeling was expressed by major General William Livesay, Jr., (William J. Livsey Jr), the commandant of Fort Benning in Georgia, in the early 1980-ies, when the army was first integrating computer chips into weapons. “Despite all the advanced weapons, which we can do or Tips, you still have to deal with a lone infantryman and his rifle on his land. This is the most difficult task,” he said.
In popular culture AK is also entered. In 2004, the “Playboy” magazine included him in a list of 50 things that changed the world, by placing the machine behind the Apple Macintosh computer, the contraceptive pill and the Sony Betamax video deck. In the movie “Jackie brown” character actor Samuel Jackson calls the distinguishing characteristic of the machine: AK. The best in the world. You’re definitely going to kill everyone in the room.”
Despite all the influence of his weapon, Kalashnikov did not receive any royalties for his invention. He recently produced a vodka under his name, which became a hit in Europe and the middle East. In the US it needs to get to the next year.
He continues to demonstrate steadfastness and aloof, blaming others for the wrong use of the machine. “I invented a weapon to protect the Motherland. I have no regrets and bear no responsibility for how it is used politicians,” he said in an interview.
Larry Kahaner’s book AK-47: the Weapon that changed the war”.
